Reading is such an integral part of today's society that it's almost impossible to remember a time when words on a page were just meaningless inkblots. Perhaps the earliest word I learned to recognize was my name, though I don't remember ever being told, "These four letters make up your name and here's what it looks like." (I obviously added my own corollary: Now write it all over your parents' furniture. Yes, just like that!)
My earliest memory of being able to "read" was from sometime around 4 years old. (I'm not quite certain of the time, as I have no contextual clues in the memory to help out.) I was bothering Dad upstairs in his office. He was doing something on the computer (at least I assume it was a computer. Has there ever not been a computer in Dad's office?) when I wandered in. There was a piece of paper that had been printed out sitting on the desk next to him. I picked up the paper and said (to the effect of), "Daddy, look! I can read!" At which point I painstakingly recited every letter that was printed. Not word by word, but letter by letter. I'd probably been taught the alphabet in school that day (or my mother, for all I know, over the summer). I recognized the letters, but not the words they formed.
My next memory is kindergarten. We had picture books in the classroom library, for the class moms or the teacher to read to us. I remember having some sort of disdain regarding those books; either I could them all by myself like a big kid or I thought the stories were dumb, I'm not quite sure which. I lean more toward the former because I'm rather awesome, but I digress.
In first grade, we had "stations" every couple of days. The kids would spend a certain amount of time at each station performing the tasks there. There were things like story time, finger painting, jump rope, and then the more grammatical stations. I distinctly remember one time where I was at a grammar station. All the other kids had envelopes with little pieces of paper in them. I didn't have an envelope. I didn't think anything of it and wasted time until Mrs. Norgrum (a yard duty/classroom help) came over and asked me where my vowels were. I was alarmed because not only had I been wasting time but I had no idea what "vowels" were, much less where I had put them. Mrs. Norgrum got me an envelope and we cut out little pieces of paper that had the vowels on them, like flashcards. I spent the rest of that station memorizing my vowels.
I don't have memories of reading picture books on my own. I have dim memories of Mom reading
Liza Lou and the Yellow Belly Swamp Monster and a unicorn book to me at bedtime. But reading them on my own is basically a big blank spot. I do remember spending hours at Barnes & Noble with Rene and Dad, pouring over the chapter books*, looking for the
best one to get. Rene and I would compete over whose book was better, or whose book was longer, or whose book had more chapters, as though they determined how intelligent or capable we were. (One chapter book had a story about a boy who was looking for his cat. It had 16 chapters. It was much better than Rene's chapter book.)
When I was seven or eight I moved up to chapter books without pictures. I read maybe half a dozen in the
Bone Chillers series (a
Goosebumps knock off). I don't remember the kinds books I read between second and fourth grades, unfortunately. I do know I spent an inordinate amount of time in the children's section of Barnes & Noble, perusing the almost-novel-chapter-books.
The summer before fourth grade I was nine. Catherine (14) had just finished Anne McCaffrey's
Dragonflight. I don't know why she thought that I, at nine, could understand what she could at 14, but she recommended it nonetheless. I spent an entire afternoon at the IV Swim Club reading the prologue of that book. I understood maybe three words in five. I was constantly going back and forth from the novel to the dictionary, looking up words I didn't know. It was exhausting. I finally put it down and said I'd get back to it later. Later turned out to be the middle of fourth grade. I reread the prologoue, got the gist of it (if not the pseudo-scientific terms), and read that book and the rest of the series that year. I was one of the few students in Ms. Martello's class to have read 10,000+ pages that year.
After finishing
The Dragon Riders of Pern by the beginning of fifth grade, Catherine said I should read Melanie Rawn's
Dragon Prince. I read that series and the
Dragon Star trilogy that year.
When I was 11, Catherine introduced me to
The Last Herald-Mage trilogy, which remains one of my favorite trilogies to this day. I loved Lackey so much that I proceeded to read every novel published in the
Valdemar series until 2004 (I was 15), when I discovered that Lackey's work no longer challenged me, nor did I care for her cookie-cutter Valdemar heroes. (They were all rescued from an awful home-life by their wonderful Companion, taken to the capital, and realize that they are the only one who can save the kingdom from Certain Peril and absolutely can't not act. Yawn.) It must have been around this time that Catherine also recommended
Assassin's Apprentice and
The Coldfire trilogy, both of which are favorites of mine.
Looking back, I am absolutely astonished at not only the
quantity of novels I read, but also the
quality of novels.
Dragon Riders is not some fluff novel targeted at 10-year-olds. It was written and marketed toward adults, with adult themes, complex plots and characters, and advanced vocabulary (for example: chagrined). That holds doubly true for Rawn's
Dragon Prince/Dragon Star trilogies. I just recently reread them and am
still amazed at how beautifully complex and interwoven those stories are. I can't believe that my 10/11-year-old self read those with virtually no problems.
I wonder if my parents knew what they were getting into when they encouraged me to read, especially with the paternal decree that "reading is educational" and therefore I basically had
carte blanche to purchase and read any novel I wanted. I certainly took advantage of it. :)
