Learning to Love
Reading
My favorite memory
about reading is the Book Fairy. For as
long as I can remember, she came every Sunday night before we went to bed and
left a book under one of our pillows.
After our baths, we would all race to our rooms to look under our
pillows and see who got the book. We
would all climb in bed together and Mom would read the book to us. This was the highlight of our week! The Book Fairy did other things too. She would always leave books for us for our
birthdays, and at Christmas time, she would wrap a Christmas book every day in
the month of December and put it under the Christmas tree for us to read before
we went to bed. Books were such a big
part of my life, and all of these things really made reading such a happy
activity for me. I could hardly wait to
learn to read on my own.
I have
always loved reading. I have been reading all of my life, and it is one of the
best times of the day for me. Even now, I
read every night before I go to bed no matter how late I stay up doing homework
and studying. It helps me unwind so that I can begin a fresh, new day the next
day. It is a great way to escape into a completely
different world for a short time and to learn about other people. Reading has
always been a part of my daily routine and special occasions in my family, and
I believe that is why I love to read so much.
From the day I was
born, my mom read to me every day. Every
day before our nap and every night before we went to sleep, my mom would rock
Richard and me while she read to us. We
would always start with a fun book, and then the books would get calmer and
calmer until it was time for us to go to sleep.
The last book we read every night was called Sleepytime Rhyme,
and it was about mamas and babies going to sleep. Books like Miss Spider’s Tea Party and
Green Eggs and Ham helped me learn to count, my ABCs, and how to try new
things. Books helped me get ready for my first day of school when I was 3. My mom read The Kissing Hand to me the
night before my first day, and it helped me understand that even though I
wouldn’t be with my mom at school, we would still be in each other’s hearts,
and she would be waiting for me when my day is over. We still read that book the night before the
first day of school every year! I always
get a special book for the first day of school and for the last day of school
with a note written in it.
My
kindergarten teacher at St. James was Mrs. Spielman. She had a special little
tree house in her classroom that her students could sit in to read. It was my favorite place in the classroom,
and I was in the tree house as much as I could be. One day, she called my mom to see if I could be
in an advanced reading group that would go with a special reading teacher every
day. I was so excited about it, until I
realized that Richard wasn’t going to be in the group. Richie and I do
everything together, so it was really weird not doing something with him. The next day when it was time for reading, I
went with about 4 other people to Mrs. Weinstein, the reading specialist. I remember the first time that I went into the
classroom. I didn’t really know what to expect, so I was a little nervous. I
specifically remember that the chair was cold. Mrs. Weinstein talked for a minute like all
teachers do on the first day you do something, and then she handed us a book
and we started reading. It was a book
about a dog, and it was really good. I
was finally learning to read real books all by myself! We quickly moved to small chapter books, and
then to larger ones. We would practice
reading, but we would also do lessons that had to do with the plot of the book.
That ended up being my favorite part of
the day all the way through second grade. Then the bell would ring and it would
be time to go back to our regular class.
That was the only part of the class that I didn’t like. When I’m in the middle of a good book, I
don’t like to have to stop, and we usually had to stop right at a
cliffhanger! We read so many good books that other people in
my grade didn’t get to read. One reason
I think this class was so important to me was that Mrs. Weinstein taught me lots
of things about reading, like how to use context clues to figure out what
something means if I don’t understand it, how to use descriptions to form
pictures in my mind, and how to find clues in the book to show me when and
where something is happening. But the
most important thing she taught me was how to enjoy what I was reading without
just deciphering the words. That allowed
me to get so into books that I felt like I was a part of the story.
I often wonder why many
of my friends don’t like to read as much as I do. When I think back on all of the happy
memories I have about books and reading, I know that I was really lucky to be
exposed to books in that way.
