POLL: Early Reading Influences

[Brooks R]

No: HPFGUIDX 1919

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Vicki Merriman" <vjmerri at i...> 
wrote:

> I wasn't sure which way to jump on this poll and finally went 
> with "read to by parents."  My parents read bedtime stories when I 
> was small, but didn't do much reading to me or my sister aside from 
> that.

 (snip)
 
>I DEFINITELY think that I developed 
> a love of books from my parents.  Sort of a combination of being 
read 
> to while quite small but also from the example they set.  In our 
> house, people read, if that explanation makes sense.


I kow I was read to when I was pre-kindergarten - but I DON'T
REMEMBER IT.  Primarily by my mother, who read a lot.  But once I 
learned to read in first grade, I outpaced everyone else in my class; 
and after proving my ability in the different school I went to in 
second grade, got special dispensation (when the 1st and 2nd graders 
were restricted to a limited section of the school library with the 
'early readers' books) to be able to go to the section open for all 
older students - I still remember trying to phonetically pronounce 
'rendezvous' in English, from a 6th grade-level 'future of space 
flight' book (when there was still a possibility that the Gemini 
capsules would land on the ground with a Rogallo Wing parachute 
instead of water splashdowns)..... 

And speaking of space flight - a moment of silence please in honor of 
the second human in space, Gherman Titov, who had been the last 
survivor of the four men, two US and two Russian, of the 1961 space 
flights..... 

I read _The Martian Chronicles_ in third grade.

Anyway - and then I won a 'number of books read' contest in 7th grade.
But I didn't read Narnia till I was in college and my fiance told me 
what I had missed; although I read LOTR as a freshman in high school 
and loved it.  (Didn't read _Peter Pan_ until I was in college 
either).  And I have only ever read the first Oz book.  I didn't read 
any Raggedy Anne's until I was in my thirties!  (Of course they had 
been out of print for a while by then).

-Brooks