tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post5413401895610361056..comments2023-12-15T02:38:55.020+10:30Comments on Still Life With Cat: Help!Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-37422573927666720712009-09-09T09:14:36.555+09:302009-09-09T09:14:36.555+09:30International Literacy Day post at Melbourne's...International Literacy Day post at Melbourne's <a href="http://nicholasjv.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">Intelliblog</a> so I linked there to these 122 passionate recollections of I Can Read!Ann ODynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01159263330547329077noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-66084642764786396072009-08-14T16:37:11.266+09:302009-08-14T16:37:11.266+09:30My earliest recollections are to do with big words...My earliest recollections are to do with big words. I remember sounding out “rhododendron” while I traced the syllables with my finger and looked at a picture of a bright red one trailing over the walls of a house. And I remember walking home from school, along a country town road lined with big oak trees, spelling out to myself “understanding”, u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d-i-n-g. I can instantly picture which section of the road I was walking on when I knew I’d finally imprinted it in my mind. I felt delighted about being part of this until now secret world of big words, as well as very proud of myself for knowing how to spell one of them off by heart.<br /><br />Lovely post, thanks.Leanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-41845512533307286692009-08-09T16:11:03.528+09:302009-08-09T16:11:03.528+09:30I do remember being given my first take-home readi...I do remember being given my first take-home reading book at school (<i>Janet and John</i>) and reading the whole thing that evening, not just the first story, and what a delicious thing it was to discern a story in those symbols. But of course I got told off the next day for reading ahead of the rest of the class. My punishment was that I had to wait until they'd all caught up before the next book was issued. Although we had a lot of books at home, I don't think we had anything between picture books and books for much older children, like Heidi and What Katy Did, so I was stuck with the pace of the school dole-outs for a while. I was taken to the library from about age 6 or 7, and I remember the first books I took out were the Mary Plain series. I was a compulsive reader from then on. And, amazingly, Google tells me that they were the books that got Stephen Fry hooked on reading too.M-Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18409916623998907121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-52236981081558580522009-08-09T06:41:52.265+09:302009-08-09T06:41:52.265+09:30I remember my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Hughes, s...I remember my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Hughes, sitting us all down at her two horseshoe shaped tables and saying, "You're going to learn to read today." She put M and E up on the blackboard, and had us say the sounds more and more quickly until they ran together. She announced "Congratulations, you can read!"<br /><br />I also remember working with my grandmother- my family ran a bookstore, and she had an office in the back. She would send me out to choose a book, then have me sound out one word at a time by looking through a square she'd cut in the middle of an index card.Laura Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02346556758414495554noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-56453378803397165622009-08-08T17:17:50.190+09:302009-08-08T17:17:50.190+09:30My first memory of being able to read: It was 196...My first memory of being able to read: It was 1968, I was five and my eldest sister who was then 17, and in her first year at Flinders University, was sitting on the verandah of our modest little suburban home, pretending to study as she waited for her boyfriend to arrive to pick her up. It was, I remember, one of those winter's day when the sun was out. I sat down on the step next to her and began to read out loud from what I think was a psychology text book. Of course, I stammered and mispronounced and whilst I may have been a "precocious" early reader I'm sure I did not understand what I read. It was, from memory, that sister who had taught me to read before I began school.Ozfemmehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11075356134336964558noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-42589832486425934882009-08-08T10:23:10.347+09:302009-08-08T10:23:10.347+09:30This is an interesting one. I remember the circums...This is an interesting one. I remember the circumstances around being able to read, but not the reading itself. Because my parents were divorced, I didn't see my dad regularly, and I remember really clearly him picking me up in the summer to go on a trip, and I was reading the signs along the road, and he said "Oh, you didn't used to be able to do that". I must have been 7, because it was the year we moved to Australia.WhatLadderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11603489349164511704noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-82824051028856808222009-08-06T18:21:57.630+09:302009-08-06T18:21:57.630+09:30Happened upon this great post via the (marvellous)...Happened upon this great post via the (marvellous) Humanities Researcher blog and am moved to post: I don't remember the first time I realized I could read, but I do have a very vivid memory of the first time I made letters join up (the word, alas I do not remember, but I do think that the letter 'e' was involved...). I remember the thrill of seeing my word look like actual handwriting and not wanting to stop.Miglior acquehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00435557718401883857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-14028338867061431982009-08-06T08:54:30.309+09:302009-08-06T08:54:30.309+09:30My earliest reading memory is at my Aunt's wed...My earliest reading memory is at my Aunt's wedding. I was 4 and a half. I was really mad because I was not allowed to be a bridesmaid. So half way through the service, I opened the Bible and read aloud what I could. Obviously this wasn't much: "And the <i>something, blah blah</i> the <i>blah blah</i>..." It's one of the few times I can recall my grandmother getting really mad!<br /><br />Apparently I could sort of read before then. When I was about 3, I'd see EXIT signs and say, "TAXI!" in a delighted way. Err, almost...Legal Eaglehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01096038577529334966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-39352402478850881112009-08-05T07:28:11.818+09:302009-08-05T07:28:11.818+09:30I don't know why I can't remember the mome...I don't know why I can't remember the moment when I could read but I do recall vividly being in the Royal Children's Hospital recovering from an appendectomy at age 8 when a group of nuns came to visit the ward. My mother had brought me a copy of Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild and I was utterly engrossed and could barely manage to acknowledge them. One rather crossly told me it was very rude to read when someone was talking and I was enraged at the unfairness of this. The book influenced me so much I eventually became a professional dancer and recently found a website www.whitegauntlet.com by another Streatfeild reader who took up fencing and competed for Australia on the basis of an episode of White Boots. The joy of discovering a new author is still akin to going to an assignation with a secret lover.Facing Away from the Mirrorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03354358806527541996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-37068732337587692642009-08-02T23:15:08.296+09:302009-08-02T23:15:08.296+09:30Countless examples have shown that my early memori...Countless examples have shown that my early memories are not very reliable, but for what it's worth I totally remember having a bit of a light bulb moment reading aloud a sentence about a kangaroo jumping. Sometime during grade 1 (so 5ish yrs old), and up 'til then I'd never really understood the point of "reading", having just survived by guessing from the pictures in our not-hugely-exciting readers (or getting really bored sounding out letters that some well-meaning adult was pointing to). Anyway, I got the kangaroo sentence somehow slightly wrong (maybe he was bounding, or jumping across a road or something - there may or may not have been a joey involved) and just remember thinking "oh, so THAT'S why we can't just use the pictures." And after that I progressed pretty quickly from the easy book tubs to being one of the readingest kids in the class.Jennynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-3319368683910526152009-08-02T21:25:54.261+09:302009-08-02T21:25:54.261+09:30I don't have a lightbulb moment either, but I ...I don't have a lightbulb moment either, but I know I could read by the time I was kindergarten (5/6) as I was reading a book of stories about small animals and there was a misprint 'vet' instead of 'wet' and I pointed out the error to my step-father who explained about typos. Though this memory is also accompanied by simultaneous 'placement in space and time' cues that contradict each other,so perhaps I was a bit older.<br /><br />I also remember my dad reading to me and pointing out the inconsistency of a rhyme. I think it was in <i> The Terrible Tiger</i> by Jack Prelutsky which was a perennial favourite. I'll have to see what the rhyme was now, I still have the same copy.<br /><br />At some point (pre-school?) I remember reading some Ladybird books, other commenters have mentioned Nip and Fluff, who feel very familiar...<br /><br />By about 9 I read <i> The Hobbit</i> and started on LOTR, but got a bit bogged down. I loved reading though, and the library was the best place to be at school.<br /><br />D (now 9) has really only 'got' reading in the last 6-9 months, it was a real struggle until then. We hadn't tried to 'teach' him, but not prevented him either. We read to him a lot, and he was happy with that state of affairs.When he hit kindergarten he could recognise his own name, and 'knew' a few other letter names. He still refects some letters and numbers when he writes, but he's a leftie, and has some fine motor-skills issues.<br /><br />Great idea for a book. I'd love to read it.Mummy/Crithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08353892248492164501noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-11669765483180060792009-08-02T19:55:01.582+09:302009-08-02T19:55:01.582+09:30My first glimmer of 'reading' came when I ...My first glimmer of 'reading' came when I first realised that I could predict what a written word actually was by its length and shape on a page.<br />This was before I understood the alphabet and before I went to school at four and a half years of age.<br />I put the importance of size and shape had for me down to the fact that at htat stage I could fairly accurately draw objects by that stage.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-81886837073986431652009-08-02T10:49:16.875+09:302009-08-02T10:49:16.875+09:30Some write here of the joys of reading books borro...Some write here of the joys of reading books borrowed from the library. My pet horror at the time of reading such borrowed books as a child was the business of remembering to return them. <br />In those days the fines for not returning a book to the library were hefty, at least they seemed so to my seven year old self. <br />My mother harangued us regularly for forgetting where our books were in in order that we might return them on time. Given the size of my family, nine children, borrowing books simultaneously, the multiple fines could be enormous. <br />We were all slack in the business of returning books, my mother despaired. She would have liked to have banned the borrowing of books, I suspect, but she too was a reader and in those days, the sixties, ordinary people did not buy books in the main, they borrowed them. To this day I have a horror of not returning books borrowed. I now apply these principles to the borrowing of DVDs. <br />Heaven help my children when they're late returning a DVD, but worst of all is the lost DVD. A lost library book in my childhood brought with it untold horrors. There seemed no way in the world, no money enough ever to replace it. I had nightmares of lost books chasing me upstairs. This perhaps is one of the dark sides of learning to read.Elisabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04015624747225433940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-21020020862237877682009-08-02T08:38:39.784+09:302009-08-02T08:38:39.784+09:30Well, I'm still a bit miffed that there appear...Well, I'm still a bit miffed that there appear to be no national Red Cross records about who's given blood where, having been a donor in two states on and off since I was seventeen and they were still measuring in pints and fluid ounces, and therefore quite interested to know how much of my blood is running in other people's veins (sinister, that's what it is, sinister), but I don't think there'd be any way of counting books one has read. Mind you, I've had the Sydney Morning Herald reviewing job for two and a half years now with one week off, the Christmas before last, so that means I've read, what, 516 novels in that time, not counting any other reading. Doesn't touch Mrs Brown, though.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-58709397796380595212009-08-02T03:45:28.924+09:302009-08-02T03:45:28.924+09:30The Daily Telegraph, 30/7/09 had this article.
A p...The Daily Telegraph, 30/7/09 had this article.<br />A pensioner has laid claim to the title of Britain's most avid reader after it was discovered that she is about to borrow her 25,000th library book.<br />Louis Brown, 91, has read up to a dozen books a week since 1946...<br />Mrs Brown, a widow, said: "My parents were great readers and I've always loved books. I started reading when I was five and have never stopped."<br /> An editorial comment says,<br />"Public libraries, a royal road to learning for all, are a quiet triumph of British civilisation. Lesser nations find that borrowers don't bring books back..."<br /> Crikey! I always took mine back, on time, usually.Hnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-86049340467579373352009-08-01T18:28:52.208+09:302009-08-01T18:28:52.208+09:30Very, very late to this party, even though the inv...Very, very late to this party, even though the invitation came out days ago, but I'm so glad to see it's going strong.<br /><br />I don't have a first read memory either, but I do clearly recall reading my first chapter book ever, one of Enid Blyton's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barney_Mysteries" rel="nofollow">Barney mysteries</a>. It was sometime when I was about six and a half. I can recall sitting on the hearth with the fire burning, so it must have been winter, and showing it very proudly to my dad when he came in from work. I recall being very disappointed the following Christmas when my parents gave me picture books, even though they were lovely books (<i>Kirsty at the Lodge</i> anyone?). When I turned seven three weeks later they gave me chapter books. I read every single one of Mum and Dad's old books - did anyone else's parents have the complete series of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Barton_%28juvenile_series%29" rel="nofollow">Sue Barton Student/Senior/Visiting/etc Nurse</a> books? They started taking me to the local library every week to feed my habit, a practice I now continue with my daughters.Deborahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14182573274494086468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-3909863440061510012009-08-01T10:07:18.561+09:302009-08-01T10:07:18.561+09:30My first concrete memory of reading is sitting on ...My first concrete memory of reading is sitting on the sofa (not called a couch, in those days) at my grandmother's house. My grandmother had one foot in the Edwardian era so I feel that I do. The sofa was upholstered with a very scratchy textured damask in a soft, faded jade green colour. My grandmother would read to me, by the hour or so I remember, from Edward Lear's nonsense. It was years before I learned how to write a proper limerick, but I still think Lear's nonsense is fabulous child reading-to material. And of course I rescued the copy we had in our house, when my parents moved to a unit and downsized.Helenhttp://castironbalcony.media2.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-2206978290321128432009-08-01T10:02:32.355+09:302009-08-01T10:02:32.355+09:30Twice now I’ve posted a comment but both times I d...Twice now I’ve posted a comment but both times I did not speak of my earliest memory of reading. I have none to speak of. Beyond the alphabet on the walls of St Mary’s I can visualise the grades four, five and six readers published by the Victorian State Education Department. To me they were a treasure trove of words. <br /><br />We read aloud from them during class time. Mother Mary John called out people’s names at random to read for a paragraph or two before moving on to the next person. <br /><br />I loved having my turn. I rarely stumbled over words. I had the sense of performing in private. No one looked directly at me. Everyone’s head including Mother Mary John’s was in their books. In was not therefore a visual performance, one I might have hated, one I might have trembled at. Instead it was an auditory experience, as if each of us sat in our own little echo chamber, earphones on, able to block out the rest of the world. <br /><br />We read poetry, Chesterton’s ‘Village Blacksmith’; ‘My Country’ by Dorothea MacKellar; the wind a torrent of darkness in Alfred Noyes’s 'Highway Man'. These, mostly British, works cast me into an unknown world of hedgerows and barley, of copses and streams. Occasionally we would hit the Australian vernacular with words from Henry Lawson or John O’Hara’s Call of the Bush. Clancy of the Overflow. <br />'I am sitting in my dingy little office…'<br /><br />These put me in mind in my days in the classroom. How often I longed to be outside, beyond the streets of our suburbs, of Camberwell and Deepdene, far beyond and away into the country. In my mind’s eye I could see the wild grasses, smell the gum leaves and the sheep droppings. These were the sublime days of childhood when I began to long for the countryside. These were the days when I began to convert the drains and abandoned railroad crossings into magical places from far away. Where government land that had been neglected for years became for me alternative countries, places of beauty and awe. I remember these better than I remember learning to read. But it was through first reading that I could visit them and then in my imagination recreate them. <br /><br />I salute the readers.Elisabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04015624747225433940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-86285509106006198622009-07-31T20:12:42.374+09:302009-07-31T20:12:42.374+09:30I remember as a young kid always getting into trou...<i>I remember as a young kid always getting into trouble for reading all the time when I went to other people’s places.</i><br /><br />I salute and sympathise with other sufferers of this syndrome. And I alliterate for Australia.<br /><br />Pav, coming from Adelaide as I do, I wonder if you felt this as well that in Adders in the 60s it was considered quite weird to be a child who read. The other kids gave me a lot of grief about it! These days it seems quite an interlecktewal place, but it didn't seem so then!<br /><br />w/v adingsHelenhttp://castironbalcony.media2.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-84867003357165836332009-07-31T19:32:54.553+09:302009-07-31T19:32:54.553+09:30I don't remember when, but I do remember what ...I don't remember when, but I do remember what & they have remained formative.<br /> <br />http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Eloise_book_cover.jpg<br />http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/FishOutOfWater.jpg<br />http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41C9TK7YHEL._SL500_AA240_.jpg<br /><br />WV: fistifib. <br />Neigh! It be the truth!Linkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12346948772651971988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-75097201673127688922009-07-31T16:33:30.341+09:302009-07-31T16:33:30.341+09:30All these abundant memories from so many bloggers....All these abundant memories from so many bloggers. Mine are thin. <br />Saint Mary’s primary school in Greensborough. I’m seated on the floor in a ring of children, hands in our laps. This is the place where my older sisters and brothers go to school and I do not feel ready to join them. At least this is how I interpret the memory now. Around the walls high above my head the letters of the alphabet form a line of animals and objects. A is for ant, b for bat, c for cat, d for dog. Underneath the alphabet are the Stations of the Cross. The classroom converts back to its original form as the parish church every weekend for Sunday Mass. I confuse the two, the images of Christ with his crown of thorns, blood smearing his arms and back with the animals around the wall. I know instinctively that one day I will need to learn these things, these letters of the alphabet, these Stations of the Cross but I am overwhelmed by a sense that it is too hard and I will never make it. I will never catch up with the others.Elisabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04015624747225433940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-78656883229899179722009-07-31T15:36:27.595+09:302009-07-31T15:36:27.595+09:30I don't have an AHA moment that I can recall, ...I don't have an AHA moment that I can recall, but I do know that I used to insist that Mum read me the same book every night - it was called The Little House, and was all in rhyme. Apparently I used to impress visitors because I would say the words and turn the pages at the right time, as if I was reading. (I was 2).<br /><br />I was reading before I went to kinder though, and my parents were afraid I'd be bored.<br /><br />At primary school I read every Enid Blyton I could get my hands on, and by grade 3 had read all the grade 3, 4, 5 and 6 books in the school library and the librarian would bring in books from 'grown up' libraries for me.<br /><br />One memory I have is of reading something and my aunt saying I was "always in a corner somehwere, curled up with a book". And I thought, yeah, isn't everyone if they can?<br /><br />As an aside, last night Son #3 (aged 10)took a book to Son #2's music concert and spent the entire night reading, looking up and clapping briefly at the end of every piece and then putting his nose firmly back in his pages. It thrilled me.Susehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14837796439737091649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-73214520745439787232009-07-31T14:06:52.275+09:302009-07-31T14:06:52.275+09:30Kerryn, lovely to see you last night. My mum says...Kerryn, lovely to see you last night. My mum says I used to read labels in the supermarket when I was very little, but I don't remember that. What I do remember is an enormous reluctance to read. I still remember telling my mum, in tears, I WON'T read, I'll never read, you can't MAKE me! -- a premonition of how much adult responsibility reading brings with it, and how I would struggle with words for the rest of my life...? I was actually behind in kinder, because I wouldn't read, then read Mulu the Cow straight through to my lovely teacher, who gave up her lunch. DeliaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-72327688206485431082009-07-31T11:55:18.853+09:302009-07-31T11:55:18.853+09:30Wow, 100 comments - what a marvellous thread!
I r...Wow, 100 comments - what a marvellous thread!<br /><br />I remember, back when I was still working, looking forward to being able to read a book a day when I retired. That hasn't quite worked out - too busy reading blogs. :)Peterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12260041131953784035noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7459693255389523642.post-17343604328689983132009-07-31T10:48:42.353+09:302009-07-31T10:48:42.353+09:30Port Moresby, 4-5 years old, behind is the garden ...Port Moresby, 4-5 years old, behind is the garden dominated by a couple of huge rainforest trees, perhaps figs, sun filtering in, I'm looking at a blackboard, or maybe one of those word charts, the word I remember was dog, dog was important because of Psyche, my first and only dog, Psyche didn't mind when I was adopted into the family, she adopted me too, her crazy, bug-eyed blue heeler face smiling and happy in my first memories of the world, so I read dog and my father approved and everything lined up in my world.<br /><br />Later I learned she would stand in front of my cot, becoming aggressive when anyone other than my parents approached.<br /><br />30 years later I put down a brochure on Steiner schools because they talked of reading like it was a chore. I loved it then, I love it now. <br /><br />So does Bear.<br /><br />Mitts is too young of course, but his favourite toy is Doggybook.<br /><br />Life is more of a continuum than is first apparent...Armagnyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05430006925445661524noreply@blogger.com