“Reading History Essay”
To me literacy is simply the ability to read and write. In our lives we apply literacy everyday. Whether we are doing homework or reading the newspaper we are using literacy. The roots of literacy were planted when we were all children. When our parents used to sing us lullabies or read us stories. These roots are continually nourished as we read more books and learn new things.
Both my mom and my dad were the first people who influenced me to start reading. They always stressed how important reading was and that it was essential to becoming a good student. At first, I wasn't buying it. I didn't really enjoy reading until I started kindergarten. In kindergarten, we would read books like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Clifford the Big Red Dog. Reading books was like entering a whole new world full of exciting people and places. That's when I brought my love of reading home, getting my parents to read my favorite fairy tales, Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella before bedtime.
My interest in books continued all through elementary school. In my school, Lindenwold School 5, we had D.E.A.R. For those of you who don't know, D.E.A.R stands for Drop Everything and Read. During D.E.A.R we were allowed 15 minutes before the end of the day to read any book of our choice. This granted me plenty of time to catch up on Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing or E.B Whites Charlotte's Web.
The love I had for reading had held strong all the way up until middle school. In my middle school, John Paul II Regional School, I began to lose interest in books. They just seemed boring in comparison to hanging out with friends or going to the movies. Don't get me wrong though I still read books, but just not as many as I used to. In fact, middle school is where I read one of my favorite books of all time. It was And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. This book had me hooked like no other. It drifted me away from comic fiction books and pulled me more toward mystery books.
Now that I am in high school I plan on getting more into reading. This year I would really like to read books like The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mocking Bird and The Time Traveler's Wife. Besides books you can almost always catch me reading magazines. Whether it be Seventeen Magazine or Teen Vogue there is always one in my hand. I definitely consider myself to be a literate person otherwise I wouldn't have been able read all the books that I have.
At this moment in time I feel like reading is a very important part of life. Reading helps you learn new things and grow as a student. Currently I am reading Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane. Literacy is important because it helps you survive in the world. Without literacy you wouldn't be able to do simple everyday tasks such as reading the newspaper or writing a letter. Literacy has helped me in my life because it has made me learn things that I wouldn't have been able to without it. Literacy is like a tree because the more you read the greater your knowledge expands just like the more you water a tree the more it grows.
