The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

25 my earliest memories, in fact, are those of my mom reading aloud to me, my sister, and my brother. When we were very young, she read us picture books: Chrysanthemum, Fritz and the Beautiful Ponies, The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash, Stellaluna, Ferdinand the Bull, Julius the Baby of the World, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Giving Tree, her favorite, Love You Forever , and my favorite, Andrew Henry’s Meadow . We loved to listen to her; not only for the sake of being together, but also for the sake of the story itself. My sister and I quickly advanced in our reading skills. We leapt past Dick and Jane , and quickly moved on to more difficult and much more entertaining stories. My brother, on the other hand, got stuck. He was bored out of his mind by Dick and Jane because the books of Dick and Jane are not stories. Each is a conglomerate of repetitive sentences designed to be a tool to teach young children basic reading skills without truly entertaining or engaging them in any way. My mom quickly realized that she was getting nowhere, so she revised his reading list and filled it with Calvin and Hobbes collections. His reading immediately improved. However, even though he could now read well, my brother still enjoyed having me read to him. We would sit side by side with a Calvin and Hobbes book across our laps and I would read it to him panel by panel. I used funny voices, sound effects, dramatic pauses, and changes in volume to make the words come to life. Even though I could read on my own, I too still enjoyed being read to. As we got older, my mom began to read chapter books to us. I remember sitting on our back porch in the summer listening to her read The Chronicles of Narnia . I do not know if it was the first set of chapter books she decided to read to us, but I distinctly remember a moment when I was contemplating where to look. Before, I had curled up next to her and looked at the pictures from under her elbow. But now there were no pictures. I remember that it was then that I first began to stare dreamily out into the distance and see the pictures the words painted in my mind’s eye. This became a reflex for me, even when I began to read on my own. My imagination became so vivid, that sometimes I could barely see the words before me. I became a fly on the wall in Cair Paravel, Erebor, The Capitol, Lothlórien, Maycomb, Cawdor Castle, Ithaka, a raft on the Mississippi, West Egg, Manor Farm, Ingolstadt, behind the barricade in Paris, and many other captivating places. I