In 2014, I read 75 books. My goal for 2015 is to read 85. So far I've read 62. (You can check out what I've read recently on my Goodreads account.)
I've always loved reading. I have a brother who is one year older than me and when he was learning to read in Kindergarten, I wanted to be like him and learn the same thing, even though I wasn't in school yet. We had a series of children's books on tape (yes, I'm talking about literally "on tape" - as in, cassette tapes) and I remember loading one of those cassettes in my little pink cassette player and listening to it and following along in the book. It also probably helped that my mom had to drive my dad to and from his workplace every morning and afternoon (my dad has poor eyesight and doesn't have a driver's license). This was a time before smartphones or any young-kid-friendly handheld gaming systems (we weren't allowed Game Boys when we were that young), and so my brother and I both got into the habit of bringing books along to entertain ourselves on these car rides.
I was four years old when I started Kindergarten at a private Christian school. Because of my late-December birthday, I wouldn't turn five until after the cut-off date for public school, so my parents had two options - force their daughter who could already read and loved to learn and was begging to go to school like her big brother to wait another year before starting Kindergarten, or find an alternative to public school. They took me to a few different places, all of which "tested" me to make sure I was ready for Kindergarten. I don't remember these tests, other than for one of them I was allowed to bring a snack, and I brought a baggie of Goldfish crackers. One private school apparently wanted to place me immediately in first grade, rather than Kindergarten - but my brother was going to be starting first grade and my parents didn't want us in the same grade. The school I ended up going to was called Plymouth Christian Academy. Apparently they had a tradition that entering Kindergarteners write their own names in a book. My dad likes to tell a story that the administration was still wavering a bit on deciding to let my young self in when they handed me the pencil and asked me to sign my name. He says I wrote my name better than anyone else had on the page - that finally the administration was convinced I could handle school, once they could so easily compare the size and control of my lettering against those of the rest of my class.
I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging. There were other areas where I was probably not yet ready for school - particularly in social/emotional growth. By the time I was getting ready for middle school, my teacher called my parents in to suggest that I stay back a year and repeat fifth grade. It wasn't that she thought I wasn't smart enough - just that she thought I wasn't emotionally prepared for middle school. (We didn't heed her advice. All my friends were going on the middle school and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to join them.)
I transferred into public school before second grade, after only two years at Plymouth Christian Academy. I was tested for entrance into the public school's TAG (Talented and Gifted) program. I made it through the first two rounds (written tests), but apparently didn't "pass" the third round, which was a one-on-one interview. I suspect there were probably concerns that I wasn't "emotionally ready" for the challenge yet; concerns that I was too quiet, or too shy. I remember one question where I was asked to describe a tornado in one word. I probably said something like "big" or "scary." My brother was also taking the test (all third grades in the district took it, but you had to have your parents opt for you to take it as a second grader), and we compared our interviews afterward. He told me he'd chosen the word "destructive." I remembered that word the previous year, when I went through the tests again with the rest of my third-grade class. They used the same questions. I said "destructive." I was allowed entrance into TAG for the following year.
I was often the youngest in my class. When my fifth grade teacher discouraged my parents from letting me continue on to middle school, she cited my age as a factor they should consider. She asked if they wanted me to feel "left out" when, for example, all of my friends would be turning sixteen and old enough to drive and I would have to wait. I told them I wouldn't feel left out, that I wouldn't care. (It was true. Many of my friends were only a month or two older than me anyway, and many of us didn't get our driver's licenses when we turned sixteen. I didn't get mine until I was in college. It just wasn't a priority for me.) I did feel a bit left out in my first semester in college, when I was only seventeen in November and thus unable to vote on election day. It was 2006, so at least it wasn't a presidential election. I didn't miss too much.
But I think the biggest drawback to becoming a reader at such a young age and staying at an advanced reading level was the emotional content I was exposed to. For all the public schools were concerned about me not being emotionally ready for the classes I took, it was never those classes that exposed me to mature content I wasn't prepared for. It was the stuff I read outside of class.
In elementary school, I read books about middle school. In middle school, I read books about high school.
I was in second or third grade when my grandma bought a cardboard box full of Baby-Sitter's Club books for me at a garage sale. I devoured them. I loved them. Most children's books series I was exposed to in elementary school were geared more toward male readers. I read my brother's Animorphs books, but never got into them too much. I wasn't into scary stories, so Goosebumps was out. I did love the Dear America books - and I still love historical fiction today - but the Baby-Sitter's Club series was different, because it was contemporary. They seemed like real kids, real situations, real life. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed when I actually got to middle school and found out that not every 11-to-13-year-old girl had a boyfriend.
It was worse in middle school. The Baby-Sitter's Club came out with a more mature "sub-series" called The California Diaries. It was about some of the same characters, but they were in high school, and they dealt with more mature subject matter. Cancer, anorexia, racism, depression, suicide. I read about a thirteen-year-old who weighed 100 pounds and thought she was fat - all while I was eleven, and already at 100 pounds myself. I read other books I wasn't emotionally ready for either - books I found in the library. Speak is one in particular that I remember. I probably read it in 7th or 8th grade, which would have been soon after it was published. I started writing some dark poetry. I hadn't had any trauma in my own life, but I'd read enough YA trauma stories that I was eager to internalize to write some pretty convincing stuff. My eighth grade language arts teacher - who was also the mom of one of my closest friends - read some of my poetry and asked if I was alright. I think I laughed. Of course I was alright. I was just pretending. I thought that was the kind of stuff I was supposed to write, the kind of stuff I was supposed to feel. The kind of stuff that would make me a teenager.
Now, at that point, I wasn't drastically different in age from the protagonists I was reading about. By eighth grade, I'd more or less caught up. I was in eighth grade, reading about a ninth grader in Speak. But remember that I was a young eighth grader. Young in age, but also in experiences. I led a sheltered life. I was not popular. I didn't go to big parties. I didn't have a boyfriend. I was very shy and very bookish. I had no idea how to meet someone or date. To celebrate my middle school birthdays, I invited four or five female friends over for a sleepover. The raunchiest songs I listened to were by NSYNC and "Oops... I Did It Again" era Britney. I went to church and read my Bible and went to wholesome youth group events like New Year's Eve bowling parties, even though I wasn't really friends with any of the other kids at my church. I was not allowed to watch MTV or see rated-R movies - and nor did I really want to.
But I was allowed to pick up any book I wanted at the library. And I did. I visited the Teen Room at my local library and went right for the shelves that were labeled "graphic"... These were not graphic novels as in novels with pictures, but graphic novels as in novels with mature storylines. I knew what I was getting into. I read them anyway. Rape. Sex. Mental Illness. For some reason, even though I had literally grown up treating books as entertainment - reading them on car rides instead of playing video games - I very often confused books as educational. If something was printed, didn't it have to be true - at least a little bit? I think I picked up a lot of questionable ideas of what high school and adult relationships were supposed to look like just from the types of books I read.
Let me be clear. I am ABSOLUTELY NOT saying that it would have been better if someone had policed the content of what I read growing up - as they policed the content of what I read at school, or what I was allowed to watch on TV or see in a movie or listen to on a CD. I am NOT advocating censorship. Books were literally the only place where I was given free reign, where I was allowed to decide for myself what I was ready for. The fact that I continually chose content that I was perhaps not emotionally ready for just proves, I think, how hungry I was for this "secret" knowledge of the world beyond my sheltered middle school life.
What might have been nice, however, was if I had not read these books alone. I did not share these books with friends, or post reviews on Goodreads (Goodreads didn't exist then), or talk about them with my parents. And so any meaning I derived from these books, any lessons I "learned" about how the world really was, I learned on my own, with only my own interpretation to rely on. I wasn't given the appropriate context. If I had questions, I didn't feel comfortable asking them. (Now, I might ask the Internet. Back then, there wasn't as much Internet to ask.) More often though, I probably didn't even realize I had questions - because no one was prompting me to consider what questions I might have.
I've always loved reading. I have a brother who is one year older than me and when he was learning to read in Kindergarten, I wanted to be like him and learn the same thing, even though I wasn't in school yet. We had a series of children's books on tape (yes, I'm talking about literally "on tape" - as in, cassette tapes) and I remember loading one of those cassettes in my little pink cassette player and listening to it and following along in the book. It also probably helped that my mom had to drive my dad to and from his workplace every morning and afternoon (my dad has poor eyesight and doesn't have a driver's license). This was a time before smartphones or any young-kid-friendly handheld gaming systems (we weren't allowed Game Boys when we were that young), and so my brother and I both got into the habit of bringing books along to entertain ourselves on these car rides.
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| Some of the books on my "Favorites" shelf on Goodreads |
I was four years old when I started Kindergarten at a private Christian school. Because of my late-December birthday, I wouldn't turn five until after the cut-off date for public school, so my parents had two options - force their daughter who could already read and loved to learn and was begging to go to school like her big brother to wait another year before starting Kindergarten, or find an alternative to public school. They took me to a few different places, all of which "tested" me to make sure I was ready for Kindergarten. I don't remember these tests, other than for one of them I was allowed to bring a snack, and I brought a baggie of Goldfish crackers. One private school apparently wanted to place me immediately in first grade, rather than Kindergarten - but my brother was going to be starting first grade and my parents didn't want us in the same grade. The school I ended up going to was called Plymouth Christian Academy. Apparently they had a tradition that entering Kindergarteners write their own names in a book. My dad likes to tell a story that the administration was still wavering a bit on deciding to let my young self in when they handed me the pencil and asked me to sign my name. He says I wrote my name better than anyone else had on the page - that finally the administration was convinced I could handle school, once they could so easily compare the size and control of my lettering against those of the rest of my class.
I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging. There were other areas where I was probably not yet ready for school - particularly in social/emotional growth. By the time I was getting ready for middle school, my teacher called my parents in to suggest that I stay back a year and repeat fifth grade. It wasn't that she thought I wasn't smart enough - just that she thought I wasn't emotionally prepared for middle school. (We didn't heed her advice. All my friends were going on the middle school and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to join them.)
I transferred into public school before second grade, after only two years at Plymouth Christian Academy. I was tested for entrance into the public school's TAG (Talented and Gifted) program. I made it through the first two rounds (written tests), but apparently didn't "pass" the third round, which was a one-on-one interview. I suspect there were probably concerns that I wasn't "emotionally ready" for the challenge yet; concerns that I was too quiet, or too shy. I remember one question where I was asked to describe a tornado in one word. I probably said something like "big" or "scary." My brother was also taking the test (all third grades in the district took it, but you had to have your parents opt for you to take it as a second grader), and we compared our interviews afterward. He told me he'd chosen the word "destructive." I remembered that word the previous year, when I went through the tests again with the rest of my third-grade class. They used the same questions. I said "destructive." I was allowed entrance into TAG for the following year.
I was often the youngest in my class. When my fifth grade teacher discouraged my parents from letting me continue on to middle school, she cited my age as a factor they should consider. She asked if they wanted me to feel "left out" when, for example, all of my friends would be turning sixteen and old enough to drive and I would have to wait. I told them I wouldn't feel left out, that I wouldn't care. (It was true. Many of my friends were only a month or two older than me anyway, and many of us didn't get our driver's licenses when we turned sixteen. I didn't get mine until I was in college. It just wasn't a priority for me.) I did feel a bit left out in my first semester in college, when I was only seventeen in November and thus unable to vote on election day. It was 2006, so at least it wasn't a presidential election. I didn't miss too much.
But I think the biggest drawback to becoming a reader at such a young age and staying at an advanced reading level was the emotional content I was exposed to. For all the public schools were concerned about me not being emotionally ready for the classes I took, it was never those classes that exposed me to mature content I wasn't prepared for. It was the stuff I read outside of class.
In elementary school, I read books about middle school. In middle school, I read books about high school.
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| For years, I was obsessed with BSC books. I loved Kristy because she played baseball (like me); Claudia because she was artistic and loved chocolate (like me); Mary-Anne because she was shy and quiet (like me); Stacy because she was blonde (like me), and I found diabetes fascinating; Dawn because she was blonde and hippie-ish (which seemed cool); Mallory because she was bookish and wanted to be a writer (like me); Jessi because she was into dance (like my best friend) - hell, I loved them all. |
I was in second or third grade when my grandma bought a cardboard box full of Baby-Sitter's Club books for me at a garage sale. I devoured them. I loved them. Most children's books series I was exposed to in elementary school were geared more toward male readers. I read my brother's Animorphs books, but never got into them too much. I wasn't into scary stories, so Goosebumps was out. I did love the Dear America books - and I still love historical fiction today - but the Baby-Sitter's Club series was different, because it was contemporary. They seemed like real kids, real situations, real life. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed when I actually got to middle school and found out that not every 11-to-13-year-old girl had a boyfriend.
It was worse in middle school. The Baby-Sitter's Club came out with a more mature "sub-series" called The California Diaries. It was about some of the same characters, but they were in high school, and they dealt with more mature subject matter. Cancer, anorexia, racism, depression, suicide. I read about a thirteen-year-old who weighed 100 pounds and thought she was fat - all while I was eleven, and already at 100 pounds myself. I read other books I wasn't emotionally ready for either - books I found in the library. Speak is one in particular that I remember. I probably read it in 7th or 8th grade, which would have been soon after it was published. I started writing some dark poetry. I hadn't had any trauma in my own life, but I'd read enough YA trauma stories that I was eager to internalize to write some pretty convincing stuff. My eighth grade language arts teacher - who was also the mom of one of my closest friends - read some of my poetry and asked if I was alright. I think I laughed. Of course I was alright. I was just pretending. I thought that was the kind of stuff I was supposed to write, the kind of stuff I was supposed to feel. The kind of stuff that would make me a teenager.
 |
| Can Laurie Halse Anderson write a bad book?? Answer: No. No, she cannot. |
Now, at that point, I wasn't drastically different in age from the protagonists I was reading about. By eighth grade, I'd more or less caught up. I was in eighth grade, reading about a ninth grader in Speak. But remember that I was a young eighth grader. Young in age, but also in experiences. I led a sheltered life. I was not popular. I didn't go to big parties. I didn't have a boyfriend. I was very shy and very bookish. I had no idea how to meet someone or date. To celebrate my middle school birthdays, I invited four or five female friends over for a sleepover. The raunchiest songs I listened to were by NSYNC and "Oops... I Did It Again" era Britney. I went to church and read my Bible and went to wholesome youth group events like New Year's Eve bowling parties, even though I wasn't really friends with any of the other kids at my church. I was not allowed to watch MTV or see rated-R movies - and nor did I really want to.
But I was allowed to pick up any book I wanted at the library. And I did. I visited the Teen Room at my local library and went right for the shelves that were labeled "graphic"... These were not graphic novels as in novels with pictures, but graphic novels as in novels with mature storylines. I knew what I was getting into. I read them anyway. Rape. Sex. Mental Illness. For some reason, even though I had literally grown up treating books as entertainment - reading them on car rides instead of playing video games - I very often confused books as educational. If something was printed, didn't it have to be true - at least a little bit? I think I picked up a lot of questionable ideas of what high school and adult relationships were supposed to look like just from the types of books I read.
Let me be clear. I am ABSOLUTELY NOT saying that it would have been better if someone had policed the content of what I read growing up - as they policed the content of what I read at school, or what I was allowed to watch on TV or see in a movie or listen to on a CD. I am NOT advocating censorship. Books were literally the only place where I was given free reign, where I was allowed to decide for myself what I was ready for. The fact that I continually chose content that I was perhaps not emotionally ready for just proves, I think, how hungry I was for this "secret" knowledge of the world beyond my sheltered middle school life.
What might have been nice, however, was if I had not read these books alone. I did not share these books with friends, or post reviews on Goodreads (Goodreads didn't exist then), or talk about them with my parents. And so any meaning I derived from these books, any lessons I "learned" about how the world really was, I learned on my own, with only my own interpretation to rely on. I wasn't given the appropriate context. If I had questions, I didn't feel comfortable asking them. (Now, I might ask the Internet. Back then, there wasn't as much Internet to ask.) More often though, I probably didn't even realize I had questions - because no one was prompting me to consider what questions I might have.
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