My Literacy Journey and the Books that Made Me

I have many memories of reading and writing when I was a kid. So, it’s actually kind of hard to put those thoughts into perspective, especially when I think about the most important books of my life. Without a doubt, the stories that come to mind have impacted me as a reader, writer, and a teacher. They are numerous. I know I could try to explain them, but there are just so many stories that changed me. In this post, I would like to discuss my literacy journey. It started when I was very young. But, by reflecting on it, I hope it inspires you to think about your experiences as well.

Library Books, Essays, AR Reading

I can remember going to my local library often when I was a kid. Occasionally, my mom would have us write book reports in exchange for takeout dinner. Consequently, my siblings and I would comb through the stacks at the library seeking interesting topics. I wrote a report about Bengal tigers once. But, it was here that we found a million interesting books (like Choose Your Own Adventure books by R.L. Stine), and where we learned that silence and reading were two comforting allies.

In elementary school, I also had a ton of Accelerated Reader points. The gold standard for myself and many of my peers. These points were extremely important to us because you collected them like coins. All you had to do was pass a short quiz on a book. The more points, the more prizes you could win. Myself and two other students won top prizes for the year. The prize? Going with our principle, Mr. Katzinger, to lunch and the local library. It’s a great memory for me, and it’s important for my literacy journey.

Read-a-Longs and Read-a-Thons

Another memory I have is from earlier in my life, roughly around third grade. My school would host a read-a-long (or a read-a-thon, I don’t remember which), where students would spend a good chunk of the day–if not the entire day– reading. We would lay around the school reading books and immersing ourselves in literature. As a bonus, we were allowed a sleeping bag, snacks, and a drink.

For me, the consummate teacher’s pet, I ended up putting my sleeping bag underneath the teacher’s desk. My teacher, Ms. Knoblauch, was elsewhere in the room. There I read Roald Dahl’s 1988 children’s novel Matilda front to back, cover to cover. It was such a pleasant experience and that book holds a precious place in my heart. I can remember the quiet solitude, and the rain pattering on the window. The energy was out of the school, as each child experienced the written word in their own way in silent contemplation. Dahl’s Matilda had all of the ingredients to lull me into a safe place, including a precocious, avid-reader protagonist and an evil principal.

There was also the love of an endearing teacher, Miss Honey. It was only a year later I would meet the kindest, sweetest teacher in my entire life, who was very similar in many ways. She was a literacy advocate through and through.

Childhood Memories of Reading and Writing

My literacy journey continues: in my early teens I sat at my parents’ kitchen table (sat on the kitchen table), and I had my legs up on a chair while my mom washed the dishes after dinner. She asked me to read a few stories, which was a frequent tradition when she was preoccupied with other matters, and so I read her two tales from two separate collections, exchanging each book on my lap when the first story ended.

One of which was Stephen King’s short story “Suffer the Little Children” from his 1993 collection of short stories Nightmares & Dreamscapes. This is an excellent collection, and in it, a third-grade teacher (much like a similar character from his story “Here There Be Tygers”) begins to suspect that her students are actually shapeshifting monster. It’s about a monstrous takeover or it’s about a teacher’s slow descent into madness. Either way, it’s one of my mom’s favorites, and I found it especially unsettling–but I did love it.

The second story was Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 short story “The Black Cat.” This was in one of our many Poe collections. I didn’t quite understand Poe at the time and felt the story was too real. In fact, I thought it was from the perspective of the author himself. The admission of gouging out the cat’s eye with a penknife left me startled, as I thought it was an admission of guilt. Little did I know that the story is simply a genius-level conjuration of a literary giant.

These stories greatly infected my taste for horror, and I sought it out everywhere and in every form, from books to short stories, and from television to film.

Reflecting on My Literacy Journey

I think about these moments in my literacy journey often. Now that I am a teacher, I try to have a positive impact on my students. I also have a young daughter who is as precocious as I ever was. So, I can only think about how there are these exact moments with students in middle school and first-year college that shape their entire outlook on literacy. There are moments when you are a young kid in third grade that will forever impact you for the rest of your life. Even though I went through the same experiences, I guess I’m just glad I had a good book to help me along.