Miller

Danielle Miller
Composition and Culture
Dr. Wansor
11 October 2016
My Love for Literacy
The earliest recollection I have of reading was after a visit to the library with my mom.
As with most weekly visits downtown, I insisted on going to the library. It didnt matter if our
original intention was to just pass by on the way home from daycare or if we were on our way to
see my dad: I had to go to the library. Of course, this was during the time that the library was
actually visited and library cards were still in existence. The library was the place to be! There
was always something happening from live music to comedians to stories by a campfire for the
kids. In the library, everyone was a kid. Everyone had the imagination and hunger for
knowledge and complete enjoyment of it. When I say everyone, I mean everyone. The library
was always bus, and sometimes it was hard to find a table to sit at, but I was content just reading
on the floor in some corner. I remember circling the block, just waiting for a spot to open. My
mom would drive around and around until we found a spot. When we finally found a place, my
mom always let me put coins in the parking meter. I always put in too many quarters. I thought
that we just might be in there forever, or at least until the library closed.
There was something magical about my library. Located in downtown York, the
architecture was original, with tall ceilings, sweeping archways and winding spiral staircases
with marble and gold throughout. Looking back now, the library was my favorite place to be.
Needless to say, I spent much of my time there. I was enamored by the mystery of the
encyclopedias, the foreign languages, the thick pages. A world of knowledge was at my

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fingertips. There was something about the feeling of the pages between my fingers and that old
book smell. I gasped at the magic around me. I laughed at each turn of the page. I ran to my
mom to blurt out everything that I learned. She warned me that the librarian would tell me to be
quiet, that people were trying to learn. I was just trying to have fun. Even the librarian couldnt
silence my fun.
While my mom looked for her James Patterson books, I ran from shelf to shelf piling
stacks of books until they were taller than me. Half of the time, I couldnt even understand the
story, but then again, I was only three years old at this moment. While I was buried in books, I
barely even noticed the lady with the camera taking pictures of me. My mom later told me that
she worked for the newspaper, the one we read each morning at the breakfast table. Little did I
know, the next morning, I would see myself on the front page of that newspaper with the caption
Danielle Miller, age 3, reads her first book: Baby Learns to Potty. Of course this story led to
some giggles, but hey, you gotta start somewhere, and let me just tell you that the book even had
pop-ups and sound effects!
After my mom and I started reading each night at bed, I really took hold of reading.
Sometimes, she would read to me, and I would just listen. I remember my favorite books being
Goodnight Moon, No, David, No, and the If You Give A Pig A Pancake series. But soon, I
got to the point where I was the one reading on my own, and they were no longer picture books.
Now they were poems and short stories from Falling Up and Where The Sidewalk Ends by
Shel Silverstein. These introduced me to and helped me to appreciate poetry in an early form.
This poetry was enjoyable for me and a stark contrast to what I would encounter in high school.
After poetry came my first encounters with what I would now call short stories. I loved Junie

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B. Jones because I was just like Junie, a fashionable and sassy little girl just trying to find her
way through the adventures of life.
My mom would get tired and go to bed, while I would stay up until midnight reading.
Eventually, I would fall asleep with a book next to me and my light still on. My parents would
always complain in the morning that I was wasting energy, but they were thrilled by the prospect
of me being enthralled with reading. Soon, I was reading books at a high level with great pace.
There was a point in time when I read books at the same pace with which I outgrew my jeans.
My mom, however, was more than happy to buy me books rather than designer ripped jeans. My
parents would be so impressed that I finished a 200-page book in a day and was able to recall the
story. I clearly remember reading The Chronicles of Narnia series and connecting with it
because I also performed in the show based on the book at my local theater. The director of the
theater frequently laughed at the facts that I could point out that Edmund was supposed to be
wearing a red sweater in the opening scene as in the book.
Since then, Id like to think that Ive matured in my intellectual and literary abilities. I
returned to the library frequently after that for more books and more stories to discover. I
became fascinated with the power of words and the way that they transformed into sentences and
then paragraphs and then an entire story. I loved reading because I could be transported into the
story. I became one of the characters. When I was reading, I could block out everything else. I
devoured books from page to page. My reading got me free baseball tickets, free food, trips to
Lancaster and Hershey, but I never read because I had to or for the rewards. I just read because I
wanted to and I loved it. My parents were continually amazed that I could read in the car, no
matter if the road trip was only ten minutes long. All my time was spent reading and because of
this, I tested at a third grade reading level when I started first grade. During my 5th grade

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graduation, I was named with the honor of being the most accelerated reader in my schools
reading program. Each time we read a book, we were supposed to take a quiz on it afterward to
test our knowledge of key concepts, characters, the plot, and the setting. Points were awarded
for each correct answer. There were tiers of rewards based on an increasing amount of points.
The other students still looked up to me and admired me because I could read so fluently. To
them, I was a role model.
I continued my literacy journey with the Magic Tree House series; I even had the
collectors edition box set, where all the book cover could be arranged to make a huge treehouse.
I bugged my mom to go all over town to find the next book in the series within hours of finishing
the previous book so I could start the next one. At some point, though, the chase for literacy
slowed to a crawl. I no longer had the same excitement and passion for reading. In high school,
I read because I had to, because it was part of an assignment or a grade. Of course, I still
enjoyed some of the books my teachers made me read. Some of my favorite books included
Night by Elie Wiesel because it exposed me to such a significant event that I was not around to
experience in person. I also really enjoyed 1984 by George Orwell. I was fascinated by the
concept of the regression of humans despite the fact it was a futuristic society. But, I never went
out of my way to read for pleasure. Perhaps, it was because I just got older and no longer have
free time or because the stories bored me, if there was even supposed to be a story at all. It
wasnt cool to read anymore. I unfortunately fell into the trap of just wanting to fit in with my
peers.
Before entering this class, I had never really thought about my literacy sponsors or even
the fact that I was so lucky to receive the sponsorship that I did. Unlike the stories of Malcolm X
and Sherman Alexie, I was always expected to succeed because I grew up in a normal, middle

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class family, with two educated parents, a great education for myself and all the resources I
needed. I realize that while these factors placed me in a different discourse community than
these authors, we had more in common than I originally predicted. While reading Malcolm Xs
story, I connected with his passion for reading. Just like him, you couldnt have gotten me
out of books with a wedge (Malcolm X 121). I connected with Malcolms passion for reading
despite the many differences we shared. Just like Malcolm, I would find the smallest source of
light to keep reading long into the night. When I had progressed to really serious readingI
would be outraged with the lights out. It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of
something engrossing (Malcolm X 122). My parents acted like the prison guards in Malcolms
story. They always tried to police my bedtime, but I always found a way around it.
I also connected with Sherman Alexie because one of his literacy sponsors was one of his
parents. For me, my mom was my sponsor instead of my dad. I still found myself relating to
Alexie because I can remember picking up my [mothers] books before I could read. The words
themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I first understood,
with sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph I realized that a paragraph was a fence that
held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose (Alexie 129130). Like Alexie, my wonder with language and the connections it formed was wondrous, as I
read books late into the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess, then
during lunch, and in the few minutes left after I had finished my classroom assignments. I read
books in the car when my family traveled (Alexie 130-131).
I know that the evolution of technology played a role in my literacy journey for the better
and for the worse. When I was very young, in-print books were all that we had because there
was no Kindle, no App Store and no Amazon books. To this day, the only person in my family

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who still gets a newspaper is my grandpa. As my dad looked back on his literacy journey, he
told me how he never engaged in meaningful literature in school. He said that was one of his
biggest regrets, not learning how to appreciate reading and writing and how that made his
foundation in language unsteady. I was never able to go to him to edit my papers, brainstorm, or
have a book club because he was incapable of helping me. But, to put it all in perspective, he
always told me he never read a single book during high school. He succeeded only because he
was able to read what he called the yellow pageshis reference source and an archaic
version of Spark Notes. Even in the dinosaur days, using your resources wisely was in-print,
not digital. The irony of this was that you still had to read to understand.
I remember the immense sadness I felt when my favorite store, a huge bookstore called
Borders closed due to a lack of business. I loved Borders just about as much as I loved the
library. I was always amazed at how many new, crisp books they had in one place. I would
admittedly steal books off of the shelf and run away to read them. My mom had a hard time
finding me. I was a kid in a candy store, no, I was a kid in a bookstore. Before I knew it,
Borders was closed for good. I was devastated because at the time, I had a surplus of gift cards
left from Christmas and my birthday that I never got to use. Borders gift cards were something I
could always count on during special occasions because everyone knew how much I loved
books.
I do have to give some credit to technology because it did help to advance my journey
toward literacy. When I was younger, I had a Leapfrog learning system, which was basically an
interactive book that you plugged stories into. Even when my parents were not home, I could
hear the words aloud. I tapped along to advance the story and interacted with the fictitious

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characters. I now realize the close-knit connection between literature and technology. I am still
amazed to this day that the book knew what word I was tapping or when I turned the page.
On the other hand, I can foresee technology overpowering literature. As I entered into
high school, e-books replaced printed text and newspaper and magazines practically became
extinct. It was just harder to enjoy the real experience of reading online. Technology took away
the warm and cozy feeling of reading and gave it a cold edge. I did not like the white glare of
the tablet screen. It did not feel right to swipe to turn the page. I could not highlight or underline
in the margins. It was no longer engaging. We are coming into a time when digital books are
soon to be the only option. When I started my dual enrollment classes in high school, I started
my first search for college textbooks, online of course, and found that I did not even need to buy
the paper version but that I could instantly download the textbook for free and save two hundred
and thirty dollars! On the first day of my classes as a dual enrollment student, both of my
professors even told me that they prefer the electronic text. While I would like to think that I will
read bedtime stories to my kids someday like my mom did for me, I have a strong feeling that
those books wont be in print like the ones in my childhood.

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Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. The Joy of Reading and Writing. Writing about Writing, edited by Elizabeth
Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martins, 2014, pp. 128-131.
Malcolm X. Learning to Read. Writing about Writing, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug
Downs, Bedford/St. Martins, 2014, pp. 120-126.