Who if anyone encouraged you to read when you were a kid?

[GeoffC]

Probably my mother, at school !

Interestingly neither of my parents read anything beyond the paper and magazines. Any books we had in the house were either dictionaries/reference books for crossword puzzles or mine, and given the price of these (I don't recall any in paperback?) I had to get used to re-reading them - a habit I haven't lost....Even my sister never seemed to read.

[estrial]

My parents both love reading, especially my mom disappears into novels for hours on. As a kid I hated books as they reminded me of school. The first book that I ever picked up was The Witches by Roald Dahl at the age of 8, absolutely loved the book and even wanted to be a smelly kid. At 12 I read Memoirs of a Geisha and have not touched any books till recently.

When I turned 20 a couple of years back, I started reading fan fiction of tv-shows/movies that I had enjoyed and it lead on to reading more ebooks and so fourth. Presently I am very happy with how technology has progressed and has not stopped reading since.

[Mercury]

Thinking more about it, one of my teachers (first year of junior school-7years old) did make me read 'age appropriate' books and refused to let me read in class the books that I was actually reading. Instead I was back to Janet and John. When I finished them quickly during reading time, I had to sit quietly with the book open, under strict orders not to open any other book, or even look at the bookshelves at the back of the class room.

This was only in the mid eighties, but I'm sure that teaching nowadays does not pursue such a rigid course. Although if I were a teacher I can understand how much easier everything must be if all of your pupils are at exactly the same learning stage! This would be just one of the reasons I would not be cut out to be a teacher!

[mrscoach]

My whole family. When I was tiny and took a book to either of my sisters of my parents they would drop what they were doing (even if cooking dinner) and read to me. I later "read" those books to them. No one realized until I started reading the Sunday comics by myself that I actually WAS reading on my own. No one is quite sure when I learned, cerainly before I went to school.

We didn't have a lot of money, but I got to go to the bookstore and get a book about once a month or so, I collected the Trixie Belden series, and I remember going to libraries.

I was such a bookworm I started sneaking books into the bathroom with me and read in the tub to 'get in a few more pages, or chapters'. Mom had to practically frisk me to see that I DIDN'T have a book when I went to bathe at night, or I might never have gotten clean. LOL

[bevdeforges]

Like many of the others here, I had reading parents. And the house was always full of book, magazines and newspapers. I learned to read by the age of 5 simply by having my Dad read the funny papers to me every day. And any time I expressed an interest in anything, my Mom would haul me off to the library to find every book we could on the subject - horses, astronomy, rocks and minerals, etc. etc.

It was always a big treat to go to the library en famille and my Dad introduced me to all sorts of books he enjoyed - like the Horatio Hornblower series, The Education of Hyman Kaplan, and Archy and Mehitibel. He had me into science fiction for a long time and we were both big Isaac Asimov fans.

In 5th and 6th grades, the school brought in a special reading teacher for about 6 of us who were reading well beyond our grade level. Miss Dobyn introduced us to all sorts of classics, starting with A Christmas Carol and I recall that she pretty much encouraged us to read anything we were interested in.

[future]

I don't remember my mother or father reading, the books where there but not the readers. When I was a child, a new library was built on my school. Our language teacher told us to enjoy all those news books, most of them for kids. I think I had some problems with my vocabulary, I didn't know the meaning of some words so she told me to read would help me to improve my vocabulary.

Not that time but after some years, I finally got a very good level that let me write articles on magazines today.

Thank you Loli, I never thank you what you did for me.

[RDaneel54]

I was inspired by two examples. One was my grandmother, who was a voracious reader of everything. The other was my oldest brother, who read science fiction and comic books.

What I read when I was young was mostly what written for children, for example, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, other juvenile fiction. The main exception was the level of science fiction I read. Because of my brother, I was introduced to adult science fiction and fantasy at a very young age.

I cannot remember a time when I did not read. I'm pretty sure I wasn't born reading, though.

Dean

[Quake1028]

My mother and my K, 1st and 2nd grade teachers.

[Pookeysgirl]

Nobody encouraged me. I learned at the age of 4, my mother taught me, but I continued from that age to read on my own as many books as possible to hide from the world. I had a rough time at that age and being able to "hide" in a book was my salvation. I still read for that reason sometimes and I'm 27 now.

[mrscoach]

I remember being in elementary school and we had small group reading time, where some of us sat around a table and took turns reading paragraphs or pages. I, of course, got bored slogging laboriously through the book with the others and would read ahead, then get in trouble when my turn came up and I didn't know where we were. I blame my loving family for indulging me so much when I was younger.

[GeoffC]

class reading out loud was the 'rage' when i was in school. the shole class would be expected to read one by one from the same book, a paragraph or chapter at a time, or even reading until the teacher shouted out the name of the next victim (keeping awake was advised, but did not cater for those who couldn't hear properly ! - sheesh the cane was hard in them days).

[Sweetpea]

I'm not sure anybody encouraged me... I know I got "discouraged" a lot though! Especially when I was reading in bed (again), with flashlight (under the blankets).

My parents always read a lot, there were always a lot of books in the house, and I have an almost 2 year older brother. I always read the books he read and when he went to the "big" library (in the big city next to our village), I went with him.

(it turned out later, he's slightly dyslectic, which only surfaced once he went to the technical university and couldn't keep up the pace anymore...)

[HappyMartin]

My parents gave me books, piles of books. Some had pictures but most did not, then they were too busy too read them to me. It made me nuts. I suppose I was about 3 years old. First day at school I came home way annoyed because they hadn't taught mer to read yet.

Once I could read I would go to the library once or twice a week with my grandmother. I learnt to take the thickest books because than ensured less chance of being stuck without something to read. Yay for book readers. It was a long wait to solve that problem. Try living on a farm near Rorkes Drift, 3 hour drive through the heart of Zululand to the nearest decent book store. It can make you nuts. Cheered us all up when they eventually tarred that road.

A shortage of books is what encouraged me.

[mikij]

In my family, book was a kind of religion: my grandparents were teachers, my mom worked as a librarian, my dad worked as a high-school literature teacher, my aunt the same, so everybody pushed me towards the books .
My father's library is huge (currently more than 5000 titles) and with mom working in a library, it wasn't difficult to find the interesting things to read.
I started reading at the age of three and was always very fast reader. Until the age of probably 10 or 12, I've read a lot more books than an average person in a whole life. In high school I read also a lot. Then, I went to the university (languages and literature), so it's normal I read a lot. After that, I started working (and learning IT) and stopped reading for pleasure for several decades.
Finally, two months ago I bought my reader and found the same pleasure in reading as when I was a kid. So far, I've read 17 novels since May 31. I'm back on the track!

[CyberSmoke53]

Definitely my Mom!

When we were little she would read stories to us at bedtime. She would buy us picture books .. remember little Golden Books and Dr Seuess .. and once we learned to read we would go to the library often and got to check out books.