“An Inch of My Reading”

I was once told that I was born knowing how to read. If only I could imagine myself as a baby, that’s newly born reading books and lyrics. I already knew that it was a fib and misleading. I can’t really remember how I actually learned how to read. There was help from my family, but all I could remember was sounding out words, saying vowels, and repeating the word over and over as I began learning how to read. From that day forward I was on the road of reading.

Before I was actually born and still in my mother’s womb, I was being read to. Thinking that it was contagious, I was raised, already knowing how to read just by listening to the words flow right out of her mouth as I sound to sleep. At a certain time of the day and night I would wrap up under my mother and began to listen to the bedtime stories she would read aloud to me. As I grew older I started to study the illustrations and words of the book and started to read along with her. After all of that I just began to catch on to the reading as my eyes wondered across all of the books I have read.

During school, when it came to reading I was set and ready to read. Reading became interesting with all of the colors, drawings, and pop-ups, but it also became boring. My bedtime stories from my mother didn’t stop when I entered school.

Remembering the words from the books my mother would read me helped me understand what I was reading in school. Every night she would come into my room and we would read. We would read together, sing together, take turns reading, and after we would make our own stories, and think about how far reading could take me in life.

Starting to read on my own I discovered how easy it was and thought why it took so long to learn. First I began to read the series of "Junie B. Jones" books and read each chapter every day. After, as I could begin to read higher level books, I read the series of Bluford High. Not forgetting my aunt, she would buy every series of the "Bluford High" books for me as she went out. Being a young child I still would watch television and learn more things, but I prefer reading books. I could imagine how things were. Not being an only child I started to read to my older brother and began acting out the characters in the book. The older I have got I realized some of the forbidden novels that adults read.

Both, my mother and aunt would read many different authors but yet, very large books. I knew that one day that it would be hard to avoid the books they read, instead of sticking to fictional books I would read all the time. The books my mother and aunt would read looked long but more interesting by looking at the cover of the book. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some books that adults read are fictional.  When I did get a chance to read one of the novels I became engaged in the reading, it was like I fell deep inside the book as if I was in the story.

Without any practice on how things would go in life books would become my guidance. I spent almost most of my life thinking of how my life would be. One time I read a book and it became so interesting that I felt the pain one of the characters were in. I was offended, having complete lost of words. Now I finally realized that learning how to read is based upon your own intellect.