Guess what :) My wayyyy overdue 101 post

I am sorry to my self and to my blog and anyone that has checked it only to continuously find my 100th post (espcially Aunt Michelle and Aunt Wendy who have been asking). A lot has happened since I last posted and I made a list of bigger events and such to blog about. When I have time.

But for now I thought I'd post this paper that I worked really hard on and put a lot of effort into. It was sort of a blog entry type. It's about reading throughout my life.

A Journey of Reading in my Life

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” –Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

I have always taken advantage of the opportunity to be read to. Even when I was too young to understand the words being said, and the meanings of each story as a whole. I vividly remember cuddling up in my big girl bed besides my mom as she read me nighttime stories. I loved when she read Love you Forever by Robert Munsch and would make up her own melody to the song the mom from the book sang to her son. I listened and looked at the illustrations, watching the young boy grow to be a man. The roles changed and the book ended with him growing up, taking care of his gray haired mom. I dreamed of what life would have for me as I too, grew up someday.

            I remember making room for my small self in my Grandpa Ludwig’s chair where there was not extra room to spare. I crawled into the soft blue leather recliner, embracing the warm and kindness of my grandpa, as he would read to me. Likewise, my Grandma and Grandpa Demeter would spend time reading aloud to me. The book M.A.D.L.Y. specifically stands out in my memory, a book they bought me for my birthday one year and read to me after I unwrapped it. The story was about bears whose parents wrote “M.A.D.L.Y.” on tokens for their children to keep with them. It was to remind their children “mom and dad love you.” I loved the secrecy of the tokens, only understood by the parents and their kids, and how close the phrase and title of the book was to my name, Maddy.

            Even as I grew older and could read the words printed on the pages by myself, I continued to enjoy being read to. My mom no longer read pictures books like Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, Little Critter, The Berenstain Bears, Goodnight Moon, and Rotten Ralph. These were put aside for my younger sister, and I got to hear chapter books! When she read books from The Boxcar Children series, I used to imagine the young family of adventurous kids in my own back yard, by the creek I loved to play near. These books sparked my imagination, as my sister and I used to play outside pretending we were orphaned kids. Similarly, she read the American Girl Doll series to me. My favorite were the Molly books, she was my first doll and therefore my favorite, not to mention we both had brown hair and brown eyes. I loved learning about what life was like growing up in a different time period, the 1940s. Sometimes as she read, I envisioned myself growing up alongside Molly. My mom also read me books that my grandma had read to mom when she was a young girl like me. I vaguely remember the stories of A Little Princess and The Blue Willow, but I remember her reading them. Both were hardback books without book jackets. The covers were each a different shade of blue fabric.

            With a few exceptions, this is also what I find to be true of my memoires of being read aloud to all throughout school. I can recall the titles of many books, and which specific teacher read them: in first grade Mrs. Zimmerman read Caddie Woodlawn and Where the Sidewalk Ends, in third grade Ms. Drake read The BFG, in fourth grade Mrs. Kirtley read Hatchet, in fifth grade Mrs. Harris read A View from Saturday, in eighth grade Ms. Gunn read Define Normal, and as a junior when I was a student assistant during her English class Mrs. Lewellen read Of Mice and Men.  I can envision the different classrooms and the chair each teacher sat in as she read; sometimes we sat on the floor near her and in other classrooms stayed in our desk chairs. I loved when my teachers would use a different voice for each character, making them come alive. Being read to has always been something I’ve enjoyed. More than anything, it is soothing hearing someone’s steady and constant voice as he or she reads stories. It makes me calm, relaxed, and sometimes even sleepy.

            There are four books, all from middle school, that will always be unforgettable. In sixth grade, Mrs. Haas read Don’t Look Behind You and Ten Little Indians. Both of these novels were full of mystery and suspense. They kept my interest and were too exciting to dismiss their plots. I remember anticipating her class throughout the day, waiting to hear more, and always wishing she could read more than we ever had time for. In seventh grade, Mrs. Streetman read Seedfolk to my class. Her voice was always smiling, making the story even more pleasant. This book was about a community garden in the middle of a city. Each chapter revealed a different character that we would take notes on as she read. I loved seeing the connections and interactions between the characters whose lives overlapped by sharing in this garden. Eventually, we even planted our own seeds in Dixie cups in her classroom and let them grow along the window. Then, in eighth grade, there was the unforgettable Thirteen Reasons Why. Ms. Gunn read this book aloud to our class, though she skipped some parts and never finished it. The book was about a teenage girl who committed suicide. Before ending her life, she recorded the thirteen reasons why on cassette tapes. Throughout the novel, a classmate plays the tapes and her reasons are revealed. The plot itself was creepy and unsettling. Though we liked the book and wanted to hear the end, there was always a weird stigma my friends and I placed on it. During the rest of the school year, and years to follow, we would have random sightings of the book. Once it was in the hallway at school, once brought to our tennis courts by a girl on the opposing team, and once in my cousins’ van when we met to tour Butler University.

            During many of these years when I was read to, I could, and did, read on my own. My first memories of learning to read were with the Reader Rabbit program on my dad’s computer. My brother had started it, and I was excited when I was old enough to. There was a computer game portion, as well as small white books. There were multiple books for each level, and each level had a different pastel color incorporated on the cover. It was challenging, but achieving the next levels and being handed the next plastic sandwich bag of books from my dad was always rewarding in itself.

            As I have gotten to be a better reader, I read more advanced books like Amelia Bedilia books, Junie B Jones books, and Animal Ark books. Though my parents and teachers encouraged me to read, I felt most compelled to read through programs that rewarded reading. At school, there was a book it program. I cannot remember how it worked exactly. Maybe you just had to list books your parents read to you, or you read alone each month. There was a number requirement and if you met it, you got a little certificate, bookmark sized, that entitled you to a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut. I was also very involved in the summer reading program at the library each year. There were different types of books you had to read and different projects you had to do, earning points for completing these tasks. With the points you could pick out different small prizes. The kids’ area at the library was always an exciting place to go, even if it was not during the summer. I loved to check out books, and was always, and still am, guilty of judging books by their covers.

            The school libraries were also places that captured my interest. In elementary and middle school, my friends and I would always find books together. Sometimes we read series like The Amazing Days of Abby Haze and would each check out a different book, other times we found books that had multiple copies and checked out the same book at the same time, like The Music of Dolphins, and still other times we would just have to wait until the other person had read the book and turned it back in, like I was a 98 Pound Duckling. I have never really enjoyed watching movies twice, nor liked to read a book more than once. However, Laci and I each read The Music of Dolphins many times. The book was so fun because it was about a girl who was raised by dolphins and was now being taught to talk by humans. The size of the font often increased and the chapters were always shorts. One night Laci asked me if I had gotten to the part where the girl was reading in the bathtub, I was bummed to find out that if I had read a few more pages I would have been reading in the bath as I read about the girl from the book reading during her bath.

            For many birthdays, I received a Barnes and Noble gift card from my Great Aunt Madeline. I found the bookstore to captivate me just as the library always had. I loved having the freedom to roam the aisles and select whatever books I wanted to purchase. I knew what books I like, realistic ones where the main character was a girl my age or a little older. I also preferred there to be some sort of love story woven in, or something that was a part of my own life to be included such as soccer, dogs, or the beach. Over the years, some of the books I bought included Pretty Tough, Skye’s the Limit, The Secret Language of Girls, books written by Sarah Dessen, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.  The hard part was always deciding which book I would dive into first.

            In school, I found that reading was different. I enjoyed ssr where we could read our own books, but did not like being assigned specific books to read. There is always an exception, to almost everything. For this specific subject of being assigned books to read on our own, it was in fifth grade. We were in small groups that each read the same book. Luckily, my group had Walk Two Moons. I still to this day remember the section about when the girl’s grandparents told her of when they got married. The grandpa had been chasing after the grandma and asked her father if he could marry her. Her father simply replied, “If you can get her to stand still long enough and if she’ll have you, I guess you can.” When the grandpa finally asked her, she did not answer right away. Instead, she starting asking him questions, about his dog. The grandpa anxiously answered each one, telling her that his beagle sleeps in his bed, greets him by jumping up and licking him when he gets home, and that he pets her as he sings to calm her down. Eventually, the grandma said, “You’ve told me all that I need to know. I figure if you treat a dog that good, you’ll treat me better. I figure if that old beagle Sadie loves you so much, I’ll probably love you better. Yes, I’ll marry you.” Since I read that, I have continued to pay close attention to the way people treat their dogs, my dog, and how my dog responds to them. I believe the grandma from the book is wise, and that the grandpa was a fine suitor and lucky catch.

            I wish I could say I have been that connected and interested in all of the books I have been assigned to read over time, but that just is not the way things have worked out. Especially once I got into high school and took honors English, reading became different. It was no longer something I enjoyed in my spare time. Books were constantly being assigned, even in the summer before classes started and over spring break when students are supposed to relax, and take a break from schoolwork. I never seemed to understand exactly what was going on. In class, there were many reading comprehension quizzes that I seemed to do poorly on because I could never remember the details or even understood the main ideas. I eventually gave up on working hard to get the reading assignments done, because whether I read or not my scores would be about the same. I no longer connected to books, and no longer felt connected to my friends through reading, even though we were still reading the same books. However, unlike the library books we once shared, we were not selecting the books we read.

            Being in these demanding English classes during high school has limited my reading for pleasure. There was almost never time where we were not reading a book for class. Once we finished one, we were assigned the next one within days. I never was able to read to books at once because I could not keep the stories separate, not to mention there was never time to read a book that I would have picked out on my own. There were occasional opportunities for us to choose our own books for class, but they still had requirements in place, such as “it must be a ‘classic,’” that stopped me from being able to select something I actually wanted to read.

            I have been able to squeeze in a few books that I read for pleasure and loved, though the list is sparse. During my high school years, I have fallen in love with the stories of Cold Tangerines, Stories I Only Tell my Friends, Two Kisses for Maddy, Start Something that Matters, and Bittersweet. Coincidentally these novels are all true stories (I still do not know if that classifies them as fictional or non-fictional). I have truly connected and sympathized with the honest stories each writer has shared about his or her life. Each of these books is written well, but still simply enough that I comprehend what is happening. I did not spend time physically reading them only to find that I absorbed minimal of the context I do with the majority of the others books I read for class. The writing itself of these books has also been inspirational to me. They have helped me to find my own voice and style in writing which I execute as often as I have time for on my blog. Though it is not reading, but writing, blogging has been a vital part of my life since the day I started when school ended last May. It has helped me to remember, to reflect, to connect, and to invest in each day-making it something for others to read about.