All my life I have loved stories. I used to love to listen to my parents read stories to me be they written or experiences in there own life. Today I still love stories I love to watch TV and movies and I read on my own spare time. However it wasn’t that easy for me to make a transition from having my parents read to me to reading on my own. As for writing when I was you I loved making the stories that I would create stories in my head mostly which would only make sense to me and have no real basis.

When I was young I had always been read to. I remember my dad would read me Oh, the Places You’ll Go! By Dr. Seuss, this book was one of the first books that I can remember being read to. However as a grew older and got into 1st grade I started getting read more complex books like the Strega Nona Series by Tomie de Paola. I enjoyed the books tremendously however I did not read them myself as I was a rather stubborn and defiant six year old. Going into second grade I could read however I didn’t read I hated Phonics with a passion my parents got me tutors to help with my phonics which helped somewhat but I still didn’t read or write for fun.

However a lot of that changed in 3rd grade when I had to go to “Learning Center” to help me read better. This is were a really got into reading, my teacher Mr. Schutten was excellent he had a system that really got me into reading. The system went like this every other Friday we had a “game day” were we would watch movies and have a little party with candy and soda. However to be able to get this candy and soda you needed to get points and the way you got points was read. If you read a book like one of the Hardy Boys you might get 250 points and if you read small books you might get 25 points. At first I read little mildly entertaining books such as The Berenstain Bears by Stan & Jan Berenstain. However I stared to read more complex books such as The Magic Tree House Series by Mary Pope Osborne. We also had to write these paragraph sized reports about various animals from a sheet which taught me the standard five sentence paragraph system. This was one of my first real experiences with writing real reports with an actual system.

In the 4th grade I actually started to read for pleasure rather then being forced to by a adult. At this time too we had to do book reports I loved history so a lot of my books I read were Historical Fiction (as history was and is still my favorite subject). One book I read which I still love is Dragons Gate by Lawrence Yep, this opened my eyes to historical fiction. I read a lot of the My Name is America which is a series were authors write stories in diary form and there all about significant moments in American history. I also enjoyed abridged versions of classic books such as A Tale of Two Cities these books were written at a 3rd grade level but still gave me the basic plot of the original classics I had about twenty of these which my mom got of eBay this really made me envy my brothers who were old enough to read and understand the full classics.. My fifth grade year was slowly making the transition between elementary school and middle school, so also was my writing which still needed improvement.

In sixth grade it was one of the first times I had to read a book for school. The first book we read as I remember was “The Little Prince” which I found childish and uninteresting. The next book we read was much more interesting for me it was Ten Little Indians or as it is now called to be more politically correct And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. This book which was assigned was one of the only assigned books that I actually read ahead of the class to see what happens. We wrote few essays that year but the essays we did write where turned in and redone multiply times as we would have about 5 drafts by the time we where done..

In seventh grade my reading experience was a bit different. It was different because I didn’t enjoy any of the books I read. We had to read “Freak the Mighty” by Rodman Philbrick, which I thought was a huge waste of time. I was so sick of it I didn’t finish it I just asked people what happened in the last chapters I didn’t read. Later that year I got Mono. Mono isn’t really a horrible illness I just slept 14 hours a day which meant when I was home I had lots of time so I read all of the four Dan Brown books in about 4 days. I enjoyed these because they were really easy yet interesting at the same time. This got me into reading for pleasure for a short few months.

However by the start of 8th grade I had fizzled out of reading. Nevertheless we started reading some short stories I actually liked for instance I really enjoyed reading “The Monkeys Paw” and “The Tell-Ttale Heart.” We had to write responses to these which I actually found extremely interesting and enjoyed analyzing what I had read. Later that year we another book assignment this time it was The Call of The Wild by Jack London. I could not stand this book and it really made me wonder why it was considered such a classic. In the time that I was half reading The Call of the Wild, I found a new book to read for my own pleasure called “Into the Wild” by John Krakuer which I really enjoyed as it was one of my earliest non-fiction books. I found more non-fiction books that I liked, such as Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakuer. In the summer I Read Chasing Ghosts by Paul Riekoff about his experience in the war in Iraq which was disturbing and informative. As for writing in 8th grade we had more essays again which we would do multiply drafts of. I then found that that when doing book reports about books I actually liked I would quite enjoy writing essays however on the downside my brain had so much to say, as I am more of a talker, some of my thoughts would get all disjointed and out of order as that is how humans naturally talk.

Freshmen year of high school I found that writing was much more extreme. As I stated before in middle school we would do a large number of drafts of a essay before actually turning it in where as in high school my teachers would basically say its due Wednesday. This both shocked me but as I did get use to it I found it more effective as you would try to make your first draft your best as most often then not it would be your last. I also really enjoyed a essay I had to do about youth violence because I found it to be a nice refreshing change from writing about books or short stories as it was something that was relevant today. This really showed me that it was possible for me to actually enjoy writing.

I found that my reading and writing life has changed a lot in my life times. For the most part it has been a love/hate relationship. I love writing some things hate writing others. The same goes for books I love some and I hate others. However for the most part my English career has been a largely beneficial to my other classes and my overall enjoyment of literature.