>The Reader

>My entire childhood can be broken down in books.

My earliest memories are of reading The Monster at the End of This Book over and over again, laughing uproariously each time Grover begged me not to turn the page. I also adored the Frances series, the Babar books, Curious George and Gus the Friendly Ghost. I loved my small collection of picture books so much that I had my mother read me each one until I had it memorized; that’s how I learned to read.

I grew older and decided to read every book in my public library’s children’s section. I’d spend entire Saturdays there, making sure I’d gotten through every single one. The Beverly Cleary books, the Encyclopedia Browns, The Mrs. Piggle Wiggles, the Pippi Longstockings- My appetite was insatiable. Nearly all of my spare time was devoted to reading or thinking about reading or re-enacting a scene from something I had read, and because of that, my world stretched far beyond the confines of my small southern town. I was Sara Crewe, trying to survive the cruelties of Miss Minchin. I was Harriet the Spy, hiding in a dumbwaiter. I was Becky Thatcher, reveling in Tom Sawyer’s childish advances.

From the day I sounded out the words on a page for the first time, my life has been shaped by the books I’ve read.

And I’ll be honest- one of the very first things that crossed my mind upon learning I was pregnant six years ago was that I was going to be able to give my own child the gift of reading. Immediately, I began collecting books for my daughter- ordering them by the boxload off Ebay, snatching them up at consignment sales, haunting library castoff events, and ordering a precious few in hardback off Amazon. For years, I’ve read to her and it’s paid off in the sense that she loves sitting in my lap and listening to stories.

But waiting for her to actually read on her own has been agonizing.

Last year, I began teaching her the basics of reading, using a kindergarten curriculum. She could complete the exercises without a problem. She could identify letter sounds and blends. She could even put those sounds together and read actual words, as long as she didn’t trip herself up by thinking too much about what she was doing.

But she wasn’t ready to read. She just wasn’t. I knew better than to push her. Still, it was frustrating. She was right on the verge- right on the verge. And she couldn’t quite cross over.

Then she started kindergarten. And her teacher began using her own curriculum, with sight words and pictures that corroborated with letter sounds. And somehow, within a couple of weeks of school starting, Punky managed to put what we’d learned together with what she was learning at school. She came home one day with a list of words for me to cut out and quiz her on. She made it through them so easily that I got out a little bag of letters and “blends” I’d made for her over the summer, like -at and -it and -ad, and I began forming them into simple words.

“Cat,” Punky read without hesitation. I shuffled the letters around. “Bat.” “Had.” “Bit.” “Hit.” “Sad.” Outwardly, I remained calm, but inside, fireworks were going off.

“You know what, Punky?” I said. “I think you’re ready for the BOB books.”

I got out a set of readers that I’d been saving for this very occasion. Holding my breath, I handed her the first one. She read it easily. “Mat sat. Sam sat. Sam sat on Mat.”

I handed her the second book. She read it just as easily. The third was a little harder, but she made it through. The fourth had several words she’d never seen before. It took her a few minutes, but she sounded out the words and…

She read the book. By herself.

SHE READ THE BOOK BY HERSELF.

PUNKY CAN READ!!

And of course I realize that for you, this fact is not that big of a deal. But let me just say that watching my daughter read for the first time was one of the greatest moments of my life, right up there with singing in Westminster Abbey in high school, and listening to Yo-Yo Ma play the cello at Wolf Trap, and standing hand in hand with hundreds of thousands of people, singing, “We Shall Overcome” while the confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina Statehouse, and marrying my husband beside a river in Scotland, and giving birth to a girl and then a boy.

Watching my five-year-old read for the first time was one of the most glorious, most anticipated moments of my entire life. And it was worth all of the endless waiting, the carefully hidden frustration, and every last picture book.

It was so totally worth it.