CHAPTER 6: From Loathing to Love: Sandy’s Reading Journey

I fell deeply in love with books in the second grade, but it was not love at first letter. Every night my mother would set a timer and demand that my three older brothers and I read for 20 minutes. Our prize was the timer going off and the TV going on. I remember struggling through Little House in the Big Woods (Wilder, 1932/1959), sad that my mother’s favorite book bored me.

I accepted her gift of the next book in the series with resignation and slowly opened it exactly at the moment the timer began to tick off 20. But this time, something happened. I was finally leaving the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Ma, Pa, Mary, and I had just crossed the ice. I was asleep in a strange place when I was scared awake by the sound of pops like gunfire. Pa assured me it was only the ice cracking. What if the ice had cracked while we were crossing? Did we have to cross another frozen river tomorrow? The chapter ended with our safe arrival in Kansas. Only then did I pull my face away from the book. My brothers were already watching TV. The room had a strange light and seemed bigger. I felt dazed and a little scared. Blinking rapidly helped to reposition the living room, but something in me was profoundly changed: I looked forward to the next night of reading when I would cross the raging creek.