What kind of reader were you as a kid?

Joanna here, asking the Wenches "What kind of reader were you as a kid?"
Maybe I'm asking, where do adult readers come from?

 

Anne begins:

 

What kind of reader was I?

In a word? Insatiable — and I still am now. By day I was happy to be out and about, playing and exploring with my dog, but come night-time it was essential to my happiness that I always have something to read. (We didn't have TV -- my father didn't approve of it.) I don't remember not being able to read, but probably that's because my parents and siblings read to me a lot. AA Milne — the poetry as well as the Winnie the Pooh stories, Pookie the flying rabbit, whatever they had, and once I could read I read everything I could lay my hands on. Not so much cereal boxes though — for me it was stories every time. Enid Blyton was a very prolific English children's writer, and I read everything I could find of hers, starting with Noddy, then The Magic Faraway Tree, and moving on to the Famous Five and many other series.

We always went away at Christmas (which are our long summer holidays) and my presents always included a book or two, so in the caravan or tent I read  my new books and then went on to read my brother's and sisters' books, even though they're a decade older than me. 7 isn't much of a playmate for 17, so whether it was tennis, or card games or scrabble in the evening, I couldn't join in. So it was usually a book for me.

 

Luckily we moved a lot, and in any new town the first place I sought out was the local library, and then when I started school it was the school library. In one school, another bookworm friend and I became a bit competitive — we were reading a decent sized book a night. The school librarian didn't believe we could read that fast and he'd grill us about each book before he'd let us borrow another one. 

 

Now I live in a house filled with books, my childhood friends and my adult companions. Some evoke special times or events, and with some I recall exactly where I was when I first read them. I wonder sometimes what kind of person I'd be if I'd been raised in a home with no books. Would I be a writer, or not? I really don't know.

 

Pat comes in with:

As I suspect most of the wenches and the majority of writers will say—I was an eclectic and voracious reader. One of my earliest memories is of lying on the floor with a book my librarian great-aunt had sent me for Christmas. I knew my alphabet but couldn’t read, and I had no one to read me the story promised by all the exotic pictures of foreign countries. So I lay there day after day, puzzling out the words on my own.

I begged for the Little Golden Books in the grocery store and to this day can probably quote from Poky Little Puppy and The Little Engine That Could. We had no library or bookstore, so I would read the stories over and over, making up my own to go with the pictures. 

Once I was able to access the school library, I knew no bounds. I’d pretty much read everything in the elementary school library by the time I was in sixth grade, including all the sports books meant for boys. I was reading Austen and Bronte because I could buy them through the Scholastic book club. I read Wheaties boxes at breakfast.

Those days are long gone, and I’m much too particular now. I can’t decide if that’s regrettable or not. I mean, Wheaties boxes? Let’s have a little discrimination!

 

 

 

 

Nicola:

 

Like so many other bookish children I was a reader who read anything and everything. It was an amazing voyage of discovery finding out about people and places I had never imagined, past, present and fantastical. I look back on those days with nostalgia and some envy because I don’t think it’s possible to capture quite the same rush of excitement and drive for reading that I had then. I read about children who went to boarding school, who had ballet lessons, who kept horses, who lived in the middle ages or in different countries. I particularly loved stories about big families with siblings because I didn’t have any.

 

My favourites were The Brydons (especially the Brydons on the Broads because there was a ghostly Viking ship involved) and the Fell Farm Campers because I lived in a city and the countryside seemed a strange and exotic place. I loved science fiction, I scared myself with ghost stories, and I cried over The Secret Garden and A Little Princess. Happy Days!

 

 

Andrea:

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in love with books. As a child I devoured (ummm, probably some of them literally) all those wonderful Golden Books picture books, then moved on to The Cat in the Hat, Winnie the Pooh, Charlotte’s Web, The Wind in the Willows . . .oh, the list of childhood classics goes on and on. The magic of storytelling already had me in its thrall. I remember a particular favorite was the Fabulous Flight by a local author, Robert Lawson. I still vividly remember being absolutely enchanted by the adventures of Peter Pepperell and his friend Gus the seagull as they set out to save the world from an evil scientist.

I quickly exhausted children’s books (my mother often came to do a bed check and make sure I hadn’t taken a flashlight with me to read under the covers once I had reached the ‘lights out” hour.) At age eleven I had to battle with the town librarians to be allowed in the adult section. I remember being told I couldn’t check out a book on Jacques Cousteau and his marine biology expeditions because it wasn’t “appropriate” reading material for my age. My mother thankfully marched down there the next day . . .I don’t know what she said, but after that I had free rein of the books. (I am forever grateful for that) Then I discovered Mary Stewart and Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer . . .

Reading is an integral part of who I am. It’s a source of joy, of discovery, of learning, of inspiration, of laughter. Whenever I’m feeling down, I know that curling up with a book will help lift my spirits. I’m never not reading a book, and often I have a few different genres going. I truly can’t imagine a life without books.

 

Joanna here: I'll just mention that there was wide Wench agreement about a childhood of flashlights and blankets.

 

And MaryJo rounds it out:

What kind of reader was I?  It will surprise no one to hear that I was voracious--I would read anything, including cereal boxes and ads in the back of magazines.  The worst vacation in my life was camping in a state park on the St. Lawrence River and I didn't have enough to read.  It was lethally boring!  We had a Reader's Digest, and I read every article in it. Twice.  (This may be related to the fact that I hate camping, too.)

I read horse books, stories with girl protagonists and boy protagonists, and mysteries and adventure and all else.  (I always liked if there was a romantic element, of course.)  I loved Robert Heinlein's science fiction and the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet books, and fairy tales and Greek and Roman mythology.  (No wonder I love fantasy!)

I loved the school library, though sadly I was only allowed to take out two books a day.  I read all the youth biographies of famous Americans and they helped lay the foundation for my love of history. 

A favorite that I read and reread was Swiss Family Robinson, a story of a family surviving when their ship founders and they have to figure out food and shelter and many other things.  (I recall a couple of the sons riding ostriches. <G>)  The book is a classic and the link above is to a free edition on Amazon.

Mary Jo, still reading lots, though pickier these days!

 

And me ... Joanna

I read everything I could get my hands on. Fiction. Nonfiction. New. Old. Cereal boxes. Washing machine directions. Sometimes it seemed the world I lived in was a small place and the world of books was huge everywhere around me.

Particular books that have stuck with me? Kim. That was a huge world I wandered into that I never really strolled out of. If you glance above, you'll see Tom Corbett, one of Mary Jo's favorites. I loved those books.

What else? Robert Heinlein. He wrote so many lovely YAs,for instance, Have Spacesuit - Will Travel is one of the best. I loved the English girls' schools books, (me and Anne,) like Second Form at St. Clare's.  The Narnia books by CS Lewis.

So many cool books. I have been so lucky.

 

What about you? What kind of Reader were you as a child? Did it make you reader you are today?