Sample: Early Literacy Narrative
Gian’s Literacy Story
One of my earliest memories is of my grandfather, John Howell, reading the picture book, Grandfather Frog, to me. I would sit in his laps and listen to his deep voice read the story. I remember the book had a green cover, and there were pictures of the frog jumping into a pond. I think the frog talked to a beaver about building a home. I sort of think the frog was lazy and hard to learn to work hard, like the beaver, but I’m not sure anymore if that was the moral of the story. What I mainly remember is that my grandfather had this bristly grey beard. And sometimes he would tickle my brother and I and try to rub his beard into our neck. We would laugh and giggle and tell him to stop. This is the most vivid memory I have of my grandfather, reading to me.
I also remember going to the library. In my memory I have a sense of going downstairs to where the children’s books were. I’m not sure there really was a downstairs, though, because today the library in my hometown of Platteville, Wisconsin, is only one level. But maybe they built a new library and what I am remembering is the old one. It’s hard to tell. I should ask my mother about that. At any rate, I remember I loved going to the library. I think there were bean bag chairs you could sit in and read. And there were so many books. There was one book series I loved, about this Pioneer on the American frontier. I think his name was Pioneer Dan. He had a buckskin jacket and carried a long rifle. The books were about life on the frontier, building a cabin, hunting deer, fishing, gathering salt, and meeting other pioneers. I don’t remember the words, only the pictures, which looked more like simple figure paintings, browns and whites and reds. I remember that Dan had some fights with Indians. I’m sure they didn’t use the term Native Americans in the story and did not talk about how the pioneers were stealing land from the natives. I think, although maybe it is only wishful thinking, that there was a story where Dan was injured and a Native American nursed him back to health. I hope the books offered that sort of message. Whatever their message, though, I know I read them all and checked them out over and over again. I have looked for them since then, but have never been able to find the series. So maybe the pioneer was not called Dan after all. I think I asked my mother about them once, but all she could remember was that it was an awful series, but faults or not, the series has stuck with me for over 40 years now.
I’m sure I wrote plenty of things, but one of my most vivid memories of writing is a poem I wrote about a caterpillar in 6th grade. Just as I have typed about the poem now, the title has come to me, The Spice Bush Caterpillar, which is the kind of caterpillar it was. We had those kinds of caterpillars in the woods behind our house. They were big fat things that would sit in the sun on a branch. There bodies were like a string of yellow bubble gumballs stuck together. I know my father, who was an English professor and a nature poet, helped me with writing the poem. The lines of the poem were short and described the caterpillar. I remember I also drew a picture of the caterpillar on a plant branch with leaves. I remember coloring the caterpillar yellow, and how the yellow had that waxy look from the crayons I had used. I don’t remember the lines of the poem, though I know I fit it onto one page. The thing I remember the most is that I cut a corner of the paper I had written the poem on in order to make it look like the caterpillar had eaten part of the page. I remember thinking what a great idea this was, and in my mind’s eye that torn corner really looks like a caterpillar had been eating the paper. I didn’t make the poem rhyme, which most of my classmates would have done, since people always think poems have to rhyme. My father would have told me not to have the poem rhyme, but instead to try to describe what I could see. And I know I would have been very proud of having written the poem the way he wanted, like the kinds of poems he would write. So, in the end, what mattered to me most was not the poem or the class assignment but writing a piece for my father in a way that would make him proud.