>>Alice: So what do I just start?

>>Speaker: Well tell us your name.

>>Alice: I'm Alice Horning

>>Speaker: And where you work.

>>Alice: I work at Oakland University.

>>Speaker: Now tell us a meaningful story about literacy in your life.

>>Alice: Alright, well my story is about a router famous children's book called "Johnny Tremain". By Esther Forbes, which won a Newberry medal.  And it's a wonderful story about a young man who was apprenticed to a silversmith, he has a very serious accident in which he burns his hand, so he can no longer work as a silversmith.  And he finds himself running around Boston in the days before the revolution.  And he makes friends with a printer's apprentice, and subsequently gets involved in the revolutionary war movement.  Prior to Lexington and Concord. And it is a book that I started reading probably in second grade.  I was a pretty good reader, my sister taught me to read before I went to school. Neither of us could remember how she did that, but she did it because she was 1 1/2 years older, and she was sick of reading to me. So she taught me to read so I could read by myself, and I became a reader.  And I don't know how that I came to Johnny Tremain.  I took it off the shelf, from the library I know, and I started reading it in second grade.  And I reread it over and over and over, I was always reading Johnny Tremain. I was reading Johnny Tremain before everything else, during everything else, and after everything else. I loved that book. And of course in the second grade it was way too hard for me, so I didn't understand but I read it all away through.  I read it again in third grade, I read it again and again and again. And finally my sister bought me a copy because she was tired of seeing me check it out of the library. And it has been with me all my, I haven't continued to read it continuously, but some years ago, maybe 3 or 4 years ago, my niece gave me a recorded version which I listened to, and loved. And then I decided I should read it again, because somehow listening to it wasn't the same as reading it for me. And so I took my copy, tattered though it is, with it's gold Newberry stamp on the cover, and I read it again. And I still love it, it's a beautiful story, it's beautifully told, the writing is gorgeous, but it's very sympathetic, it's a wonderful book.  If the city

>>Speaker: So it threw you into the world of reading.

>>Alice: It was sort of the touchstone of my reading practice, and it's an example of how if a work is sufficiently engaging and captures something important for you, you will stay with it and you will go through it again and again and again.  And no matter how high the frustration level is, no matter how many words you don't understand and how much of the story you really don't get.  And lately I've been thinking a lot about Johnny Tremain because he too lost a hand, well mostly, lost the important bits of his hand. 

>>Speaker: Wow, show your hand to the screen.

>>Alice: Here is my hand. I broke my (04:13.1) on black ice three months ago.

>>Speaker: so you sympathize with Johnny Tremain?

>>Alice: I definitely sympathize with Johnny Tremain, I've been thinking that I should read it again.