Is it? At least around here, building trades are a pretty common job for people from families who have been here so long that they say things like ‘I don’t have an ethnicity’. And the contractor’s at or near the top of the heap, often with multiple people working for them.
I remember trying to sound out “hard” words in comic books, asking my dad what certain words meant, so I guess I was about four years old when I graduated from just looking at the pictures and trying to figure out what the letters added up to. For example, I remember sounding out the word “World’s” on the cover of a comic featuring Superman and Batman together but jumping to the conclusion prematurely that the second word in the title was “First” (the comic book was entitled “World’s Finest”) and getting corrected by my dad. I know that I could read (very simple) books by the time I entered kindergarten, and was mildly surprised that none of the other five-year-olds in the class could read anything at all. My parents by the way HATED that I loved reading comic books, and I couldn’t articulate but felt strongly at the time that comic books were my gateway to literacy.
Not only can I remember the first words I read, I still remember pages from the Dick, Jane and Sally books I read in 1968 and could recite them, were I so inclined.
My mind attic is packed to the rafters.
I think you’re taking a light-hearted comment altogether too seriously! 
Mine, too. I don’t know why “It Happened One Day” is particularly prominent in my memory, but when the copy I bought recently arrived, the pictures and stories were very, very familiar. Another one I remember is being in bed with a cold and my brother bringing me Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”, presumably when I was well beyond the “It Happened One Day” stage.
I read my daughter the updated Nancy Drew books for years. (It took her until she was in high school and read one herself while I was away to figure out that the housekeeper’s name wasn’t Hannah Gruesome.) We read the reissue of the original one, which was shown above. Definitely racist. The rewrites got rid of the racism by getting rid of minority characters. Plus, Nancy dropped everything and went to church on Sunday, not a part of the originals.
To respond to the question of did our parents read to us: my father read me a story every night on my way to bed, but I am pretty sure I didn’t learn to read from that.
[hijack] Sorry, but I cannot refrain from telling a story about my grandson. When DIL brought him to the pediatrician for his 4th year checkup, she asked him if he could write his name. He said he could and she asked him to demonstrate, handing him a pencil and paper. Sitting across her desk, facing her, he proceeded to do so, printing the letters upside down and backwards, so she could read them.[/hijack]
Yeah, the first Nancy Drew I read was one from the 40s that my aunt gave me and my sisters. The illustrations looked more 30s though. And Nancy was very independent, drove a sporty little roadster, and stood up to authority. I don’t have the specific book anymore, so I found an old copy recently that I bought for the nostalgia factor (and the old illustrations are so much better). I haven’t re-read it yet, so I’m pre-cringing to see if there’s any overt racism that went over my head as a 9 or 10 year old. I liked that it had an almost identical gift inscription to the one in aunt’s old book!
Love it. Smart kid.
Thereby including their own racism.
et al
It never occurred to me that some people can’t remember learning to read. In the 1st grade I was the youngest kid in my family for another year, and the youngest kid on the block, and I was unbelievably jealous that the rest of them could read. I wanted to read the comics in the newspaper, and comic books, and I wanted to know when by brother was lying to me about what stuff said. Once I got started I picked it up quickly because I was highly motivated. I didn’t just want to read, I wanted to read better than all of them! I actually kinda did. I was the school star with the SRA reading program in 5th and 6th grade. I shoulda led with that on my resume!
I had hoped my irony came through. The worst was that the original Tom Swift had a stereotyped (and I mean stereotyped) black character - who at least was heroic, not a coward. He was replaced in the Tom Swift Jr. books by a Texan. Chuck wagon cook type. Way to not face the issue, guys.
I thought that was what you meant; but wanted to make a further point of it.
Yeah. I think the intent was often good, even if much of the stereotyping was nasty – the stereotyped characters were often good guys and also good at something important to the story.
Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have cleaned it up, of course – only that, as you meant, that was very much the wrong way to do it.
For me, I just don’t remember the “before”. At some point in first grade (this was back when kindergarten was more of a structured play setting than anything REMOTELY scholastic), likely fairly early on, something “clicked” and I could read.
Not always perfectly, of course (“slipped on the ick”) but by the beginning of second grade I was devouring any chapter books I could get hold of.
So, all I remember was that it was definitely in first grade. I have no memory of caring about reading before that.
I always ran out of levels before the school year ended.
One of my earliest attempts at reading was deciphering an ancient coverless copy of Detective Comics I found in the attic. Not only was I learning the words, but I was trying to make sense of the logicless Batman world.
I remember when I first figured it out: you know the sound that each letter makes, right? Maybe you just have to say, in sequence, the sound of each letter in a word on order to read that word. That’s probably how it works.
The problem was when I sought confirmation of this theory. Three-year-old me was not able to articulate it quite that way. So, standing on the triangular step where our stairway turned a right angle, I asked my father, “how do you read?”
Several-and-a-half decades later I am no longer surprised that my tired old man, just home from work, didn’t give much of an answer.
But at least I know I was right. I had it figured out.
It’s a wonder you ever achieved literacy. Or sanity, for that matter.
Using this as a starting off point.
My reading books were Dick, Jane and Sally. No Tom, as far as I remember.
But I have a very vague and cloudy memory that there was a second series of books, for the “slow learners” (that’s how I remember it). This would have been no later than 1968. I don’t know how much simper the books can be than D,J&S, but my memory says there was a set. Does anyone remember these, or know what I am talking about?
I was reading by the time I was 5 and was really excited about it so, as I remember, I would shout out everything I could read as we traveled in our car. I mean EVERYTHING. “Jake’s Variety Store!” … “School Zone!” … “Slow Traffic Ahead!” It was incessant, and it had to be annoying, but my parents were very encouraging and patient. I would have gagged me and thrown me in the trunk. LOL
Nah, I’m sure it was endearing. I’m a parent of a 10- and 8-year-old, and, funny thing is, I barely remember them learning how to read. My 8-year-old is still learning English, mostly on her own, as she’s in a Spanish-language program (we’re not Hispanic, but we live in a heavy Hispanic neighborhood and she grew up with local kids in daycare and had interest in the language, so we sent her to a program that is 90% in Spanish). She still will pipe up occasionally and start reading things in English, and it warms my heart to see her figuring it out with very little input from us. Frankly, I’m astounded she reads as well as she does. Then again, my parents didn’t speak or read English when I was growing up, and I managed to figure it out (but I did go to a 100% English-speaking school.)
A couple other learning-to-read memories:
In school, when we got to the Fun with Dick and Jane readers, I already knew a little bit about “sounding out,” but was still supremely excited. I knew deep down that this story with only two words repeated throughout (“look” and “oh”) was the first step to something incredibly exciting.
In that vein, I basically taught myself to read, with comic books. The very first story I ever read on my own was Magnus: Robot fighter !
Good times. Ah, good times.