Tracing My Love Affair With Reading: A History

My earliest memory of reading, naturally, traces back to a nursery classroom when I was four or five years old. There was our class teacher, taking us through the most celebrated reading manual of the day, Sound and Read. Book one was black and yellow and book two was black and blue. Both had the simple drawing of two very African humans, complete with the wide noses and distinct afros, of a child and his instructor. Book two was more technical than book one, and for this reason, I held a secret fear for it.

This was soon overcome once I crossed the initial hurdles and milestones that came with learning to read. The realisation that I could receive information without speaking was electrifying. I felt like a new hero who had just received her superpowers, or rather someone who had suddenly landed a windfall. Nothing seemed beyond me at that point.

Soon enough, I was enjoying books from the Ladybird series, whenever I could get some. What was not to love about those books? With their glossy hardcovers, careful illustrations and plain, easy-to-read format, they were a young child’s paradise. There were the fairy tales (which I didn’t care much for) and then the Peter and Jane series. Peter and Jane always seemed to be having grand adventures. I envied Peter and Jane.

Soon enough I moved into primary school. In my free time, I enjoyed reading the English textbook, the poems and the paragraphs. It was always such a pleasure to be chosen by the class teacher to read aloud during the lesson. One memory that stood out for me was when I was reading at home one day and I came across the word “choir” for the very first time. I asked my auntie Eva how to pronounce it, and she told me it was pronounced kwai·uh. A few weeks later, our class teacher asked the class how that strange word was pronounced. Nobody had any idea. Imagine my pride, therefore, when I was able to pronounce it correctly!

Not too long afterwards I moved to different schools where the New Progressive Primary English textbooks by Oxford University Press were being used. True to their naming, those books were progressive. So progressive that after every couple of units there were excerpts from class readers—storybooks carefully written according to age which introduced various themes and topics. My family could not afford to buy all the class readers at that time, but there were two sisters, Judy and Helen, who had them all, neatly-covered. It was such a pleasure to read them if one could manage to be placed on the queue. Being the responsible elder sister, Judy did not lend her readers to everyone.

Two and a half short years after I began my primary school education, I left formal schooling and my mother started to home-school my siblings and me. Towards the end of the year when I was a class three pupil, my father suddenly came home one day with a novel. It was no other than Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. You know those moments when your parents task you with difficult things to do? This was one of those moments. He challenged me to finish the novel from start to end.

If I am being honest, that was the most difficult assignment I have ever had in my life. Dickensian English seemed pompous and far-removed from the realities of how I spoke every day, and most times I doubted if I even understood what I was reading. I had not yet learnt to use a dictionary yet, and neither did we have one. What helped me were the evening discussions I used to have with my father. Having read the book many years before, he checked up on my progress from time to time and explained the development of the plot. After several weeks, to both our surprise and pleasure, I was through with the book.

The experience of reading Oliver Twist changed me completely. It seemed to have unlocked greater portals and possibilities for me, almost the same way completing the Sound and Read training had a few short years earlier. From then on, nothing was off-limits. If I could read Oliver Twist, with its then-difficult English and seemingly complex storyline, I could read anything. Since then, I have never looked back. As I continue to publish reviews on this blog on books I have had the pleasure of reading in my lifetime, it is my hope that the same joy and wonder I have experienced in those pages, will inspire you to find them too.