Pictures
Like Miranda, I dug through my memories, both fuzzy and clear, and couldn’t really put my finger on any one person or event that had a huge influence on my literacy development. What I did find was a bunch of vivid images. In my mind I searched for a face that had an impact on me, but instead, came across the rustling pink dress I imagined on one of the sisters in “Striped Ice Cream,� a thin novel my mom read to my sisters and I countless times in steamy July. When trying to recall an event of significance, instead came to mind the big plastic “reading bubble,� inflated by a fan in a corner of the classroom and painted with fish by my fellow first graders—a place to silently read during free time. And then there was the memory of a winter supper of bread and milk in the dog-centered story of “Sable� in third grade, the orange light of a fire flushing the faces of hobbits and trolls, and the dusty, sugar smell of cut grass and dry dirt roads in “Dandelion Wine.�
My manner of development has been gradual and marked more by sensory milestones than people and places. While this does not exactly make me an expert on the journey to words and understanding, I think it is still important. That I can physically remember the words I have loved and perused will—I hope—give me something to entice with, something I can hold up as a sign of my growth, something that may encourage others.
(Also...blogs that rule:
Orangette
Cover Your Mouth
3191
good idea John)
Comments
Whoa. How excellent is 3191? That's one of the coolest things I've seen in quite a while.
Posted by: John Sharkey | September 5, 2007 9:43 PM
Emily, your memory of the "reading bubble" reminds me of how much reading (more than writing, as Wendy has experienced) was a part of my childhood, especially the idea of a SPACE for reading that was cozy and a sort of extra reward besides the book itself: my seventh- and eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Visconti (it's always amazing to me that I and everyone I know remembers all their teachers' names--I wonder to what extent that's the case with writing consultants...), had a yellow old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub in the back corner of her classroom; anyone who wanted to could lie down in the tub and read. I used to climb a tree in my backyard and bring a book to read up there. And when I was much younger, I used to want a Volkswagen Rabbit when I grew up. Not for speed, or style, or Farfegnugen (not yet invented), but because it was the only hatchback whose name I knew. And I wanted a hatchback so that I could install bookshelves back there and sit in what I saw as a small cozy space to read, my own little self-contained reading world. So, for me, the pleasure of reading, and reading in a particular space, was (and still is) the most important part of my literacy. (Any very snowy day in winter will find me either baking something or curled up in bed reading a fat 19th-century novel.)
Posted by: Katie L. | September 5, 2007 11:57 PM
I like that your memories here are always just out of the grasp of definitive words. That's not to say that we shouldn't try to pin things down exactly when we write, but there's a different, more diffuse kind of meaning here.
It reminds me, a lot, of the book Austerlitz-- anyone ever read that? It deals with memory and language and writing in a really beautful, fleeting way...commenting without directly commenting on them. Anyhow, it's great and this post made me think.
Posted by: Miranda Trimmier | September 6, 2007 11:18 AM