Written Language & Literacy Narrative 

When I was in elementary school, my teacher gave everyone in my class a copy of a book from The Magic Tree House series as a gift to read over winter break. I’d had interest in reading before, but that day I spent every minute reading that book, feeling the texture of it between my fingers each time I turned the page. I stayed up late, hiding the book under my pillow as the sky turned dark and my parents said goodnight to me. I finished the book that night and I was hooked. The book was set in the middle of the series, and I had to know the beginning. My parents didn’t exactly love the fact that I stayed up late, but they wanted to encourage me to read more, so that year at the Scholastic Book Fair was selling the rest of the books, they agreed to buy them for me. I remember the odd looks I got as I lugged over a hundred books, heavier than I thought I would be able to carry, through the hallways and out to my parents, but it was more than worth it. 

I spent that summer reading each book as fast as I could and whenever I could. 

One night, my parents had a party at our house with a few of my mom’s friends, including my younger cousin. She was about five at the time and me and my brother were her closest cousins, so when she came over, she was just excited to play with us. But I wanted to keep reading, so I made her a deal. She could pick any book out of my new collection, and I would read it out to her. She picked Mummies in the Morning because she liked the cat on the front. I’d already read that one, but honestly, I liked the cat too. 

So, we sat on a couch on the back porch, surrounded by everyone and yet no one seemed to notice us, we were already being sucked into a different world. My dad started a firepit as the sun started to set and the air began to chill. The smell of smoke overpowered the scent of the book as I opened it.  

I began to read aloud to her; I could definitely feel my voice cracking since I didn’t usually talk for extended periods of time and even though no one had been paying attention to us a was still a little self-conscious, but my cousin seemed to enjoy the story and I did too. 

I think I had only made it to chapter two when I realized that my cousin had fallen asleep. My uncle seemed to notice I had stopped and came over to give her a blanket and pick her up. I was going to close my book when my grandma stopped me and asked me to keep reading. I guess at some point some of my family and the other guests stopped talking and started listening to me read. I think I was even more embarrassed then than when I had started reading, but the damage was already done, so I kept reading until the sun had completely set. 

As people started to leave, they complimented me on my reading. I knew that they were the kinds of compliments you give kids when they did something that wasn’t amazing, but you want to encourage it, but it still felt nice to be complimented. My grandma always knew how to make anything genuine though and the praise she gave me was worth the world to me.  

I was lucky to have a family that encouraged me, my dad and grandma, who wanted to support me in anything I was interested in, and my mom who was as obsessed with reading as I was. My cousin also started to become interested in books, and even when we would play, she would want to make up stories based on the books I had told her about.  

When I think about the way many of the people I know whose first language isn’t English would answer this question, my answer kind of seems mundane. Reading was something that just happened to come easy to me and I didn’t have the hurdle of a second language to jump over. My closest friend is someone who had to take an ESL course in school, and even though I personally had trouble speaking and had to attend years of speech therapy, my learning wasn’t impacted in the same way his was. I was able to start learning to read and write from the time I started Kindergarten, but he and some of my other friends had to learn another language in order to get the same beginning I did. He’s just as smart as I am, but because his first language and the one he spoke at home is Spanish, he had to be treated differently and learn differently than I did. I also believe that my love for reading was more encouraged and expected of me in school because I was a girl. It was more acceptable for me to sit and read instead of running around and playing during recess. Overall, I seemed to have just happened to get the best conditions to be interested and do well when it came to reading and writing.