“5 Things About Me as a Young Reader”
1) As a young reader, I wasn’t much of a young reader. I am dyslexic and got off to a slow start. I repeated second-grade and spent the second year in a small special ed. class where they had me read the same few Dick and Jane books over and over again. It wasn’t exactly thrilling reading, but it worked well. I’m pretty sure it took advantage of the high degree of brain plasticity at that age to retrain my neural pathways. Though if you asked my teacher, she just would have said, ‘Practice makes perfect.’
2) And that may be, but the first thing I wanted to practice was the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. This was way before World of Warcraft or other advanced computer versions. D&D was made entirely of words, either spoken or written, and as I became more immersed in the game, I began reading the books. I poured over The Player’s Handbook, The Monster Manual, and though it was technically forbidden for a mere player like me, the impressive, tome-like Dungeon Master’s Guide. I wasn’t reading for the fun of reading, exactly. I was looking for shortcuts and clues and information, anything that could make me a better player and my characters more powerful. Nonetheless, I found myself spellbound (so to speak) by those books for hours at a time.
3) The first book I remember reading for fun was also largely because of D&D. My brother, Matt, was a voracious reader and had named his top character after a character from a book. It was the ultimate compliment in our world (I’d named my top character after a Norse god!), and I had to know how a mere book—like the ones they made us read in school—could be cool enough to cross over into the game that dominated our own fiercely guarded after-school hours. The book was The Book of Three, the first installment in Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydian series, and after reading and enjoying it, I understood why Matt named his ranger Gwydion.
4) The next big book for me actually was assigned in school: Watership Down
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