On Reading

The first word I read was "pork," or so the story goes. I don't actually remember it, to be honest. Apparently, we were at a Chinese restaurant (Lani Louie's, how I miss thee!) and I was looking at the menu and then burst out with "Mommy, that says pork!" and by golly, it sure did!


I've always been a reader. We have pictures of me sitting at my little play desk "reading" before I could actually read. Mom and Dad used to read to me all the time - lots of things, but I especially remember The Little Engine that Could, The Pokey Little Puppy, and The Night Before Christmas. Hey, it was a way cool pop up book, of course I loved it!


As I got older, I began to read to myself. I was reading before I started school, which meant I "got to" leave my classroom to go to the next grade up for reading and spelling. I loved reading anything and everything - Amelia Bedelia, Mrs Piggle Wiggle, and later, The Baby-Sitter's Club, Sweet Valley Twins, and Judy Blume, not to mention cereal boxes, the TV Guide, and anything else that crossed my path. I would read pretty much anything and everything.


We still read as a family, though. I distinctly remember reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe around the dinner table. We'd pass the book around after we finished dinner, each taking a turn, reading a chapter a night. To this day, those are some of my favorite books. I reread them about once a year.


In the late elementary/early teen years, I would ride my bike to the library in the summer and check out 10-15 books weekly. I flew through books, rarely stopping to do anything else. I would read while I walked to the bus stop, read in the car, read before bed. I read between classes, between softball games, before practice. I loved to read.


I've been thinking a lot about this lately. The reading scores at my school are not good. Most of our kids are not passing their state reading tests. Many of them don't like to read, because they struggle with it, and most of them did not have the joy of parents who read to them or with them when they were developing readers. While I think I'm a natural reader, I was lucky to have parents who fostered that love in me, who showed me that it was a good thing to do with my time. I'm sure there were times growing up when they wished I didn't love it quite as much as I did, but I know their encouragement of my reading is what helped me be the student I was.


Reading is so incredibly important. It opens doors in people's lives. It allows us to learn about other places and times, to discover new ideas, to escape into someone else's world. I cannot imagine living life without the joy of reading. And so today, I thank all the people who take the time to read with children. People like my parents, who read with me when I was little. People like the teachers I work with, who make time for reading in their class periods, to help teach our students just how important it is. People like my mom, who volunteer for the SMART program, helping kids who struggle with reading.

With that, I'm off to read another chapter in my latest book.