My Early Literacy Memories
Hand, Beth

>>BETH: Hi, my name is Beth and I have several short memories of beginning literacy in my life. I remember when my sister was in second grade and she had rheumatic fever and she had to be at home for a long period of time and she just very much got into reading and I was fascinated with her fascination of that. In my own case, I remember reading Nancy Drew stories and before that I was not a big reader and I know my mother would encourage me to read the information on the soup label and I thought, "Oh how terribly boring that is." The first time that I really remember enjoying and becoming very much involved in a book was reading a Nancy drew book "The Secret Staircase" and I was in my room reading away and there was this scene where somebody appeared outside a window and I screamed and it just made me realize how much I was into the book and that helped me become a better reader and become more interested in reading. Another book that I recall reading was "Cheaper by the Dozen" and I was just fascinated with their suggestions on being efficient and I would take that throughout life. To this day I think about sections of that book and being efficient. In the last literacy thing that I remember is doing a book report - oh it was probably in in third grade and we had to decorate that front cover of it and I spent a long time decorating it because I really felt that I owned this book and that was the first really piece of written literature that I had done that I felt very successful with it, I felt it was a piece of me with that. In all of those experiences put together I think is what created my literacy.