During the course of my childhood, my parents did not read stories to me a lot. They mainly just brought me books as a child and read to or with me every now and then, but that didn’t affect my love for reading. I owned books such as the Dr. Seuss collection, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr., and many more! I would sit in the middle of my bedroom floor and read my books over and over again, never getting tired of them. As I got older I started reading chapter books, and the size of the books would keep getting bigger.
Being in public school, we were required to read books and take a test over them. They called this AR or Accelerated Reading. At my old schools, we had AR books in our library but weren’t required to get goal points. We were just required to read. I was always a grade level or two ahead and did well in AR. When I came here, I did poorly in AR. I never got any AR goal points. Which I must admit, I am not very proud of it. I am not sure why I started slowly disliking reading all of a sudden when I moved here, it just happened. This made it tremendously challenging to do independent reading assignments throughout school. Maybe it was the fact that I was pressured to reach the higher clubs in AR versus reading the books for myself and enjoying them.
When I moved to Arkansas, I started becoming detached from reading more and more and more. From then up until now, I would personally rather spend time with friends, family, or go out and have fun. Reading just for fun is not something I even consider doing. I now get sidetracked really easily and I can’t concentrate on what I am reading. I would read a sentence several times and still would not know what it was about. Despite the fact that I feel this way towards reading, I have tried to engage in reading, like I use to, more often. Every once in a while I will find a good book to read. Suspenseful books… They do something to me. They tend to grasp my full attention, and I just can’t put them down! If the book seems interesting, I will consider reading it. I just hope to someday get back my love for reading.
Despite my love for reading when I was young and somewhat now, I still tend to dislike reading at times. I wouldn’t say I hate reading, I would say I just don’t have a love for it anymore. Every blue moon, you will catch me reading a book for my own pleasure. Most likely, it will be an independent reading assignment from my English teacher.
