My literacy memory is actually from this past Christmas break. After a few days of lounging around at home doing absolutely nothing, I found myself craving to read any book other than a textbook. My younger brother was working his way through the ‘Eragon’ series for the first time, so I decided to revisit that series as well! The last time I had read through the ‘Eragon’ was six or seven years ago, so I was curious to see how I would experience it differently this time around.
After finishing the series, I noticed quite a few differences in how I perceived the books. During my first read-through, I distinctly remember encountering words that were not in my vocabulary, which I had to either look up or rely on context clues to figure out. This time, however, I was able to make my way through the entire series without any vocabulary stumbles. In addition, the manner in which the author, Christopher Paolini, wrote now seems somewhat bulky. I remember thinking that his language and sentence flow was phenomenal back when I was younger, but after being exposed to a much larger reserve of literature, I can see that Paolini’s writing style is far from impeccable.
These were just two of the many differences I noticed on my second read-through of this particular series. It astounded me to see how my perception of an entire set of books could be augmented in such a way over a period of only a few years. I think that this instance is a solid exemplar of how literacy evolves with us as we are exposed to more and more sources of literature. It also makes me wonder if I would experience other books from my younger years, e.g. the Harry Potter series, in a different fashion as well, or if this is just a singular, specific case…
As apart of receiving the Children’s Lit Certificate I am currently enrolled in adolescent books. Many of the books were reading I read in my children such as “Perks of Being a Wallflower”. In our first class we read and discussed an article about how adults should not be reading books for teenagers, but I and the entire class disagreed. I really enjoyed your article because it brought to light a lot of the issues I’ve spoken about in other classes. Last semester I was constantly reading children’s books for my class and the flack from that never seized. I find something so wonderful in reading books that are slightly below or very much below my own reading level. As you mentioned, there is so much we can get out of these experiences and with every reading, the story changes for us and has the ability to change us.