Reading in the Country
Otto, Rosalee

>>ROSALEE: I'm Rosalee Otto and I think I grew up in a very rich reading environment. I've been trying to think about why I became such an avid reader; part of it I think is because we grew up without a TV in the home. I've always thought of that first when I thought about why I became a writer. Also my parents were great readers and my siblings and I read a lot. I grew up on a farm and we read in all kinds of places. One of my favorite places to read was curled up on the plush, maroon couch in our living room. In the summer though, that was a great reading time, we had an old apple tree in our front yard and each of us had a limb of the apple tree that we claimed for our own and we'd take books up into the tree and each sit on our favorite limb of the tree and read up there. We also used it as kind of a reward. When we were taking turns mowing the lawn, one of us would sit on the porch reading while the other did their turns around the huge yard that we had and then when it was our turn we'd get up and mow and come back and do some more reading. When we're mowing in the bean field we'd take our jug of water and we'd each have our book and it would be at the end of the row so we'd hoe the weeds all the way to the end of the field and all the way back and then we'd have a five minute break where we could sit and read our books before we did the next round. So I have fond memories of taking a blanket under a tree and just laying on my stomach reading a book in the summer so I really connect that as kind of at the end of the work day, a big a treat and reward.