Storybooks, Seagulls and Swing Sets Š A Literacy Narrative; Kaitlin Marks-Dubbs Transcript

[Reel Big Fish - Story of My Life plays during introduction].

>>MARKS-DUBBS: IÕm probably the only 24-year-old adult I know that can recite all of Dr. SeussÕs ABCÕs from Aunt AnnieÕs alligator to I am a Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz as you can plainly see. ThatÕs how I learned to read, and I donÕt think I learned to read so much as I memorized it. But I remember reading to my kindergarten class a lot. I donÕt know if we had a story hour. I just know that not all of the students had learned to read yet. I went to a very rural public school, so it was a big deal and they asked me to do it for the class a lot.

[Reel Big Fish Š Story of My Life plays louder].

>>MARKS-DUBBS: [Reel Big Fish Š Story of My Life fades softly into background]. The first thing I actually remember writing was a book. It was about a killer whale and he got caught in a net and a seagull came and got him out, and my mother bound it somehow. I was about five years old, and for the cover we used this wallpaper that had been in my nursery, so it didnÕt fit the story at all. It had teddy bears and balloons, but I remember feeling so legit that I had this bound book with this cover and I remember writing ever since.

[Reel Big Fish Š Story of My Life plays louder].

>>MARKS-DUBBS: [Reel Big Fish Š Story of My Life fades softly into background]. I just did these things that I wonder now how I even did them. In eighth grade I had met a friend through horseback riding and we wrote this entire horse series and we had floppy disks back then and weÕd throw them back and forth. [We had] eighty to one hundred pages of Microsoft Word documents per book and we had written about five of them and we had nine to twelve planned and we were so in depth and so involved and so enjoyed it.

[Reel Big Fish Š Story of My Life plays louder].

>>MARKS-DUBBS: [Reel Big Fish Š Story of My Life fades softly into background]. ThatÕs what I actually wrote about for my college essay for undergrad. I wrote about the writing process. I wrote about swing sets and how I saw writing as something that doesnÕt have to necessarily be done physically. I used to go on the swing set in my backyard and my parents replaced it when I was about 20 for my Ņlittle sisterÓ because I still used it and was too big for it and so they had to get a new one [laughing]. But I wrote about this internal process that later, eventually sometimes becomes manifested on paper, on the computer, what have you, and I didnÕt know writing studies was a field but I definitely think thatÕs where I was headed and IÕm glad to be here.

[Reel Big Fish Š Story of My Life plays louder].