An Armload of Books
Looker, Samantha

>>SPEAKER: State your name.

>>SAMANTHA: I'm Samantha Looker.

>>SPEAKER: And what's your story about?

>>SAMANTHA: Briefly I'm going to talk about my experiences with reading as a child and how my parents and teachers kind of played into that.

>>SPEAKER: Ok, excellent, go ahead and share your story.

>>SAMANTHA: Ok, so one of the earliest memories I have of reading is that my mom has always been a crafty hands-on person and she made me, when I was young before I could actually read, she made me a book that was made of fabric and cardboard and things sewn together and it had a mirror in it and it had a little doll that I could put in the bathtub and put in the chair and put in different places in the book; it was classy. My dad has always been a huge reader. My mom doesn't really read books, she reads newspaper articles and things like that. So my dad and I, my dad would always sit on the couch and read when he had some spare time on the weekends and so I took to reading with my dad and so even before I could actually read I would sit there with the book my mom made for me and I would snuggle up on the couch next to my dad and he'd be reading some mystery novel or something and I'd be there looking at my book and as I grew older and could actually read I would be sitting up there with my books and sitting next to my dad. He was the one who took me to the library every weekend. We called them our father daughter adventures. Every Saturday, it was after my piano lesson, we would go to my piano lesson and go have lunch and then we would go to the library. From my dad I learned how many books you could possibly read in one week. [Laughing] And I learned techniques for carrying large piles of books. I actually learned - I don't know how you can get this on the camera - but how to like put my - no I can't get this on the camera - but I would put my one are straight so I could have a pile of books in my arm and they would be supported by this arm and the other arm would be around them to keep them in place. [Laughing] Because every time we went to the library I would get this huge stack and my dad would get this huge stack too because he read a bunch of stuff. So we'd come out of there with our big old pile of books and we would read them through the weeks and then go back and get some more. I'm trying to think, I remember a large part of my graduation from picture books to chapter books, being my second grade teacher, Ms. Sniffin, she was the coolest teacher ever. She knew me to be a nerd and a book nerd and so she kind of helped me cultivate that. Most of my peers were just reading picture books and those kinds of things and she had some chapter books in her classroom and she would push me in that direction. She'd be like, "You should really feel free to take some of these with you." She had a little library where you could check them out. That was how I got into the Babysitter's club and some of the early relatives of Nancy Drew. [Laughing] It was a younger crowd; then as part of that I started going with my dad not just to children's sections but the young adult section too. So those books were slightly smaller and made a little less unwieldy paths. [Laughing] I'm trying to think of what else to say. Those are the memories that just pop out. Oh, I have one more I want to mention. The computer is getting darker, is that a bad thing? Ok. [Laughing] It's going to sleep on me, I'm boring. So one other thing I'm thinking about is because I was such a big fan of reading I was also one of those kids who fancied that I was going to become a novelist when I grew up; I was going to become an author. In fourth and fifth grade, a part of the class was that we did a book unit and everyone wrote a book and we bound the books together. Fourth grade is the one that really just out at me. Now I'm trying to remember if it was fourth or fifth grade; I feel old sitting here. It was either fourth or fifth grade, we're just going to go with it. [Laughing] So we had to write these books and this was actually coming several years after kindergarten when we wrote books and I won an award for a book about my two cats; I don't remember what was in it but it was about my two cats and it had my cats in it. This might have happened in both fourth and fifth grade now that I think about it. In part of the book unit I was writing my book where most people were sticking to more manageable goals of ten, fifteen page books with pictures. I was writing myself a novel. I had to request an extension from my teacher because I had my eighty index cards full of my writing that I was writing together [Laughing] and I was nowhere near done when it was time for everyone else to turn their stuff in. My mom would probably be mad at me for not being able to remember what that book was about. Now I want to go home and ask her. I was funny because I think I was just kind of raised to be an overachiever or a little bit excessive when it comes to literacy with my big piles of books and my extended chapter books. But yeah, there you go, is that ok?