Thursday, February 22, 2007

Can you ever forget your first?

Truth be told, I'm a little fuzzy on mine, though I distinctly remember being very proud to sound out the first pages of Green Eggs and Ham: "I AM SAM. SAM I AM." So quite possibly the first book I read on my own was that classic of the genre.

Not everyone is so predictable, though. Phantom's son LG, for example, has shown a nonfictional and artistic bent in his first solo reading choice, and it looks like his little sister is right behind him.

As for my own daughter, despite being surrounded by the cream of the crop of picture books and early readers thanks to her two librarian parents, the very first book she finished on her own, on a memorable snow day early in the winter, was this deathless title. Just goes to show you that you never know what's going to be the book that hooks a kid, and that adults' literary judgments aren't the only measuring stick.

3 comments:

Phantom Scribbler said...

(Jumping up and down with excitement) Green Eggs and Ham was MY first, too!!!

susan said...

I am feeling totally lame as I have no idea what was my first. I do remember that the Oz books were my first SERIES to read through on my own, in 2nd grade, but I must have read sooner than that. I learned to read (without my mother knowing it, mind you) sometime during the kindergarten year.

Unknown said...

Mine was What Spot?, an antique easy reader that had belonged to my mother. It was the timeless story of a walrus that saw a spot in the snow, and had to dig down to find out what it was.

And it was, absurdly, a wagon.

But the REASON I learned to read was so I could read Finn Family Moomintroll to myself. My mother hated it, and refused to read it over and over as often as I required.