My grade 4 teacher taught me to be a reader. This is something very different than just knowing how to read I think. Readers love, appreciate and respect books. They read because they want to; to learn, to experience new worlds and ideas. Mrs. Botting was deeply passionate about literature and always read aloud to us in class with voices and sound effects and props. She encouraged us to read for pleasure, not because we had to. Thanks to her, I became a ferocious reader. My parents actually had to coax me to stop reading and come out of my room. It didn't hurt that we would get free pizza for reading something like 10 books a month... remember the 'Book It' program?? My dad and I always shared a passion for books and he would provide me with a steady stream of reading material. We still love to talk about what we're reading and recommend books to each other... as long as it's not a "women's book"!
I loved English class in high school. I always felt so clueless in math and science but then I would come to English class and suddenly I felt at ease and confident in my abilities. It was in high school that I first developed a love for Canadian literature, something which I had previously thought to be very dull. My grade 11 English teacher introduced me to Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields and many other literary greats whom our country has produced. Anne of Green Gables changed my whole world when I first read it as an adolescent (it remains my most favourite book!), and as I delved into other Canadian authors I began to see how - like in Montgomery’s Anne - identity and a sense of place, or landscape, are so interconnected in Canadian fiction. This is an area that I love to explore in my reading today.
I'm an English teacher, and when I talk to my new students on the first day of class, they often tell me, "I hate reading"... it's almost like a disclaimer... "I won't like this class and I won't do well because I hate to read!" Some kids really struggle with reading and so I get it - no one really wants to do something they find difficult. But I love the challenge of trying to change some of their minds about books! I remember reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time with my grade 10 class last year and after a few days of reading the book aloud, one of my most notorious non-readers (and not to mention trouble-makers!) declared that this was the "sickest" he'd ever read. That's good right?? He asked if there were any other books like this one that he could read, and I think by the end of the year, a kid who'd never read an entire novel in his life had read 10 books! All because he found a book that spoke his language.
When I finished reading the book Theories of Relativity with a grade 11 class, one of my students remarked that they were sad we were done the book. To me, that was such an accurate statement of what makes a good book. The best books are the ones that leave you almost in a state of mourning when you're done, because you're sad to leave the people and the world that you are so invested in.
One of my biggest goals as a parent is to provide my kids with an appreciation for reading. They don't have to love it as much as I do (my husband is a total non-reader; he's just not into it!) but I don't want them to grow up afraid of it or with a 'books suck' mentality. I really want them to LIKE reading! I've read to Wesley since he was first born and it's something we love doing together! He'll sit quietly working on his soother as we read before naptime or bed and he definitely already has his favourites (more on that in another post...). In the past week or so he's actually starting picking up books and bringing them over to me! I almost cried the first time this happened! Reading to your baby is the best thing you can do for them in terms of encouraging language development and listening and memory skills.
I started this post with the intention of writing about some books I've enjoyed lately, but it's turned more into a story about my love affair with reading... so I'll post again about that soon, along with some of our favourite kids books!
