My earliest memory involving pre-formal reading and storytelling is that of my dad telling me his invented tales of a little girl and little boy growing up in Nova Scotia. I cannot remember at what age I was when he first began telling me these stories, but it is definitely the first thing I can remember. These stories seemed to have a very loose plot structure. The little boy and little girl from Nova Scotia lived on the Bay of Fundy and usually experienced some kind of weather phenomena, or their experience echoed something from my dad’s own past. There was no overarching moral to his stories; the importance was using my imagination to paint a picture of what a life alternative to my own would be like.
I always remember my parents reading, be it solitary or to me – or even, to each other. My mom would read Sherlock Holmes stories out loud on long trips. My dad would read the Sunday comics to me. When I got to be about 4 years old, he began reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books to me. That was the first experience of relating to a character in a story from a different time, for me, and it was a really powerful experience. To this day I can remember huge scenes from the “Little House” books as if they were from my own memory. I formed a real relationship with those stories and characters. Personal involvement in stories seems pretty key, looking back. Even with stories like “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” my family and I would re-enact the scene in which the goats “trip-trap” across the bridge. Every bridge I crossed suddenly had a troll underneath it.
So, reading was very important in my house. It was not something that was explicitly stressed, but rather implicitly so. Even in the television I watched, there was an emphasis on literacy. I learned my alphabet watching Sesame Street. I continued to develop the value of a good story by watching Reading Rainbow and going to the library frequently. I learned how to read outside of the classroom setting. I remember how nerve wracked I was when my mother told my teacher that I could read already and the teacher sat me down in front of fifteen or so of my peers, who weren’t reading yet, and had me read to them. To this day, I remember feeling the embarrassment of stumbling over words, uncertain if I was reading correctly. I thought they would think I was a bad reader or not a reader at all – maybe faking it somehow.
After learning to read, I became voracious. I devoured book after book. My mother would take me to the library on a regular basis and I would walk out with an armload and finish half of them on the car ride home. In the summer, I would participate in the library summer reading initiative, earning prizes for the books I read. I continued reading as if it were a competitive sport in school with Accelerated Reader, always choosing the books worth the most points and reading them as quickly as I could. I would regularly be at the top of the Accelerated Reader list as far as who had the most points, as a result.
I remember honing my skills as a reader by recording myself reading a story I had written and illustrated. The cover was made of leftover wallpaper and my drawings and near illegible scrawls were stapled inside. I vaguely remember it being about a dog named BoBo. Everyone had a story about BoBo the dog, as it was part of a handmade flash card system my teacher used to teach us phonics.