Tyger VS Tigger

So as I have admitted in my previous post I was not very much of a reader growing up, and I have to say nursery rhymes always weirded me out. The fact that the adult I was having a perfectly coherent conversation with had just sat down was now rhyming to me about some generally pointless and not engaging event like a girl getting scared by a spider, or mouse running up and down a clock honestly made the whole reading thing to me just seem to make people a little bit…. well…. Strange.

Worse than that were the rhymes I found the rhymes disturbing like Three Blind Mice. Whatever did that awful woman want with their tails anyhow?  The rhyme that sticks with me as really having bothered me was Who Killed Cock Robin after reading that one I thought that maybe these rhymes had scary underlying meaning like making murder and violence an acceptable part of society. Which actually made the innocent ones bother me more because I was trying to figure out what kind of morbidity they were promoting and when I couldn’t figure it out I wondered what other people were taking away from them.

I liked reading nursery rhymes because they were short so if I was supposed to be reading I could spend all my time on one or two of them and feel like I had actually accomplished finishing something, being that I was a painfully slow reader. I don’t recall disliking nursery rhymes but to say I liked them was a bit of a stretch too. Rather the concept of trying to figure out why anyone would write about such silly events and why some of them seemed to be so good and others  there seemed to be something not quite morally right about kept me reading them. I also imagine looking back on it that I assumed at a young age all nursery rhymes were written by the same author because of the writing style.

I had enough books read too me that I was aware certain stories that were made by the same person sounded a certain way, because nursery rhymes were usually stuffed in one big book I just assumed one person wrote them, because I really couldn’t imagine more than one person being so very strange. I have since discovered that the world is a very strange place.

Having had such mixed feelings about rhymes as a child I wonder how it is they determine what reading levels and age groups nursery rhymes are for?  At my age now I hate censorship and can’t imagine locking something into an age group but as a kid I thought some of the rhymes I heard were just palin wrong and should not be read in front of children.

 I have also been looking for a rhyme book for my reading for ages 0-5 and for the same book I have found it listed as ages: 1 and up, 5 – 9 and 9 – 12? Apparently the internet may always have an answer but many times it seems unable to settle on just one. The worst part is that I found all these listed at relatively sound informative site that I normally pull book information off of like Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  What exactly is poetry for children?

For me I can honestly say the first “rhyme” that stuck in my head at a young age was “The Tyger” by William Blake, because it was part of a Batman cartoon episode. Bruce Wayne only read the first few lines of it in the cartoon episode, but I remember the words painting such a vivid picture in my mind, I actually did ask for it by author in the book store ended up reading the rest of the Poem … what is more I remember distinctly liking it. This likely stemmed only from my love of big cats at the time, and it having being on a batman episode where someone became part cat I assumed it was about some one transforming into a tiger. I read the Lamb as well but couldn’t relate so some of the other works in the collection the book store owner gave me. I do remember thinking the William Blake poems were more meaningful than nursery rhymes, and they gave me more of a sense of normalcy because when I puzzled through one or two of them they sounded like something an adult would say. Therefore if I read (or more likely had read to me) poetry that was dealing it things like good and evil, and death and murder, it didn’t bother me because it sounded like it was coming from an adult, who I felt should know about these sort of things and talk and explain about them to other adults. I wasn’t  as discouraged if I didn’t grasp the meaning of things because I figured I wasn’t meant to at my age and I just enjoyed the powerful visual properties of the words used in short bits of writing that I could actually read in a short period of time.  The Tyger will always stick with me because it painted a fierce and beautiful image of a large flaming cat with wings, a giant kitty that was all claws and fire. I don’t think I understood it any more than that but I liked it and I remember it almost to the word to this day and I am sure if you had asked me to recite it to you in grade two, I likely did know it word for word. I still enjoy short poerty and the strong visual disctiptions it holds.

It's all Greek to me! The reluctant reader.

 My recent travels in Europe had me not only thanking the stars that I could read some French and that by mashing French and English together and guessing a few words that kind of looked like French or English you could usually find something to eat off a menu or figure out how to purchase a rail ticket in most countries. The exceptions to this rule on my route being Bulgaria and Greece where the equivalent to having someone change all your word documents into wingdings font (pencile airplane mail box..... open mail box) and you lose all ability to read. This made me reflect on my childhood lack or reading skills

I was an odd combination of a reluctant reader growing up. I had a high vocabulary but could not easily decode words. My brain could talk fast and form complex sentences at a young age. I was always included in adult conversations and helped my parents entertain their friends from a very young age. When you have been discussing what you saw on the news with your parents, as well as things like investing and insurance and then you are put in front of ”The fuzzy bunny book" you really have no interest in it. It always seemed like an awful lot of work to wreck your brain to figure out the words and then end up with something so below even what was average for your age level the experience was mind-numbing. Why would anyone go through all this effort when they can just speak to people over the phone or in person? The sad thing was I just wasn't at the right reading level for my age and the content seemed like way to much work for a whole lot of things that were geared at much younger people.

My parents were called in because of it in grade 4 I was much below the rest of my class and because I had so many good friends it was really no trouble to get into a group of people and figure out an assignment, the teacher always clearly explained what they wanted to I didn't really have to read it. It was not until grade six that I was actually forced to learn to read because it became more effort to not read then it was to start decoding things. At this point I had the Babysitters Club thrown at me and promptly threw it back everything about the books threw me off from the pastel color  covers to the prospect of reading about the daily social interactions of girls. I'm a girl I do girl things, why should I have to read about them? Then again this is coming from the weird kid who from a very young age told their parents that Inspector Gadget should be reported to child and family services if he was a real person because he always left Penny and Brain alone in the cartoon episodes.

The other option of the day was Goosebumps. The problem with Goosebumps is that I was an absolute wuss when it came to scary stories, but after coming to the realization that the books were really not all that scary, I managed to choke down the books at an insanely slow speed enough to learn to read. The thing that I think kept my morbid fascination with the books was being continually amazed at how stupidly unable the characters were at making decisions when it came to their own safety. Book One in the series I thought had a clever plot twist, and Monsterblood sold me which was volume 3, and kept me reading the books but alas even the monster blood sequels with in the series were never as good as book 3 there was just something about the lack of control the character had over the events in Monsterblood that them seem less stupid and two dimensional then most of the character in the Goosebumps series.

I liked reading series books more for the collection aspect of things, after I finished a book I got to add it to my collection. I always had a pack rat personality when I was a kid and in the end it was that, that kept me reading to add to my collection. My reading level improved but my speed did not. I've always been “built for comfort and not speed”. I hated reading in class because everyone would flip the pages faster than me and I found it distracting and irksome. It was about this time I came across a book in my basement that I had bought at a 3rd grade book sale Into the Land of the Unicorns by Bruce Colville. I almost didn't read it because it seemed way to "girlie" a big white unicorn on the front walking through a dark silver forest. I was afraid it would turn out to be a romance novel *gasp and horror* I avoided reading any kind of romance book until I was about 18 and am still loath to admit that I do enjoy a good/bad romance. It's just not good for a grade 6 tom boy image you know?

Well I was madly interested in animals at the time and being that the back of the book seemed to have no visible love interest I could always have read it and then if ever questioned by the imaginary image police I could claim I had no way of knowing it was a love story if it turned out to be one. After reading that book I wanted to read. I had a love for fantasy adventure books, reading became a love, joy, and past time. By the time I hit grade 7 my reading speed was only slightly slower than average and my ability to read and deal with vocabulary slighting higher than my classmates.  One summer made all the difference. I had quickly realized that larger books were vastly more interesting and was willing to put in the time to get them read. Over the summer I could read as slow as I wanted and I didn't have to compare myself with anyone.

At the age of 16 I discovered that comic books were not just men running around in tights and had a renewed reading addiction (and I do say addiction being that some of my trips to the shop cost me over $300 ah the days where you had a job and didn’t pay rent).

 I think I will be able to relate to kids who don't want to read as a librarian. I've experienced some of the difficulties of reading myself.

1. Learning to read is hard.

2. People assume sometimes that because you don't read well you have a limited vocabulary and lack ability to understand plots.

3. Young reading material seems so stuck in pink and blue gender roles that it can be unappealing to people who are more green or purple or even orange. I still liked stuff about girls as a kid but was more interested in books where the female character excelled over her male counter parts or proved herself a valued equal rather than stories that just involved female oriented social interactions. I pretended to like green books which would be more geared at boys but contained love stories or aspects of plot a girl would like... but if the book did not have a central female character I usually lost interested in my reading at a young age. When I actually started reading in grade 6 I liked books with male lead characters.

Currently in class we have gone over reasons why kids are reluctant to read, and in general I think that more than one reason usually apply for any given reluctant reader. I would be interested in knowing what some of the best approaches are to helping reluctant readers? We talked a bit about the difficulty with boys being concidered more acive and having less selection, but what are some of the ways to help a reluctant reader move past the reluctance quickly? Giving them a choice is a good start but so many books to choose from can be a bit daunting. Knowing which type of reluctant reader you have is also a good step toward helping them but how do you assess what problems a kid is experiencing as a reader? In a school library you may have more chance to assess the child or ask a teacher but in a public library it seems like it would be a great challange to sort out what type of problems a kid may be experiencing. 

There is a book that sparks for everyone. It's like the first love of your life in a way and some of us have to go through more pages than others to find it. Hopefully I spent enough time with the pages that didn't spark to relate to someone who hasn't found their first book yet. Your real first book is the one you remember always. I couldn't tell you what the first book I ever read was and I only remember kids books that I thought were stupid but I do remember the first one I loved.  Hopefully having gone through more pages than most to find it, I can remember how hard it is to learn to read and help those who are reluctant in reading find what is right for them. The three challenges I listed are only some of the challenges young readers can face, but most of us do learn to read but the fastest way to learning to read, is loving to read… and yes I still read books about unicorns if only for the nostalgia of it.