YA Lit - Reading Autobiography

 Reading Autobiography

     As a child, I remember loving books based on their colorful illustrations.  My parents were very supportive of my love for reading and did their best to promote reading in our household.  Out of my 3 siblings, I loved the idea of books and reading the most.  We lived in a predominantly low income neighborhood, so to my advantage, we were able to take advantage of the Bookmobile that visited our neighborhood every Saturday.  Many times, I was the only person within the whole neighborhood who would even bother paying the bookmobile a visit. I guess others simply weren't interested.  I also had no idea that the Bookmobile only visited low income neighborhoods.  Later in life, I learned that this was done in efforts of bringing books to neighborhood where kids may not have the luxury of physically going to an actual library of some sort.

    Through my elementary and Jr. high years, I remember my father taking my siblings and me to the Sterling Public Library to expose us to books of all sorts.  Learning to reading was very imperative to my father because he had to drop out of school during his elementary years in order to work with his father in the fields.  His mission as a father was to ensure his kids were afforded the opportunity to learn to read at all costs.  

    My mother graduated high school and was pretty well educated for the most part.  She could read well and appreciated that I could too, but didn't necessarily make any efforts to ensure that we necessarily "fell in love" with reading.  My two older siblings struggled with reading in school, so reading for pleasure was not their thing, per se. I on the other hand, loved anything as long as it had nice colors and illustrations.  I specifically remember loving the books Stone Soup and But No Elephants.  I can't necessarily say why, but something within the contents of those books hooked me for year.  

    As an adult, I read NON-STOP.  I literally always have a book in the works that I'm reading.  I'm the lady who you'll find reading while waiting my turn in the grocery store line, fast food drive thru, or red light.  In all honesty, I don't read mature/educational books for pleasure - I mostly read romance novels to appease my interests.  

    I understand the importance of helping students fall in love with reading.  Because of this, I make a continuous effort to make my students love the reading experience they get with me.  When I read aloud to my students, I make it a whole experience.  I go in full character mode to make the book come to life using props when necessary.  I feel this is important and rewarding because my animation helps to bring understanding and appreciation to the books that I'm sharing.