Journal Prompt: What do you remember about learning to read?
What I wrote: We were the only family in town with a library in the house. When the carpenter put up all the shelves in the combination dining room/library/office for my Dad, he asked, “You opening up a grocery story or what?” When we told him it was for the books, he grunted and said, “Past the Bible and the Sears catalog, don’t have much use for them myself.”
The room was soon filled with books, top to bottom. I learned to read early, and after I mastered the comics in the newspaper, and the Betsey McCall section of my mother’s McCall’s magazine, I began to read National Geographic.
One day, I considered all the books in our library and asked my father if I could read one. (It wold not have occurred to me to simply take a book without asking. Different times, very different upbringing.) My father told me, kindly, that I wouldn’t understand them.
“Why not?” I asked. “I can read English.”
My father smiled and handed me a physics book. “Read this, then,” he said.
I worked through the introduction, getting the words right, but with no idea about the ideas in the book. At 5 years, physics isn’t a familiar concept.
I remember the mix of awe, anger and concern that I could not grasp the material. It was English. I knew how to read English. Why couldn’t I understand this English?
Slowly I came to understand the difference between reading and comprehension; between seeing and knowing. The complex relationship between seeing words and understanding concepts came slowly to me, but I began to read more, eager for the ability to link words to concepts.
There are still many books I don’t understand, and many I don’t try to understand, but the joy and mystery of reading can fill me with a joy that few other things can reach. I hope the love of reading doesn’t fade away, replaced by electronic pastimes. Reading was my comfort, excitement and cure for loneliness. It still is.
–Quinn McDonald is a writer who teaches others to write through training programs. See her work at QuinnCreative.com Image: Mouse, charcoal on paper. Quinn McDonald. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.
Super mouse, Quinn! You have definitely grasped reductive drawing with your left hand!
I still have my first book: it is a little English children’s poem about Gnoggy Gnome and his magical house (and shaped like a little cottage, too) and my mother read it to me so many times that one night I took the book from her hand and recited the entire story right back to her, even to turning the pages at the right times! But my first real reading was in first grade, AFTER a great dramatic passage of them having to figure out that I was memorizing everything because I couldn’t see what they were pointing at! AH! Glasses! My homes have always had books, but I also cull them regularly and donate or sell whatever has passed its useful life. But Gnoggy Gnome is still there; so is Great-granddad’s picture book with the pictures that slide apart to reveal new pictures; Grandma S’s Tanglewood tales (my other Grandma was put in the cotton mills of Lancashire when she was five and never learned to read though she did manage four spinners by the time she was ten and my Grandfather sent me the instruction book which came with her first gas cooker and was full of old Lancashire recipes which Grandma knew by heart but could never read); my Mother’s copy of Lark Rise to Candleford and many others.
My favorite saying carve is “We are made whole by books.”
I love the mouse, too! Is that a watercolor?
I remember being about four and watching Sesame Street. There was a word on the screen and I didn’t know what it was, but I just HAD to know it. I yelled to my mom to come into the room and tell me what the word was, and she did. I don’t remember what word it was today, but I do remember my desire to know it and comprehend it, and lots of words after!
—the mouse is a charcoal drawing. You rub charcoal all over the page, then take it off with an eraser. The ‘taking it off” is controlled like a pencil, and that’s what makes the drawing. I did add the whiskers with white charcoal, and go back and add her feet and tail shadow with black charcoal.
Stories of people understanding the importance of words always thrill me. How wonderful that that memory is so clear to you!
First- I love your field mouse. He looks like he could scurry right off the page.
Second – Your memories of learning to read are fascinating, especially your realization that you need to understand the words you are saying. We have always had homes stuffed with books, at least on my mother’s side of the family. The joke was that we would build a house for the books and then move in with them!
—I’m pretty amazed by the field mouse as well–my drawing instructor is amazing and she helps me see objects so I can draw them. Once she encouraged me to go back to being left handed, it was much easier for me to see the things I wanted to draw. I love your house of books idea. I could move in with a lot of my books and be comfortable! Even in the apartment, I’ve started to fill a bookcase. -Q