Literacy Narrative

It’s the summer of 2009, I just finished 3rd grade and I was moving onto 4th grade. As a kid I loved the outdoors and being active and playing games with friends. Summer vacation was awesome and I was excited for it. But I had a summer reading project. At this point in my life I hated reading books. Well maybe hate is a little harsh more I was more disinterested. I was a typical kid that hated summer reading books. I wanted to play sports, hang out with friends, play video games. I didn’t want to read books, they had no appeal to me. I saw reading books and book reports as a chore.

Going into 4th grade my teacher, Mrs. Weber, had assigned us a summer reading project. She had assigned for us to find a short book on our own, read it, and write a report on it. Nothing too complicated but for the first time I could choose the book. This was an opportunity for me being a non-reader because I had the chance to read something I wanted to read, not something assigned to me.

A few weeks later my mom brought me to a public library to find a book. I looked around the library for a while and I couldn’t find anything. Up until this point in my life I wasn’t a reader, so I had nothing to base my taste off of. I didn’t know if I liked fiction, non-fiction, mysteries, fantasy, action, drama and so on. After a while my mom told me to finish up looking and just chose a book and if I don’t like the book I can come back and get another one. So I chose a book called Treasure Island by. Robert Louis Stevenson. My mom had recommended it so that’s why I chose it. We checked out and went home and then I started reading. I started to read the book but I had a hard time starting. I would read a couple pages then get distracted. The book was okay at first but I couldn’t get into it. But I kept reading, and I started to like the book more. Then to my surprise I was done. I had read the entire book in only a few hours. Plus I had enjoyed the book. It was the first book I read that I enjoyed and would read again. The next week I convinced my mom to bring me back to the library and I got a few other books from the same series, it was a series of classic books from a bunch of different authors. I just kept reading book after book. The Three Musketeers by. Alexandre Dumas, The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn by. Mark Twain, A Christmas Story by. Charles Dickens, Journey to the Center of the Earth by. Jules Verne, and many more.

I had become so engaged in these stories. I could feel myself being brought into these stories. I myself was in the story. I felt connected to these characters in these stories. I saw their perspectives and how they think. I think reading these books made me have a better respect for books and how important they are. They give the reader a chance to experience a story and a setting the author creates.

This experience showed me that you should never limit yourself to new experiences and don’t limit yourself. That we all have opinions on certain things that may be unfair. Opinions made maybe due to unfair circumstances. A city you don’t like because it rained the day you visited, a pizza place that you never go to because it was closed the one time you tried to go, the movie you don’t like that you only saw once. For us to truly get the best out of life, you have to gives things second chances so you can fully make a fair opinion on it.