One-Minute Writing of the Day:
Writer: Jen
I had a dyslexia that went undiagnosed for a long time... and made it all the way to 3rd grade not knowing how to read. I didn't understand the concept of looking at the 'letter shaped pictures' and seeing words instead of shapes... Then Miss Albers kept me in during recess and made me learn how to read, while everyone else was outside playing. I thought she was punishing me by keeping me indoors...
Now I know she was showing me the true doorway to the outside. :)
Congratulations, Jen! This was a popular prompt, and your post was to me very memorable--the "indoor/outside" connection was creative and touching! Feel free to put a One-Minute Writer WINNER! button on your blog!
65 comments:
When I was about eight years old, a friend of my parents came to visit. He looked at what I was reading -- I still remember, it was a typical children's picture storybook called "Pickles, the Fire Cat." He told me I was capable of more. With my parents' permission, he took me to the public library and introduced me to children's literature classics: the Oz books, Little Women, Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, Nancy Drew. I became an avid reader. I would go to the library every 3-4 days and take out the maximum of 5 books. The nice library lady would sometimes allow me to take more, so my Mom didn't have to drive me clear across town every couple of days. It goes without saying that this event shaped the rest of my life. Today, I am a writer.
My favourite book was about the Water Babies- I had a glass of water that sat on my windowsill ( im sure mother topped it up ) for over two years containing my babies- i would read them their story every night.
Lisa xx
When my father retired from the military, we moved to the country. Our old farm house was surrounded by farm properties and beyond the farms were woods. I used to take a book, a bag lunch and hike thru the farm fields and into the woods quite often. My father would not allow us to read comics or comic books. We had to read the classics or books. He encouraged trips to the library and that is where my love for reading was born. I could go to the woods and lose myself in the pages for hours on end. It was my little corner of peace.
Nancy Drew.
A cozy bed. Warm covers. A bedside lamp.
Untold hours of delight as I follow George, Bess, Ned, Hannah Gruen, the sherriff, Mr. Drew ... and my beloved Nancy, of course ... as they journey up a staircase, down a lane, behind a window, over a hedge, inside a trunk ... even across the seas to Scotland and Chinatown.
Heart racing with glee. Bad guys beware!
What a great prompt!
My BEST childhood memories are of reading... gathering armfuls from the country "book mobile" in summer, wandering the stacks at the Carnegie Public Library for HOURS in the next town over... sitting up against an old Oak not too far into the woods and reading.. for days... I lived many magical lives as a child...
I loved historical fiction, especially anything about Napoleon. I Grade 8, I wrote my book report on War and Peace. My teacher didn't believe I read the book! He quizzed me in front of the class in an attempt to dicredit me. At first, I was horrified, but suddenly I enjoyed defending myself and showing this male teacher for the fool he was. Children are capable of reading complex books. Of course, the many layers may be realized as one gains life's experience. Look how many people enjoy "Children's books." Cast aside Reading prejudice and read widely.
When we twins were in first grade, and our older brother was in fourth, Dad read The Chronicles of Narnia to us for the first time. Of course, we could all read, but it was special to have him read to us.
We followed the adventures of the Pevinsie clan, Aslan, and others. We were enraptured. A lifetime love of reading was solidified for three kids.
We got a dog while we were reading the books, and what did we name him? Puddleglum, Puddles for short. From then on, we always named our pets after book characters.
BTW, I agree with Tracy - what a GREAT prompt! I'm enjoying reading others' memories as much as I enjoyed having my own. I just remembered having a situation in 3rd grade similar to the one Marcail had in 8th. But the book was Heidi (I don't think I could've done War and Peace at that age!), and the wonderful teacher just couldn't believe I'd read it ... which was sad, considering that it's a book written for children. Today's young kids are missing out when they choose less-challenging books over A Little Princess, Heidi, The Secret Garden, etc....
My memory of reading from childhhod is one of my dad doing the reading- a brake manual no less. Exciting material! He was reading it while my sister was crawling all over him and he just kept moving the manual so he could see it. After about 5 minutes my sister gave up and went off to play somewhere. About 10 minutes later my dad asked my mom "Where are the kids? I haven't seen them since I got home." Ha! Now we see the source of my one track mind and ability to "Tune out" everything when I read
When I was three, I received 3 "Big Golden Books"- Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore's birthday, Winnie the Pooh The Unbouncing of Tigger and Winnie the Pooh A Tight Squeeze.
My Mom wrapped them as a gift for me the first Christmas after my oldest child was born.
He loved them as much as I did; I could hear her voice in my head when I read to him, just like she read to me.
My earliest memories of reading were the Faraway Tree. I even re-read them to my eldest daughter when she was younger.
Later I read the Adventure series by Willard Price, which contained about 20 stories about 2 brother’s adventures with their dad who collected animals for zoo’s. Not very PC I know, but they were written in the 1950’s. I think there was Amazon, Africa, Gorilla, Lion and so-on.
Later when I was a teenager and grounded, I read the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because they were the only books in my bedroom.
My feet extended upward as I laid on my bed with my legs pressed against the wall; a favorite position to absorb the latest Nancy Drew book that was gripped tightly in my hands.
Dinner? ... No thanks, I'm reading.
TV? ... No thanks, I'm reading.
Are you ok? ... Yes, I'm reading.
And, finally, with an exasperated sound, "Please leave me alone...I'm reading!!"
Judy Blume... she spoke to a young awkward me.
I read always. A book a day, several a week, forever reading.
I was safe in those worlds.
hmm... just one memory?
I was in my Reading class- both the most boring and fun class I had- and we were allowed to read any book we wanted to bring from home that week, so I was reading Brian Lumley's Nosferatu. I was in sixth grade. My teacher took one look at the cover, dragged me to the front office and called my mother.
My mother calmly explained that I had been reading for well over ten years and was certainly mature enough to deal with imaginary monsters. My teacher was obviously dissatisfied with this response and chose a seemingly benign theme for next week's book selection: "Children and their pets"
I showed up with King's Pet Semetary. My mother was never called again. :)
I love to read. I think I used reading to escape when I was a teenager. A favorite memory for me is when my little sister would join me on my bed to read. I had my novel and she had her fairy tale. She would even get in the same position as I was in. Funny thing is she doesn't even like to read now. :)
Unlike normal parents who punished their children by taking away television and video games, my Mom wouldn’t allow me to read. I would have to sneak off to the library and smuggle books into the house. My sister would blackmail me by threatening to tell that I had books hidden in her toy box. I acted like a teenager on drugs. My addiction just happened to be books.
At first I was stumped, maybe because I can't think of a time when I haven't loved reading, from the Mills and Boon my Mum used to read - my father soon stopped that! :-)to the Famous Five.
But then I remember my Mallory Towers books by Enid Blyton, I SOOOOOO wanted to be at a boarding school, it sounded like such fun. - I had an amazing flash back of this when in Indonesia last Septempber, I saw some Enid Blyton books. I was immediatley transported to that girl of 10 or something like it, who was snuggled up reading in bed with a cup of tea and probably digestive biscuits, to the light of my bedside lamp.
- This totally took more than a minute, but I just enjoyed writing about it so much, wanted it all in. Thanks for this prompt!
My sister is 8 years younger than me. My dad read classics to both of us growing up. We were on a family vacation trip and the plane was almost empty. I was in high school and way too cool to be read to (or be seen with my parents for that matter). He was reading "Where the Red Fern Grows" to my sister in the row behind me.
When he got to the end, he had no idea that his cool, high school daughter was silently quaking with sobs and hanging on every word.
I first learned to love reading when I was 8 years old and my babysitter's daughter gave me one of her Trixie Belden books to read. I was hooked from the first chapter. From that day forward, I read every Trixie book by Julie Campbell available, and then I moved on to others. The Betsy Books by Carolyn Haywood, The Three Investigators by Robert Arthur Jr., The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, The Land of Oz series by L. Frank Baum, Encyclopedia Brown, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle - these are just a few of my childhood favorites.
I am still an avid reader and this habit has been transferred to my youngest daughter - age 16 - who loves reading as much as I do.
I really enjoyed the world in 'The Enchanted Woods' in the Faraway Tree series by Enid Blyton, I SO wanted to take off and climb the Tree and meet Saucepan man, Dame Washalot, the Pixies, MoonFace, Mr. Watzisname etc. I bought the book again a few months ago and even as an adult I cannot help but transport myself to this magical world.
I used to borrow lots of books from the library. Enid Blyton was among my favourites (for a period). I still love libraries, and almost any story that has a secret passage in it... (the Blyton kids always seemed to find one of those).
As a child I loved reading, everything from Little Women to Asterix to receipe books to (on the sly) my Mum's Judith Krantz books.
However the most poignant memory for me was the first time I read Rilla Of Ingleside, the last of the Anne Of Green Gables books. I was curled up on my bed, getting a numb arm reading on my bed, with music in the background as was my habit.
I was listening to the ABBA Gold album when my favourite character Walter died. I was dumbstruck at how LM Montgomery could have been so cruel. With Fernando's melancholy tones throbbing in my ear and my eyes prickling with tears, I staggered down to the kitchen and nudged under my mum's arm for a much needed hug.
I haven't read Rilla Of Ingleside in years, but I still well up for Walter when I hear Fernando.
I used to love to read so much...it was almost all I ever did. I remember one assignment that we had in school to invent something. My invention was a contraption that you put on you bike so you could read while you rode your bike. I laugh at the danger involved now but I delight in how my love for reading blinded me to that at the time!
I remember being in kindergarten and reading the I See Sam readers; we would get Lucky Charms or Cheerios or something like that for reading our pages in our little reading groups. In early elementary school, I can then remember Carolyn Haywood's B is for Betsy and the Betsy-series of books and then Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins and Ramona the Pest series. Later on, it would be the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. By the early teen years, I devoured the Trixie Belden mysteries by Julie Campbell and Kathryn Kenny. Since my late teens, I've been into Romance novels - Kathleen Woodiwiss, Debbie Macobmer, Joan Johnston, Danielle Steele, etc.
I credit learning how to read with not eating my veggies.
Every time we had cooked carrots in particular I would refuse to eat them. My parents would make me sit at the dining room table until I did. But I was a stubborn child. I vividly recall sitting there one night after all the dishes were done and the kitchen cleaned (did I mention I was stubborn?) and long after my mushy carrots were stone cold. I can hear the strains of the Addams family on the television downstairs. Behind me was a bookshelf. I started pulling books off to read, determined as I was with not wanting to eat those carrots.
My mother was a librarian at the Hennepin County Public Library. They had a wonderful children's section in this modern marvel of a building. My mother often had to work on Saturdays and she would park me in the children's section. But I would become bored and wander off into the stacks. They would find me sitting on the floor in some random aisle pulling all the books off the shelf that I could reach. I might not have understood the words, and I appreciated the pictures more, but what I learned was a healthy quest for knowledge contained therein. To this day, I cannot go to a library without wanting to pick a stack and start browsing.
I recently took my 7 year old daughter to the local library, and we did just that. We picked a subject to research, I showed her what the Dewey decimel system meant, and we proceeded to pick not one, but three books out. And they all weren't in the same subject, but rather in the general vicinity.
I hope that she enjoys the treasures contained in the books as much as the hunt.
_____
I have been away for some time and I miss this site and the insightful comments from other writers! I have been swamped at my day job but I hope to be back more frequently.
Enjoy the day!
Erin
[word verification:
ovessel: n. /oh-VESS-uhl/
type of bowl made by an inexperienced potter on the wheel, particularly not round
My son Cal makes wonderful cylinders and perfectly round vessels while I tend to make wonky ovessels that will best be tucked away or only useful for paperclip containers.
(This is actually true! We are taking a pottery class right now!)
I don't remember learning to read.
I do, however, remember the first book I fell in love with. I was in first grade.
It was a small piece of fiction about a man who took children into his rocket ship to visit other planets.
I must have been an unhappy child because this "escape" was all I could think about.
He was so cute. He had a shock of blonde hair that would always fall into his eyes. Oh, and he was tall. For an eight-year old. And I was in LOVE. Every afternoon, he would sit, crossed-legged, under the tree in his front yard, with a book on his lap. Hunched. Focused. Reading. We'd pass by, and my mother would comment about how great it was that he read so much.
But I just really wanted him to look up.
He was so cute. He had a shock of blonde hair that would always fall into his eyes. Oh, and he was tall. For an eight-year old. And I was in LOVE. Every afternoon, he would sit, crossed-legged, under the tree in his front yard, with a book on his lap. Hunched. Focused. Reading. We'd pass by, and my mother would comment about how great it was that he read so much.
But I just really wanted him to look up.
I was reading at age 3.
I read everything and anything.
Reading was my escape from an otherwise not so brilliant childhood.
I remember discovering that our encyclopedia had great stories in it.
And hiding out in the canteen shed at yet another new school with my lunch and my book.
When I was about eight or nine years old, I read a book series called The Littles by John Peterson. The books were about a family of tiny humans that only stood to be about 4-6 inches tall, had mouse-like ears and tails, and went on many interesting adventures. They lived with a normal-sized family called the Biggs who didn’t know about the Littles.
Upon reading the series, I began acting out the books in my bedroom to an audience of stuffed animals, dolls, and Barbies. I used my bathrobe’s tie as a tail and made “mouse ears” with an old head-band and some construction paper. I’m sure that reading and then acting it out on my “stage” had entertained me for a good 3 months until my baby brother was born to keep me occupied.
This was fun! But that 60 seconds goes by way too fast! :)
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I read a lot. Ever since I was a child, I have loved books. I used to walk to the library from my grandmother’s house—sometimes more than once a day—to get a stack of books to read. My favorite book, according to my mother, was Tooloose the Chocolate Moose. I’m not sure what attracted me.
When I was young
I read a book
Whose imagery was chilling
Twisted words,
raw characters
debauchery, blood-spilling
Broken families
Broken hearts
Men rising from the dead
Ruthless leaders
Suffering subjects
Dying for want of bread
Wars and famine
Adulterous women
Murder, slander, libel
I still haven't managed
To put it down yet
The best read I've found...
the Bible!
For some reason, we had an old claw-foot bathtub on our front porch when I was growing up. (It's ok, we lived in the country and could get away with stuff like that.) My mom was an antique collector and I'm sure she had visions of putting it to its intended use one day, but for that one warm, sunny summer, it sat on the porch and I wasted no time filling it with blankets and pillows and using as my reading nook. It was an odd but comfortable little place to get lost in the pages of my latest library book.
Terrific prompt today!
I have an early memory of sitting in my father's lap while he read the newspaper to me. Of course, it was always a story about a neighborhood hero or a parade in town or how to grow a good vegetable garden or the comics section. But it was great. I always saw my parents reading growing up. The only time in life I did not like to read was between about 7th and 12th grades because the amount of reading in school made me want to do anything but read when I wasn't studying. However, I got back into it in college, and especially since college. One of my favorite books was Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever where I would spend hours creating stories from the pages.
We had an Eager Beaver Reading Club in the school I attended from grades one to four. They posted a chart in the library with each student's name and a running tally of how many books they had read.
Thanks to my Encyclopedia Brown obsession, I always topped the list...
As the youngest of seven girls, my older sisters always would read me Dr Seuss books. I loved them. Then two of my sisters recorded themselves reading all the Dr Seuss books on a tape and I remember listening and reading along with this tape all the time as a little kid. I still read them with the same influxes and emphasis they used when I read them to my kid now.
I'll never forget this one. My little sisters and I had just seen Alfred Hitchock's "The Birds" on Tv and were so scared so my mom whips out Hans Christian Anderson and starts reading "The Little Girl with The Red Shoes." This is a story about a little girl whose shoes won't stop dancing and the woodcutter has to chop off her feet! Yikes! My mother was like, "oh, my God" She was trying to calm us down but no such luck. We were completely terrorized that night!
Believe it or not, we still all LOVE to read! lol
I rarely find a book I don't enjoy. So my most memorable reading moments are not based around what book I was reading, they are based around my surroundings. When I was little my papa was living with us because he had cancer and was really sick. I used to go into his room and sit there reading him stories and watch tv with him. He died when I was 6. He left me that chair in his will. My favorite spot to read is in that chair on the screened in porch at the cottage.
My happiest childhood memories include snuggling at the edge of my bed, favorite book in hand, glass of milk by my side. Sipping, reading, and savoring each moment. Entering the world of adventure and fantasy was the highlight of my day.
Enid Blyton and The Famous Five. Life didn't really get much better - secret tunnels, camping on islands, and best of all lashings and lashings of ginger ale!
There are not many childhood memories that do not involve reading! I started my love affair with reading at the ripe old age of 4 and have never looked back! Reading was always there for me....whenever I was made fun of at school or was not asked to the school dance, there was always someone in a book that had or was going through a similar thing! Reading is my most favorite thing in the entire world!
I would get in trouble for reading too much as a child.
I devoured the Baby-Sitter's Club books my cousin gave me, reading them and re-reading them until the bindings fell apart. And the I would read them some more.
Growing up, my family traveled ALOT, and we often stayed with family friends. Much to my shock and horror, one family in particular that we stayed with had NO BOOKS in their house. Oh, they had children's books, and I'm sure there were cookbooks or something of that ilk SOMEWHERE, but there were no REAL books. The parents, trying to be good hosts to a strange, and lonely, 10 year old who was much older than their own children, tried to entertain me with TV and movies. A few hours later, the mom came upstairs to find me tucked neatly into her youngest son's closet, curled up with "Toilet Training Made Easy." This was the point at which she realized that I truly would read ANYTHING, and declared that we were making a visit to their local library.
This was a wonderful prompt, but it was exceedingly hard to choose only one memory - almost all of my great childhood memories involve books and/or reading!
Horton Hears a Who was the first book I remember receiving as a gift when I was a child. I enjoyed having it read to me but I remember that I was so incredibly disappointed that it wasn't a pair of roller skates. It was the only Dr. Suess book I liked - the others were just too disturbing and weird.
Ok you got me with this one!
I have always loved reading. One summer day in my teens it was my turn to make the family dinner while my parents were gone for the day.
I spent the whole day stretched out on the couch reading "Gone With The Wind" ad when I heard their car pull into our driveay I jumped up & headed for the fridge. Problem was...I hadn't stopped reading long enough to eat all day & as I got to the fridge I promptly fainted!
My parents found me on the floor in the kitchen & I did not get in trouble for the lack of dinner on the table!
My house as a child was not always a comforting place to be. However, I do remember a little book that I had, called "Sally Squirrel." It was about 2 1/2 X 2 1/2 inch square and contained the sweetest little pictures of Sally and her adventures through the trees. I spent a lot of time with my nose poked inside that little book!
I was stuck in my stupid bedroom with my stupid sister for THREE WHOLE STUPID HOURS. We were grounded, but it wasn't "no TV" or "no video games." It was "NO BOOKS."
The worst kind of torture.
One of my favorite memories as a child is sitting on my mom's lap while she read to me. She read Golden Books, and Dr. Suess when I was very young, as I got older she introduced the classics. Even after I learned to read she would read to me whenever I asked. She even read some of my Nancy Drew books out loud to me. It was such a special time of closeness.
My parents always told me about how I opened Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the age of two or so, and flipped through it, saying "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," on each page.
I remember walking into a bookstore with my dad, which was filled with the blue covers of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, now one of my favorite books.
A chilly March 30 morning in Northeastern PA, as a little girl woke up knowing it was her Mama's birthday. She opened the recipe box on the kitchen counter and found "coffee cake" not knowing exactly what it was, but knowing how much her Mama loved coffee. She peeked into her Mama's room and saw that she was still asleep and decided to give her a birthday surprise. Not quite knowing how to read a recipe at the tender age of 4, the cake got all messed up, but Mama seemed to love it anyway. Who would've known that 16 years later, the little girl would hold a degree in Baking & Pastry Arts in her hands - and it all started because she couldn't read.
(a true story about me!)
I went into second grade not knowing how to read and write. My second grade teacher spent countless hours tutoring me. I learned to sound out each letter and when I was finally able to sound out an entire word, I felt like I was on top of the world! Imagine my excitement when I was able to read an entire sentence!
It took a long time for me to learn to read, but when I finally did, it opened a whole new world for me.
I have always LOVED reading. There were nine kids in my family so there was a lot of activity, especially in the kitchen and family room. Bedrooms were crowded too. But we had a living room that was "company only" use. I used stretch out on the carpet in the front entry with the empty living room between me and everyone else. Hours would be spent in my own world with Nancy Drew, or The Hardy Boys or Tom Swift.
when i was a kid, one of my favorite books was called "100,001 things that make me crabby." it was a list written by some woman complaining about things she didn't like, such as toast crumbs in butter or people who drive too slow. i thought it was hilarious and i think it helped shape my present-day love of complaining.
here goes...
old man and sea
that book made see futility as a 7th grader
i still carry that with me today
my 60 seconds are up
I had a dyslexia that went undiagnosed for a long time... and made it all the way to 3rd grade not knowing how to read. I didn't understand the concept of looking at the 'letter shaped pictures' and seeing words instead of shapes... Then Miss Albers kept me in during recess and made me learn how to read, while everyone else was outside playing. I thought she was punishing me by keeping me indoors...
Now I know she was showing me the true doorway to the outside. :)
I was 6 years old when I picked up a big fairy tales' book. It had the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I loved the picture of the beautiful lady who I thought was Snow White but was actually the evil step mother. I could not read the last few lines as they were quite difficult.
My mother sat next to me and helped me finish those few lines.
It was the first story I ever read.
and I thought I had grown up!
I was an addict on "Mengapa Begini, Mengapa Begitu" science series. Got one fix each month from mom. It was my treasure up to elementary years.
A few year ago, the whole series were destroyed by termites. It was one of the saddest things in my life.
Every year for Christmas. I would always ask for was books. As a child, I especially loved R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike books. One year one of my aunts got me nothing except their books. Stacks of them. I remember being so excited and as soon as we opened presents, I curled up in the corner at my Granny's. By the time we left that night, I had already read over half of the books.
Growing up in my house, my dad was a little overbearing. I think it had a lot to do with the responsibility that he was shouldering. The man had nine kids and worked two jobs to help pay for our upbringing. In the evenings, he would come home and the tension would just be thick as soup. But when it came to dinner time (and we ate as a family most always), he liked to read to us. My dad considered himself a scholar and being a member of Mensa, I'd have to say he was pretty smart. He desperately wanted to pass that intelligence along to all of us. He was demanding. So, after finishing his meal, he would settle in and read us chapters of a book at a time. I remember him reading J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit", and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. He even did the voices. How he kept all the voices straight from dinner to dinner was amazing. It was one of the neatest regular family events we had. So long before they were made into movies, my siblings and I knew all about Frodo, Bilbo, Gandolf and all the others. Somehow those moments shared between my father and us got missed in the early teen years between my kids and I.
I discovered first-hand the close connection between scents and memory when I came across a tiny, forgotten dish of cuticle cream. I opened the old container and sniffed... What was that smell? It was so distinct, so familiar... A few moments later, I placed it: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (by Robert C. O'Brien). My mother read the book aloud to me and my brothers in the evenings before bed, and all the while she read, I rubbed that cuticle cream on my fingers. Years later, the smell is still irrevocably connected to the story.
I was reading comics for hours on end, just upon learning to read, at age five, before my age peers in Sweden who start at age seven.
The word verification is unkle, suggesting this may have given me an avuncular outlook ...
Hello!
Just posting a message to give you permission to use my entry for your podcast. :D
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