My earliest memory of Reading

My love for literature and reading started many years ago, back in preschool. I'm not sure what the first book I ever read was (it was most likely a typical book for my reading level, like Goodnight Moon or The Bearenstein Bears), but I can remember my mother reading to me in a gentle voice, almost like a song of some sort. Maybe that soothing sound was why I first tried to start reading? I can never be sure, and I don't think it really matters anymore. What does matter is that I set out on my own scholarly path, and my life changed forever (for the better) because of it.

The first actual book I ever read on my own was one of the books my (grand?)parents had lying around in their house. The name of that book was My Father's Dragon, and I was originally drawn to it by the simplistic yet beautiful illustrations of a young boy standing next to a small dragon. I picked it up, and started reading it. I was four at the time, and wasn't quite able to grasp what some words meant, and I sometimes had to ask my parents for help, but I was able to understand enough of the story to fall in love with it.

After I finished reading My Father's Dragon, I moved on to other simplistic works of fiction that delighted me. I was enthralled by the talking mice and medieval world of Redwall, delighted by the poetry of Shel Silverstein, and gripped with terror over R.L. Stine's Goosebumps and the stories told in Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to tell in the Dark. (They still scare me somewhat, but more for the haunting, eerie illustrations of Stephen Gammel.)

Ever since those early days of discovery, I have been enthralled by works of greater literary magnitude, such as The Great Gatsby, Brave New World, and Of Mice and Men, but I will always have a special place in my heart for the books I read so many years ago. I was fortunately able to hold onto my copy of My Father's Dragon for many years, until my parents were divorced and I had to move away from home. I never saw it again.That book, like so many other old possessions of mine, probably still sits in a box in a storage room somewhere, another forgotten item of childhood lost to the rapidly changing world around me.