Teaching preschoolers for six years now showed me the importance of reading. Usually pupils fail in this area more than mathematics, however, they still cannot solve word problems without first comprehending it.
I love reading and books. I deliberately labeled myself a bibliophile. If most kikay girls and shopaholics scouts the mall's beauty booth, I raid the bookstores.
Reading started as a leisure for me. Although I don't remember how I learned how to read or who taught me but I do recall how it started.
I was maybe 6 years old at that time when I saw a box of comics in my lolo's silong. Silong is that space under the house. Old houses used to have that. Anyway, these comics are not your Marvel or DC comics nor the famous Funny Komiks . They contain the classics (but at that time I don't know yet) like Les Miserables, Romeo and Juliet and others. I think they might be the precursor of today's graphic novels.
this is the silong
( photo from Sasha Manuel)
I frequented the silong just to finish the whole box of comics. When I finished everything, that's when I started buying the typical comics from the newstand.
Funny Komiks with Planet Op Di Eyps as cover
(from rakista.com)
From comics I switched to Tagalog romance novels (pocketbooks). My Tita and mom would buy a lot of those and they would swaps after reading, so I got to read a lot too and I was only 11 years old.
(from Tagalog Romance Pocketbooks)
From Tagalog pocketbooks, I turned to English young adult books when I started High School. Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley Twins (followed by Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley University) was popular at that time. Who could forget Elizabeth and Jessica?
I became a certified "tambay" of our High School library. I began reading seriously. When I say seriously it means I stopped with the pa-cute-kilig-puro-crushes pocketbooks and started reading books like Sherlock Holmes, Siddharta Gautama and The Diary of Anne Frank.
Reading became more than just leisure for me. I now read to learn; to learn about other people, other places, other worlds. In college, two books touched me most: The Good Earth and To Kill a Mockingbird. Honestly, I cried over these stories.
Fast forward to the present, now that I'm a preschool teacher and a mother, my list of books now includes children story books, parenting books and magazine, self-help books and even cook books. Whatever is your preference, reading is indeed important. I would like my own children to love reading and books as well, in spite of the emergence and powerful influence of online games and applications, social media and gadgets. I rather fill their room with books than to give them an iPad. Seriously! The feel of turning the pages of the book is still different from swiping the tablet's screen, don't you think? Well, well, well. I'll just leave you with this quote:
“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious,
for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
―
Gustave Flaubert
Post script:
For the bibliophile like me, why don't you try creating your Goodreads account?
