Childhood Encyclopedia Indexing
Grohens, Joseph

>>SPEAKER: Ok, we're recording this. Do you want to tell me your name and what your literacy story is about? 

>>JOSEPH: My name is Joe Grohens and I wanted to tell about how I, as a young boy, became very involved in books and reading. So in my early years in school I often stayed home from school a lot and I can remember in second and third grade I had many, many weeks where I was out of school with bronchitis or pneumonia or something and I had an aunt in California, for reasons I don't remember, would periodically send me children's encyclopedias one volume at a time and it was a growing collection. I like to read and this is something that I used to pass the time when I was confined to bed and remember that I read, eventually, every article in this entire set of encyclopedias. Then I got the idea that I wanted to create a list of every volume and page where there was something about fishing because I had the hope that my father would take me fishing and teach me how to fish; it was something we had talked about. So I was studying up on it and I noticed that every so often there would be some different thing about fish occurring so I created an index and wrote it out and it was two pages long. Several months later my aunt sent me the final volume of the encyclopedia which already had an index in it. [Laughing] So I was somewhat disappointed that my index was not longer necessary but that was my first indexing experience. From there I graduated into reading classics by Jules Verne and Dickens and that sort of thing. But I think if it hadn't been for the fact that I was out of school for such extended periods and had nothing to do I would not have become so immersed in books and encyclopedias are still some of my favorite kinds of reading.

>>SPEAKER: Ok.

>>JOSEPH: That's my story.

>>SPEAKER: Thank you.