November 26, 2014

I just started my second class in my pursuit of a Masters degree in Education.  The very first assignment was to provide my personal history of thinking about reading and writing, and my impressions of children's and young adult literature.  As I am getting back into the "going to school" mode I decided that I want to continue using technology in every part of my education so that when I do become a teacher it will be embedded in everything I do.  So here it goes...

Assignment #1 - Patty's Personal Reading History for RDU531

Before I started this class and started reading the textbook I would say that my opinions of children’s literature were limited solely to whether I liked a book or not.  My impression of children’s literature was that books were written for the enjoyment and/or education of our children.  I never really thought about the things that might influence the writing of children’s literature.  I enjoy reading all types of children’s literature both for my own enjoyment as well as for entertaining my children.

I am number six of seven children and I grew up in what I would consider a lower middle class family.  My Dad was a blue collar worker and my Mom was a stay-at-home Mom.  Coming from a large family and being one of the youngest children I was very competitive and was always trying to keep up with my older siblings.  I don’t remember being read to as a child or visiting the library very often.  However, I was very eager to go to school so that I could learn to read and write.  The county school district that we lived in didn’t have kindergarten so my Mom enrolled me in the city school kindergarten program and drove me to and from school every day.  I was thrilled to be in school like my older brothers and sisters.  I learned very quickly and reading came very easy to me.  When I started first grade in the county school system I was so far ahead of the other students in my class that they ended up promoting me to second grade part way through the year.  We didn’t really discuss books in my family.  We talked about sports, music, church, family, and many other subjects, but rarely books.

I found my love of reading in the first grade.  Because I was so far ahead of the other students my teacher (Mrs. Underwood) would find “special” books for me to read in class during reading time.  She would also recommend many different books to me to read on my own.  I remember reading things like Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder), The Street of Flower Boxes (Peggy Mann), Ralph and the Motorcycle (Beverly Cleary), tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (Judy Blume), Encyclopedia Brown (Donald Sobol), Nancy Drew Series (Carolyn Keene), Hardy Boys Series (Franklin Dixson), Charlotte’s Web (EB White), and Black Beauty (Anna Sewell).  I loved reading anything that I could get lost in. 

As I got older I became more focused on math and science in school.  I didn’t do as well in English and social studies classes, and my reading began to drop off.  I had to read some books for school but rarely enjoyed it.  Some of the books I remember disliking the most include The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne), Animal Farm (George Orwell), Romeo and Juliette (William Shakespeare), The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper), and A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens).  These books were very hard for me to read and it became much more like work and not much fun.  When I went to college I worked full time while majoring in Chemical Engineering.  There was very little time for reading for enjoyment.  I can remember reading Calvin and Hobbs (Bill Watterson) books and the comics in the Sunday newspaper.  

After I graduated and married my wonderful husband, Rick, I started to read for enjoyment again.  At this point I was reading books by authors such as Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Dan Brown.  This is when I first remember my family actually talking about books.  My Dad would be reading the same books and we would often talk about them.  Being in the middle of four brothers I was very much a tomboy growing up and I tended to read more adventure books.  My Mom likes reading mysteries which I could never seem to get into.  She introduced me to The Mitford series (Jan Karon) and Ladies of Covington series (Joan Medlicott) which I enjoyed very much and we at last could talk about books together.

Then my oldest daughter was born.  Trying to be the perfect parents, we read to our daughter all the time.  She loved it and so did I.  I discovered the wonderful world of children’s literature, starting with some fun picture books like Good Night Moon and The Runaway Bunny (Margaret Wise Brown), Love you Forever (Robert N. Munsch), Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? (Bill Martin) and The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle).   (I had these memorized at one point.)  It was around this same time that I also discovered the Harry Potter series (JK Rowling) and immediately I was hooked.  This was right up my alley.  A story that was a combination fantasy, reality, and adventure and that I could get totally lost in.  As each new book in the series was released more and more of my family members were reading it.  We would go to the bookstore at midnight on the day the book was released (in costume, of course) and then spend the next few days reading it front to back.  Once everyone was done we would have many conversations about what had happened and what we thought might happen next.  When the release date for the next book was set I would re-read each of the previous books one right after the next so I would be ready for the next one.  At this point I think I’ve read the entire series at least eight times, and I will still pick them up and read them from time to time. 

When the movies started coming out my family (brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews) would dress up and go to the midnight showing.  Then we would spend the next several weeks discussing how the movies differed from the books.  At first my girls were too young to enjoy Harry Potter, but as time went on and the movies came out on DVD they started watching them with me.  When my youngest was in kindergarten I started reading the first book to both of them at night and we all loved it.  It was our special time together at the end of the day.  By the time the last movie came out my youngest daughter begged us to let her go with us.  She made a fantastic Dobby!

As my girls have grown, I have continued to read what they read and have enjoyed many fabulous books.  Our latest favorites include The Fault In Our Stars (John Green), The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Twilight (Stephanie Meyers), and Divergent (Veronica Roth).  I have also continued to expand my own reading and almost always have a book at hand that I read at night or during down time. 

With this class I am excited to learn more about children’s literature and how I might teach children to learn to read and to love reading like my first grade teacher did for me.