Reader Sketch

This is what kept me sane during my stay in the hospital... all that reminiscing was pretty entertaining.

As soon as I was shot screaming into this world, people felt compelled to read to me. My parents and grandparents read to me. Sometimes the stories were published, other times, my Grampa would make up stories to entertain my brother and I. The first book that I learned to actually read (not memorize) was Mr. Happy, a delightful little morsel in which Mr. Happy helps Mr. Miserable turn his frown upside down. Some of my favorite childhood books include Mr. Pine’s Mixed Up Signs, The Little Old Man Who Could Not Read, The Pain and the Great One, The Best Little Monkeys in the World, and several Berenstain Bears books.

I’ve always been a little bookworm. Sometime around 3rd grade, my mother introduced me to the Little House series. I loved them. During this stage in my life, I also read a book called Best Enemies, which is about a regular kid who is bullied by another girl. I guess I tried to choose books that related to my own trials in life. One of my favorite series were the Ramona Quimby books.
I was a little book freak. I made it into a career. When I lived in Danville, IL, I turned my closet into a bookworm-hole. I had a little bookshelf that was overflowing with rabbit-eared titles and ripped pages. I had to be the coldest spot in the house because it was, well, pretty much in the garage. I chose to rid myself of my old toy box, and replaced it with a sleeping bag. I added a lamp to the top of my bookshelf for great night reading. I used to spend hours in that closet just reading the day away.

One of the single most influential books of my childhood was Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. The exact date of initial inspection is unknown, but the approximate age was 9 or 10. Everything traumatic or important in my young life seemed to happen between 3rd or 4th grade, at least that’s how I remember it. I read that book so many times that it fell apart twice. The protagonist is a 6th grade hotshot named Harriet. My heroine is a self-proclaimed spy who constantly carries a notebook to write down observations. The plot thickens when she accidentally drops her notebook during a game of tag. Her friends find her notebook and read it. The remainder of the story intimates how she deals with each insolent child and the subsequent year at school. This is where my obsession with writing began. I’m also sure that it’s responsible for the birth of my obsessive/compulsive journal collection.

I also liked to read things like Pippi Longstocking, Mandy, the Sweet Valley High series, and several other girl-heroine books. Although I read about fictional female heroines, I was never exposed to anything about real-life heroines like Rosie the Riveter, Louisa May Alcott, or Eleanor Roosevelt. The closest I got was Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts.
I always loved literature class. Whatever we read was enough to satiate my brain. 6th grade was my last year in Danville, and I had an awesome literature teacher. Mrs. Oakwood had us reading stuff like The Outsiders, Where the Red Fern Grows, and Pigman. Although I managed to get a “D” in English grammar, literature was “A’s” all the way.

I moved to DePere two days before 7th grade began. Reading was my hobby because I was so homesick. I read myraid of R.L. Stine books. I eventually became annoyed with the author because his works were so predictable. Literature class in 7th grade was interesting because my teacher’s husband attended St. Norbert High School for Boys at the same time as my Grampa. So my teacher liked me. She recommended a lot of things to me.

I remember having to do a huge poetry project for her class. We had to find poems we hadn’t read before. We then had to copy down those that we enjoyed and write short reflections. As a direct result of this project, I was exposed to Emily Dickinson’s “As if some little artic flower…” I remember understanding it. In retrospect, that is a huge literary accomplishment for any 7th grader. I also read my first Shel Silverstein poem: “Sarah Cythia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out.” I was instantly hooked. This teacher also suggested that I read The Giver by Lois Lowery. This was the first work of literature that thoroughly disturbed me.

I loved it.

All of the things I had read up to that point gave the reader a nice little wrapped up package by the end of the story. This one not only catapulted me out of my reader comfort zone, but it left me hanging as well. Not only hanging, but wanting more.
In 8th grade the school hired a new lit teacher. I remember reading a short story, and our assignment was to rewrite to somehow make it our own. The story was set in the South. As my twist, I chose to re-write the entire thing in southern dialect a la Mark Twain. I don’t remember much about the reading material I chose in 8th grade. This was also the year I started writing poetry, and I can thank my science teacher for that. Science teacher? What the hell does science have to do with poetry? We were assigned to write a poem about nature. I my little mind was fueled with rhyme as I wrote a stunning “Trilogy of the Sky.” It depicted a girl walking home from school. I did my best to describe the sky in three different ways: sunny, rainy, and bejeweled with stars. I loved it. It wasn’t my first poem. I remember trying to write a poem about roses while I still lived in Danville, but I thought it was stupid and threw it away.

I was enrolled to attend Notre Dame Academy (NDA) in the fall of 96, and we were required to do summer reading. We had to read at least four novels. They gave us a recommendation reading list. I don’t even remember what I read, but I know I desperately tried to read Emma whilst soaking up sun rays. However, I almost threw the stinky Victorian tome in the public pool
Freshman year I had to read Fahrenheit 451. I liked Bradbury, but I really didn’t think twice about him. One of the turning points in my life occurred my freshman year in that English class. One of our assignments was to pick a poem and explicate it for the class. I was listening to one of the boys give a presentation about his poem. He was explaining that the poem was only about a purple jellyfish. He shot off his presentation in that cocky, facetious, I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-this attitude that only the cool boys could pull off. The urge rose to make him look like an ass, so I raised my hand. “Maybe you need to read into it more. I don’t think it’s just about a purple jellyfish.” The words sprang forth from my mouth like poison-tipped spears aimed directly at his ego. At this point, my English teacher looked right at me and said, “You know exactly what you’re talking about.” We also had to write a research paper about our future career choice. I wanted to be a writer. That summer I read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I was instantly hooked. I loved his descriptive technique.

Sophomore year was another great English teacher: Mrs. Brown. We read Puddin’ Head Wilson, and The Great Gatsby. Mrs. Brown was fabulous because she had daily quotes (from Oscar Wilde even), and we had weekly vocabulary tests. Whichever class had the best scores won a pan of homemade brownies. We also did our own version of Spoon River Anthology. Each of us had to write a poetic eulogy. We dubbed it The Fox River Anthology.

By that summer I already had a job and got my license. So I don’t really remember if I read anything. Junior year was British Literature, which I immediately detested. We had a brand new teacher, and she did things a little differently. We watched Lord of the Flies We also had a poetry unit. We chose our groups. Each group had to memorize a poem and recite it in front of the class. My group chose “Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me, too” by Shel Silverstein. We chose it because it was fun, sing-songy, and therefore easy to memorize. We had a little coffee shop poetry reading in the teacher’s lounge, and some of the students, myself included, recited original poetry.
The next summer I had the same job, so I don’t remember reading anything else. I probably polished off The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Marian Chronicles.

Senior year was amusing. I read The House on Mango Street as a series of little stores. I didn’t really read much more into it. Of course, senior year was a blow off year, so I did a book report on Dandelion Wine. I also remember reading Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace and laughing my ass off. I don’t remember much more.

The career at SLC began, and I had Vicki for Intro to Lit. I started off as an Early Childhood Education major, special and regular ed., ages birth through nine. The first thing I remember reading was “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. Mid year, I switched my major to English, and everything changed. Vicki helped my inner-feminist shine, and I read all of the feminist lit books my brain could devour. If the book wasn’t written by a feminist author, it at least included strong female characters. Some of my favorite titles include The Woman Warrior, Sister Carrie, The Awakening and The Scarlet Letter(I hated them the first time I read them), The Bluest Eye, works by Edwidge Danticat, Isabel Allende, and Maya Angelou. My favorite feminist non-fiction books are Besty Israel’s Bachelor Girl, and Gail Collins’ America’s Women. Interesting stuff.
This time around, when I read The House on Mango Street, I got it. I even wrote a paper explicating two of the stories. The title of the paper, and I love catchy titles, is: Hope Does Not Wear High Heels: and Analysis of Footwear, Fairy Tales, and Femininity in The House on Mango Street. I also explicated unusual female characters. I find it interesting, if not amusing, that, while I focused on Hamlet’s insanity in a paper written at NDA, I successfully disproved Ophelia’s insanity for my Shakespeare class during senior year at SLC.

I absolutely adore the Harry Potter series, but I am a little miffed by the fact that the American publishers have bastardized Rowling’s work. Apparently I’m not reading the original colloquialisms and expressions, which means that I a) not only have to re-buy the books, but b) am not receiving the full effect of Rowling’s stories. That just pisses me off. I’m also a huge fan of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’ve read nine of the books, and I can’t wait to finish the series. Snicket is not only hilarious, but he builds vocabulary as well!

This past year has been a little different for me. I’ve read the New Living Translation of the Bible from cover to cover. That was difficult, frustrating, and tiresome, but certainly worth it. My favorite book of the Bible is Isaiah. I’ve also read some other Christian books like Mere Christianity, Wild at Heart, Captivating, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Jesus Freaks vols. 1 and 2, and so on. This last summer I dubbed “The Summer of Bradbury” and I tried to read as many of my Bradbury books as I could. I owned about 25 of his entire published library. Until recently, I had about 100 books sitting around my house waiting to be linguistically devoured. Unfortunately I had to sell most of them, Bradbury’s works included. I only allowed myself to keep 6. I did keep a record of all those that I had, which included Grapes of Wrath, and other classics. One of my goals is to read more of the “classic” books. I read Les Miserables and I loved it. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is next, and I’m about ¼ of the way through Don Quixote. I’m also on the 6th book of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Books I absolutely detest are those that can’t hook me by the end of the first page. I refuse to read weepy romance novels, nor do I enjoy books that read like the author is shouting at me and wagging a proverbial finger in my face. It’s really difficult for me to mandatorily read books for a class. I enjoy books that challenge my intelligence, sharpen my wit, and make me chortle in a public place where everyone will turn and raise their eyebrows.