Literacry narrative book2.0

Throughout my whole life, I’ve enjoyed reading. Okay, well not really. For

as far back as my memory goes, my nana always had a book and was
reading, my pa (short for grandpa because I couldn’t say “grandpa”) had

a stack of books taller than me that he was reading at any given moment.
And my mom and dad were always reading a book when they could. As a
child, I remember my mom and my nana, reading to me every night
before bed. Of course, I had my favorite books and my mom and nana

would try and get me to read the words with them and it was just
something I was never interested in doing for myself, I’d rather have

someone else do the reading.







“Fox in Socks, Knox on


box.”


I still can’t say this right














“I’ll love you forever. I’ll like you for


always. As long as I’m living my baby

you’ll be.”

My mom still tells me this...19 years
Those banana muffins…That’s

later
what Blue wanted for breakfast

Flash forward to 4 grade, the year I had sworn off reading forever. In
th
fourth grade, we had reading logs, and reading was not something I was

interested in doing, but it was my homework so I forced myself to read.
Until that fateful day when I had forgotten to read for almost 2 weeks,
and my reading log was due, and my teacher expected 2 weeks’ worth of
reading to be on the nice, white, new, unwritten on reading log. So, I lied. I

wrote in random books from my bookshelf and the pages and times I’d
read, and then had my dad sign it on his way out the door to go to work

that morning. I turned it in, got a check mark, and went on with my life.
That was, until my mom was going through my school papers and saw
that reading log, and she knew I hadn’t read those books, because she’s the

mom and she knows everything. And she grounded me for lying on that
reading log. It was right at that moment, that I knew I would hate reading
for the rest of my life. Or so I thought.









That was the last time I


ever forged a reading log…..or

was it?

My 6 grade English class was a joke. My teacher, Ms. Coburn, was
th
crazy. She was in the middle of a divorce and custody battle and moving

houses ect. so teaching was her last concern. She would come into class
and cry because she couldn’t get the computer to work. “Who can fix the
computer today?” she would ask. My friend Autumn and I would get up
every time she asked and go over to her desk to fix it.

She would thank us and tells us all about
“how her children ate candles for dinner My actual M

last night, because she was a single mom,
phone
raising 2 children on a teachers’ salary” y
(She actually said that to us one day)

And from this last place on her mind came the “Read,
Tac, Toe” board. Without any actual work to do, which
is not good for all the kids who are in this “advanced”

English class, I read. Not really because I wanted to per
se, but because there was nothing else to do, (this was
before smart phones were really a thing, I had a flip phone). That year in

Ms. Coburns class I read over 150 books. From shorter books like the
Animorphs, and the “diaries” of historical events, all the way to the entire
Harry Potter series,(Note: Harry Potter had been an exception to all of this,

my mom and dad, and my best friend(picture) all loved harry Potter, so
naturally I had to as well, however, it did take me a long time to read each
book).

I spent a majority of my time in this class in the library looking for new
books or talking to my librarian, Mrs. Irvine. I owe a lot of my literary

success to Mrs. Irvine because when other teachers wouldn’t help me with
projects, Mrs. Irvine would always read over my essays and help me to
revise them and elevate them to a higher level. And anytime I was in the

library walking around aimlessly looking for a new series to start, she
always had new suggestions, and sometimes she even ordered books just
because I asked her to because I was interested in reading them. I guess, I

really should thank Ms. Coburn for really igniting my love of reading,
because ever since her class, I’ve never been without a book. So, Thanks Ms.
Coburn. And thanks to Mrs. Irvine for helping to enhance this newfound

love.

Then, there was Mrs. Krueger in eighth grade. First off, let me say that she
thought of herself as a coach first, a mother second, and a teacher third.

“Today,” she would say at the start of class “I need to focus on drills and
games for the basketball (or track) teams so just don’t make too much
noise” and with that, class had begun. We never

did anything in that class, which at first, was
great because I could all the books I wanted to.
However, around thanksgiving of that year she

decided she needed to be a better teacher, so she
assigned us books to read. Well, she didn’t really
want us to read them, she wanted us to listen to

them on audio book in class. And even better,
they were so old and over played because they were unkempt cassette tapes.
I had never hated listening to someone read me a book so much in my life,

while I still loved reading, my own personal choice of books, I grew to
despise the books that teachers assigned me in class, or even reading that
had to be done over the summer. (I will never forget the sound of that

reader’s voice while for 3 weeks in class, we listened to Fahrenheit 451.
And then after that, The old man and the sea.) This hatred continued
much into my high school years.







Grew to love this Still don’t like

one either of these

See? I was such a little book

nerd, I even took pictures with my

books!

Once in high school I had found my love for technical theatre, (hence my
major, theatre technology) so all the plays we had to read in English were

actually interesting to me because it was relevant to what I loved doing, so
they’re the exception to all this. But the novels we had to read, I just
stereotyped them as boring, old books that I didn’t care to read. This

changed a little bit during the summer before my junior year of high
school when we were supposed to read In Cold Blood. I was sitting in a
hospital bed, (the why is not really important) and my Nana knew I had

to read this book for school so being the loving, thoughtful, Nana she is,
she brought me a book about murder when I’m lying in a hospital bed
waiting for surgery. At first, I was annoyed because I had assumed that

this book would be just as boring as other school assigned books, but this
book changed my perception on school assigned books. This book made me
appreciate all the literary classic that my teachers had been trying to get

me to appreciate for years. I had a new perspective on all of those books I
had been reading for years. This made me excited to be taking AP Lit for
my senior year English class, because it was all reading these classic

books.

Not actually one of

my favorite books,

but an interesting


read…

I still love to read. I try to
read as much as I can, but
college and theatre make
that kind of hard, but

when I get the chance to
read, especially for

extended periods of time, I
take the opportunity to
read as much as I can. For
instance, I went on a two-

week cruise over
intersession and read this

many books while on
vacation, just because it’s
something that I love to do.
And I hope, that when I’m

old rich and famous and
can retire, that I can spend

my days reading, just like
my grandparents do. I
honestly cannot imagine

my life without reading,
and for that I am very I brought
thankful to those authors

who couldn’t imagine their 12 books with me
lives without writing.

And now, onto the next part of my literacy journey….






My current Stack

of books to read…