Born in 1991, I can’t tell an exciting or even romantic story about how I was taught to read by an elder of the family, along with all my siblings, because we couldn't go to school. I learnt to read in primary school. I remember being disappointed because my parents hadn’t started teaching me before. They believed I would be bored in primary school and lose interest in learning – yes, they are both teachers. All I remember from my first book was reading about a little boy named Leo. My primary school teacher, a middle-aged woman who looked like she was in her sixties (old age for a six-year-old) with thin hair and an even thinner body, made us over-enunciate every sound and sign each letter as we read the book. Before I could read them myself, my parents read to me a famous children’s book in French, Martine- written and illustrated by Belgian Marcel Marlier and Gilbert Delahaye. There must have been about 50 books in this series. When I learnt to read in French, I re-read them all. My parents bought them until 1998. There have been 13 published after that, but I became too old. It is my earliest memory of children’s books (which I share with about 75% of French speaking children of the 1990s). Until today, I remember the different books with all the topics. I remember the flowers shows, how to travel by plane, Martine going on a cruise, gardening, learning about the four seasons, the sad story with the donkey- that would always make me cry, and the camping one- which I had on a cassette tape. From the time I started reading independently, my parents encouraged it, providing me with ‘early reader’ and ‘young reader’ books by Loewe, a German publisher specialising in children’s books with large writing, simple words and sentences and some drawings. | Later, my parents took different approaches: My mother got me one award-winning book after another – publishers’ choices and similar – which I never found compelling. They looked and sounded boring and I always preferred choosing my own ones. I remember a time when many libraries in my area organised large book sales to empty their stock and make room for new books. The books were sold for a couple of Deutsche Mark (now about one Euro) by kilo and my record was buying 27kilos. My dad added a second book shelf in my room that week. While mum, who reads one book a year with her French students, believed it seemed a waste, but dad, an avid reader himself, encouraged it. At the time I bought almost anything that looked remotely interesting and I was able to get entire series at once. Being a library clearance, a lot of books were old, and I discovered some of the classics: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Enid Blyton books, Charlotte’s Web, Astrid Lindrgren, Tom Sawyer, Ronald Dahl... it goes on. I made it through all the typical children’s’ books: fantasy (fantasy before Harry Potter that is, I was about 11 when I discovered the magical world of Hogwarts), adventure, girly books, boarding schools, animals, friends, flying cars and houses and so many more things that even made me write my own short stories. It is sad to imagine that I cannot recall many of the books that probably turned me into the keen reader that I am now. But fact is they are there, and no modern toys can make up for what I got from my first few years of reading. |
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