I still remember looking at all those letters jammed together on a page and not knowing what they meant.
I faked reading by memorizing what was read aloud. My 3rd grade teacher found me out and yelled at me for being lazy. She put me in the dummy class.*
My parents asked Mrs. Anderson, who had been my kindergarten teacher, to tutor me. With her gentle guidance I reluctantly began to decode words.
I didn't like reading until the end of 4th grade. That's when the words started giving me pictures in my head.
All of the sudden, there weren't enough books in the world.
*No one in my "dummy class" was dumb.
In "Catatonic" the age-old question of who is smarter, cats or dogs, has finally been answered.
Check out my writing and revision classes at Bellevue College CE (no online courses yet, sorry).
A quarterly newsletter that takes lessons learned from my cat, Mew, and applies them to the writing life. Sounds incredibly sappy, is not.
Pull down the "Resources" menu to find writing prompts, recommended reading, a list of my favorite writers' organizations and instructions on writing day poems.
Copyright 2012 Lois Brandt
All rights reserved.