So I saw this video a few weeks ago on YouTube by booktuber polandbananasbooks and I thought it was such an interesting video that I decided to do my own version of it. Being a reader in society today can sometimes feel like a lost cause and I know I'm forever thankful to my family for raising me surrounded by stories. My family were definitely the ones who made me fall in love with reading and really encouraged me to read in a way that no one else really has.
My earliest memory is of my dad reading bedtime stories to me when I was little. I remember having a big hardback book of short stories that I adored and would make him read to me over and over every single night. When I was a little older, our collection of stories upgraded to a big book of Enid Blyton stories which I'm pretty sure I still have hidden somewhere actually. I think this is one of the first times I ever encountered the magic of stories and I looked forward to going to bed every single night just to hear my dad read to me.
My mom was a big reader as well. She was always reading and even now, if she has a spare minute, you're likely to find her with a book. She's a big fan of murder mysteries and crime novels, some of which I've inherited from her as I've got older and do enjoy. She was the person I read to when I was learning to read. She'd sit with me every night and listen as I sounded out words. So, in two different ways, my parents really instilled in me a deep love of reading and made it into an important skill that, in my opinion, is an ideology that we're starting to lose a little bit now. My mom was also the one who passed down her favourite stories that she's read as a child on to me. Again, I read a lot of Enid Blyton growing up - The Enchanted Wood was my absolute favourite. I remember being enthralled at the different lands the children would visit, but I also read The Famous Five, The St. Clare's series and the Five Find-Outers series (which, again, I think I've still got the box set of books)!
It was my grandma who started taking me to our local library. At the time, I thought it was magic. I could take eight books out at a time which was such an insane concept to me at the time. Insane but amazing. I think I was in there every other week and, nine times out of ten, I left with eight books. By the time I was ten, eleven years old, I think I'd read my way through most of the children's fiction at my local library. (It's not a huge library but they actually had quite a good selection). So, for a year I re-read my favourites and started my tentative foray into young adult fiction. And there I found my home. I'm pretty sure my grandma was amazed at how many books I'd actually read. She'd pick books out for me and my standard response would be 'I've read that'. In the end, she left me to it and went to get books for herself instead!
I don't remember teachers reading to me when I was little. The only teacher I remember reading to us was the last teacher I had in primary school. He was, and still is, my favourite teacher ever, and he had this book of short stories that were absolute nonsense, and absolutely hysterical. Everyone in that class looked forward to the rare days when he would break that book out and read to us. Once I left primary school, teachers no longer read to us, and when they did, they were reading from books everyone found dull. If it wasn't for that primary school teacher, I probably would have forgotten the magic that happens when you find an amazing storyteller.
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