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David Grabowsky Professor Roberts English 1101-022 9/10/13 Books and Literacy Over the past 18 years of my life hundreds of books have passed before my eyes. These books have opened my eyes to wonders that I could never have comprehended before. Worlds full of monsters and heroes, wizards and warlocks, heavens and hells, that all become available to me from right behind the cover of a book. Each book is like a spider web with an infinite number of threads branching out towards new related books, each of those books in turn have threads of their own, thus creating a complex never ending web of books. It was through this web of books that I not only became literate in reading, but also in the multiple universes that each book opened up. Reading did not come naturally to me. Up until 6th grade the only time I opened a book of my own free will was to read the instruction manuals for Legos. However this didnt mean that I hated books, in fact it was quite the opposite. Almost every night, as silly as it sounds, my mom would read me a book until I fell asleep. I would lie down in my bed with the blankets curled around me in a ball, and listen to my mother with rapt attention as she recounted the stories found within the pages of her book. It was such a long time ago that most of the books

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she read are lost to my memory, however the times when my mother read me the Harry Potter books still shine bright. Its kind of hard to explain but at the time I didnt understand that the ability to read, which was what the teachers in grade school were trying to impart on us students, and the stories of Harry Potter, had any connection. During school hours I would hate every second of the time during which we were forced to read some book I had zero interest in or were being forced to read out loud to the class. This sort of gave me the impression that reading was some odious task. Thus, I thought that the amazing stories my mother read could only be gleamed through some odious undertaking which required immense time and effort. . It wouldnt be until 6th grade that I would make the connection between these stories and the ability to read. Before I could reach 6th grade, and make the connection between reading and my mothers stories, I discovered another form of stories, video games. Video games were like the stories my mother told to me, brought to life on a screen. They had all the elements of a book minus the paper, so naturally I feel in love with them. Each game would be composed of its own characters, scenarios, emotions, and of course language just like a book. At the time I didnt realize it but I was becoming literate in entirely new languages. For instance, one of my favorite games, and universe, would be Star Wars. I would play the star wars game for hours and memorize every detail I could find. It didnt really occur to me that I had become literate in the language of star wars. Once I was joking around with one of my friends and I called him a Nerf Herder. A Nerf Herder in the video game star wars universe meant someone low level, new to the game, or not very good. A noob in game speak. As a side note in the normal star wars

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universe a Nerf Herder is still an insult but means that you are slow and stupid, because Nerfs are big slow stupid animals and I mean herding them is the equivalent of farming corn(those who cant farm, farm corn-Dwight Schrute). BAM, double meaning. Anyway, my friend of course had no idea what I was talking about, and it didnt occur to me that his lack of literacy in the star wars language caused him to be unable to understand my insult. 6th grade was the time when I finally made the connection between the function of reading and fantasy stories. By this time I had become a pretty good reader. I could understand all of the words that were on a page, and could eventually make my way through any assigned reading, but I still had no love of reading nor interest in reading. One day during my 6th grade English class I was given my first book report. A book report is basically an assignment in which the student is allowed to pick any book they want, read that book, and then write a short summary on the book in question. On the day that the assignment was given the class was taken to the library to pick out their book. I roamed around the library looking for a book with an interesting cover and to my surprise found one with cool looking dragon breathing fire. I checked out the book and once I got home I sat down and braced myself for reading. To my surprise however the book wasnt half bad. It was full of elements that I enjoyed such as dragons, obviously, heroes, bravery, etc. I wrote a smashing success of a book report, handed it in after couple of days, then decided that I wanted to read the next book in the series. I went back to the library and checked out the next book in the Dragon book series. It wasnt long before I had read the entire series and was hungering for more books. That was when I learned that the book I was reading was a fantasy book and that the library

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had an entire section of books just composed of fantasy books. Once again I looked at the cover of each book until I found one that looked relatively cool, and once again I ended up loving the book and reading the entire series. Once I finished that series I made an amazing discovery. In the back of the last book there was a little section of similar books by other authors, so of course I looked for those books and read them. This was how my spider web of books first came into being. Each book that I read led me to more books, and each of those books led me to more books, and so on and so forth. Finally my passion for reading had been ignited through these fantasy books. Each of these books I read also had their own languages, they invented words and gave meaning to words that would have been otherwise meaningless to me. It was through the creation and addition of meaning to these words that I became literate in the languages of these books. I learned words and meanings that other people who hadnt read the book couldnt understand. For instance if I hadnt read the book Dune then I wouldnt have had any idea what a Shai-Hulud is, as it happens a Shai-Hulud is a giant sandworm. Not only did the book Dune teach me a new word but it also added meaning to that word. Im not positive but Im pretty sure Shai-Hulud has a Muslim origin and can be translated into English and would then have an actual meaning, but when I first read the word I thought that the author had made it up. In any case Dune taught me a new word that other people who had read the book wouldnt understand. One very large contributor towards my increase in the literacy of books was a man named Justin. In 7th and 8th grade I went to an afterschool program called the P.A.L. It was

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basically a big building with a gym, rec room, and computer lab for kids to hang out in after school so really it was like babysitting for older kids. Anyway, one of the men working there was really into a game called dungeons and dragons, his name was Justin. Justin got together a couple of us kids and introduced us to the game. Dungeons and dragons is basically a role playing game which can be set in a universe that is as diverse and creative as an individual can imagine. The limit to the game is literally imagination. This game has hundreds of books ranging from different quests, or seniors, to lists of weapons, monsters, characters, lore, and so much more. So naturally I had to read as many of them as I could get my hands on. The more I read the books, the more I became literate in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. Justin also introduced me to a new level of reading. Up until this point I had been reading strictly from the juvenile fiction and science fiction levels found within my school library. One day Justin brought in a big box of books and told us to pick a random book from the pile and read it. I picked up a book called Black Sun Rising which to this day is still one of my favorite books. This book was deep in ways that I couldnt possible understand at my young age. However, I did get that it had human spawned deamons and a lot of other really cool and creepy stuff. After re-reading it a couple months ago I can now fully comprehend how different that book had been from the juvenile fantasy I had been reading. Justin had introduced me to the world of fantasy that wasnt inhibited by a school librarys polices, or uninhibited writing. Once again my web of books began to expand as my hunger for reading these new books began to grow.

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Books have been a huge part of my life. Even before I could read a book my mom made sure that I feel in love with the stories they told. Books opened my eyes to the endless universes and forms of literature that exist just behind the cover of a book. Finally books have helped me to shape me into the person I am today through their collective tales.