Literacy Story

One of the first books I remember reading was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. What I remember most about it were the large iridescent animals that spread across the pages. I read this book more than once, and I specifically remember going to the library and sitting down with other children near my age and listening to the librarian slowly flip through the pages. But I was impatient at how slowly the librarian was reading and how slowly she was turning the pages.
I also remember the Amelia Bedelia series by Peggy Parish. These I read on my own. I read these series a couple of times and they were interesting enough to read but I found that I enjoyed The Berenstain Bears by Stan Berenstain even more. I recall going back to these books over and over again; it's probably why I still remember quite a bit about them.

The person who has probably most impacted by literacy is probably my dad. He used to read to me at night before I'd fall asleep. Half the time I ended up falling asleep before he even finished the book, but he'd ask me what I remember about the book and then he'd finish off the story the next night from where I fell asleep.

I was a third grader when my mother came back from the library and introduced to me the first of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. I distinctly remember another kid in the class reading the same book I was-Redwall- and we both tried to finish it before the other. It was a bit of a thick book, and I spent my night and the morning of the snow delay the next day reading. I have a tendancy to literally not do anything else but read a good book I start. Once I borrowed the entire Guardians of Ga'hoole series by Kathryn Lasky, and spent the entire day on the couch with a stack of books by my side to finish. I was determined to finish the portion of the series I had next to me by dinner, and I spent the entire day up to dinner, reading.

I wasn't really into poetry until 7th/8th grade. I joined deviantart, a site for artwork and literature. I spent a lot of time browsing through poems of random people, and was inspired to write my own. I never really liked people reading things I wrote, and after spending time writing something, I would usually find that I didn't like it and I ended up tossing it away. I started a few short stories as well, and approximately 40 or so pages of a story a friend and I were working on. Unfortunately the computers the school wiped out the computer files over the summer and most of our story was gone.

Fini.