March is National Reading Month!

National reading month has got to be my third favourite time of the year, right behind fall & Christmas!
I must give a big thank you to my parents for instilling a love of reading in me from a very young age. I was 9 years old when my father had me reading Tolkien's The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, out loud. Yes, you read that right, out loud.
Thanks to them, I excelled in reading, writing, & public speaking. I didn't struggle in class to read aloud or to eat through assigned readings, I actually looked forward to them. I didn't understand why so many classmates hated reading & avoided it.
I didn't know to appreciate the effort my parents put in.
I now comprehend what a blessing it is to be able to enjoy & appreciate a great book, to understand a university text, to be able to look at a sign & know what is written on it.
I do not take reading for granted, I love it & I have made sure to pass that love onto my son. Every night, bedtime included 2 stories, I chose a book & he chose the other. Of course it was quite common for two books to become three or four but indulging him was never painful. My son still talks about his favourite stories, goes down the list of books we read together, & asks me about a title he can't recall, then smiles with fond memories surfacing in his mind, once I answer. Money was super tight, as it usually is when you're a single parent. Many of our books came from the library, Sunday's were about reading hour at the big bookstore downtown, going to the African bookstore was important & contributed to my sons self-esteem in ways I can't thank enough. My son still says, "Mom, I like my fur. I like the colour of my fur-that book made me feel so good about myself." My son's father is Jamaican & I am Polish, Greek, French, British, with a bit of Native. Your typical Québecer.

This is my cutie of a son then & now.

 My son went to a camp that was touted as being multi-cultural, it turned out that it was not all that it seemed. I was in the kitchen one summer afternoon after my son had come home from said camp, when my attention was caught by a strange noise. I opened the bathroom door to see my son slapping his tear stained, red & finger marked cheek, repeating the words, " I hate my skin, I hate the way I look, I hate being black." I was so shocked I stood in stunned silence at what I was witnessing.
My heart still aches for that little boy who was so alone when the world was too cruel for him to bear, for the innocence gone, for not being able to protect him from the ignorance passed on generationally. I am struggling to hold back tears, even as I write this awful memory. I remember thinking, this will not do. I held him, wiped away the tears, listened to his story, and talked to him about the proud moments in history. The black gold woven into the fabric of society, the accomplishments of black men & women that came before him that have been omitted from the history books, he still remembers that a black man invented peanut butter. We went out for ice cream, air hockey, a few games of house of the dead, and a walk that led to a gem of a shop. I was too broke to purchase anything after the days activities but the shop owner was kind enough to allow us to read some stories. That's where he found it, a little children's book about a rabbit liking the colour of his fur. I give God thanks for aligning everything just right so that we could get to that place, that book, that moment, where my son read a book that raised his self-esteem back up & taught him to love himself once more. This is one of the many powers of books & reading.
So, in keeping with this wonderful March reading theme, I have figured out which books are on the to read list. My auntie passed away a few weeks ago, God rest her soul. She was quite the reader and I was so happy to have received a bunch of books as a parting gift from her. I have been slacking in the reading department as of late, which is very unusual should you ask anyone who knows me.
I have been known to ignore guests, who have been warned a visit is an untimely & not recommend idea, as I am sucked into the vortex of good literature & cannot be brought back until the last page is read.
I think they didn't believe it until they saw it & then said, "I have never seen someone read like that, you weren't kidding when you said you would not see or hear anything or anyone." I apologized but really, inside I was smiling at my awesomeness! I AM A READER, BOOKWORM, BOOK GEEK, BIBLIOPHILE. Hey, whatever you want to call it, I am proud of it & would get into it further but I have this stack to smash! Get reading people & share some of that with your youngins'.











Would you look at that, I forgot Green eggs & Ham & The giving tree! What a shame, guess I gotta stop at the book store, well, you gotta do what you gotta do...

Leave me your book story in the comments section, I love to hear from you!

Before I end my post, some information on literacy:

Global rate of adult literacy: 84 per cent, but 775 million people in the world who are illiterate, with another 152 million children set to follow in their footsteps because they aren’t attending school.

After across-the-board gains between 1990 and 2000, the world literacy rate climbed from 76 per cent to about 82 per cent. Progress has slowed in the decade since. Several countries have plateaued, and only three – China, Indonesia and Iran – are expected to reach the international goal of cutting illiteracy rates in half by 2015.

In order to reach that target, 6 per cent of the world population, or more than 360 million people, will have to become literate. That’s like teaching the entire population of the United States and Canada to read and write, in just three years.

Women

The struggle for literacy is in many ways a struggle for gender equality: Women account for nearly two-thirds of those who can’t read.

There are many barriers. Families living in developing countries often struggle to pay school fees, and are sometimes forced to chose which child to send to school. Boys are the preferred choice, as girls are seen as valuable household help for domestic chores.

This dynamic explains plateaus in literacy rates in several countries. Niger and Mali, for example, have some of the lowest literacy rates in the world, and the literacy rate for women in those countries is less than half of what it is for men.

“When you educate a woman, you educate a village; when you educate a man, you educate an individual,” Ms. Marope said.

Countries that are making progress are doing so by educating females. For example, only 17 per cent of women in Nepal could read in 1990, but by 2010, that number had climbed to 48 per cent.

Youth

Signs of hope emerge in literacy rates of the world’s youth. Nearly 90 per cent of the population between the ages of 15 and 24 are literate, compared to 84 per cent of adults.

It’s a trend consistent across much of the globe, with exceptions such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where violence and conflict has destroyed schools and displaced children. (Hence the themes of this year’s literacy day: literacy and peace.)

Many in developed nations are waiting to see how the spread of smartphones and technology will have an impact on youth.

“We’re writing more than we ever had before,” Ms. Eaton said. “We’re not relying on telephones as much, we’re texting and we’re going online.”

There is some concern, however, that jargon and spelling shortcuts that are pervasive in youth culture may contribute to a literacy decline.

Canada

Literacy rates in Canada are high – around 97 per cent – but there is a debate about what that measure really means. Ideas about literacy have shifted, and while measures once focused on a person’s ability to decipher characters and read text, the bar has been raised to consider economic productivity.

“There’s learning to read and then there’s reading to learn,” said Margaret Eaton, president of ABC Life Literacy Canada. “Not enough Canadians have that skill.”

In 2008, her organization authored a report that raised concerns about whether Canadians, including those who have graduated high school, can read well enough to be comfortable with new written information or doing computer work. The report relied on Statistics Canada data that showed 48 per cent of adults age 16 and older didn’t have the literacy skills needed for the working world. The report noted that while many were new immigrants, native-born Canadians with high-school diplomas also had difficulties.
This article is from:
KATE HAMMER - EDUCATION REPORTER
THE GLOBE AND MAIL