Today in class, you will begin planning and drafting your first essay assignment, a literacy narrative, which is an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language.
Begin by asking yourself some of these questions: How have you come to think about yourself as a reader or writer? What were some of your most formative experiences as a reader or writer? What are some of the do’s and don’ts you have learned about writing? How has what you have learned about reading or writing enhanced your confidence and skill in that role? You don’t need to respond to all of those questions. Try picking one or two as a starting point, then begin bringing one of those experiences to life.
Your aim is to recreate your experience on the page and then to reflect on its significance. Your focus may be any one of the following:
a memory of a reading or writing assignment that you recall vividly
someone who helped you learn to read or write
a writing-related school event that you found humorous or embarrassing
a particular type of writing that you found (or still find) especially difficult or challenging
a memento that represents an important moment in your development as a reader or writer
learning to speak a second langauage
Detailed instructions are included in the assignment handout that you will receive in class today. An additional copy of the handout is posted on Blackboard in the essay assignments folder.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, review the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website. Also review tomorrow’s Scrabble post.
This morning in class you will compose a short essay in which you reflect on the processes of planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative. Questions to consider include the ones below. You don’t need to address all of these questions, focus on the ones whose answers reveal the most about your work.
What aspect of the writing seemed the most challenging? Determining the focus of your narrative? Developing the story? Crafting the conclusion? Why did that aspect of the writing seem the most challenging?
Did you change the subject of your narrative? If so, what was the original subject? What did you change it to? Why?
Did you change the organization of the narrative? For example: Did you initially present the story chronologically, then change it?
Did any of the sample essays we examined (“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into My Life,” “A Bridge to Words”) prove helpful to you as a model? If so, how? (Offer one or more concrete details to support your claim.)
What do you consider the strongest element of your literacy narrative?
At what point in the process did you decide on a title? Did you change the title during the writing process? If so, what was the original title?
What image did you include that documents part of your writing process away from the screen? Why did you choose that particular image?
What relevant website did you link to your blog post. Why is that particular site relevant to your narrative?
In addition to metacognition, did any of the other habits of mind of successful college students play a significant role in your writing process? If so, which one? The other seven are curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, and flexibility.
Students who have their physical copies of Writing analytically have the option to earn a bonus point by integrating a quotation from the textbook into their reflection. See the directions and the example below.
Directions
Read the section of Writing Analytically titled “Writing on Computers vs. Writing on Paper.”
Choose a short passage from the section that is relevant to your writing process and include it in your reflection.
Introduce the quotation with a signal phrase and end the sentence with a parenthetical citation. At the end of your reflection, include an MLA-style work cited entry. See the example below.
Example
The authors of Writing Analytically note that beginning a piece of writing on a computer can “lock you into a draft or a particular idea too soon” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 124). Early in the process of writing my literacy narrative, I found myself locked into an idea that I was able to discard only after I resumed writing longhand.
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Writing on Computers vs. Writing on Paper.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. 2024. pp. 124-25.
Note that the title of the textbook section and the page numbers in the ninth edition may differ from the those in the eighth edition. Make changes as needed in your parenthetical citation and work cited entry.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.
Hilaire Belloc’s “Rebecca,” illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen
Today in class we will examine the model literacy narrative “A Bridge to Words,” which appears below, and you and two or three of your classmates will collaboratively compose a piece of writing that addresses one of these elements of the essay:
concrete details
figurative language
scene (see paragraphs two through five)
the adult retrospective narrator
the writer as a child
As you continue to revise, consider the role of those elements your own literacy narrative, and ask yourself what changes may enhance them.
A Bridge to Words
To a small child, the pages of a newspaper are enormous. Looking far back through the years, I see myself, not yet school age, trying to hold up those long, thin sheets of newsprint, only to find myself draped in them, as if covered by a shroud. But of course, back then, my inability to hold a newspaper properly was of little consequence. Even if I could have turned the pages as gracefully as my parents did, I couldn’t decipher the black marks on the page; thus, my family’s ritual reading of the newspaper separated them from me. As the youngest and the only one who couldn’t read, I was left alone on the perimeter to observe. My family’s world of written words was impenetrable; I could only look over their shoulders and try to imagine the places where all those black marks on the page had carried them—these people, my kin, who had clearly forgotten that I was in the room.
My sister, who was three years older, had her very own news source: The Mini Page, a four-page miniature paper that arrived at our house as an insert in the Sunday edition. While our parents sat in their easy chairs poring over the state and local news, my sister, Jo, perched at the drop-front desk and occupied herself with articles, puzzles, and connect-the-dots.
Finally, one Sunday, someone noticed me on the margin and led me into our family’s reading circle. Whether it was one of my parents or my sister, I don’t know. I remember only the gesture and the words: someone handing me the Sunday comics and saying, “You can read part of the funny pages, too. You can read Henry.”
I took the giant page and laid it flat in the middle of the oval, braided rug on the floor of the den. Once I situated the page, I lay on top of it with my eyes just inches above the panels of the comic strip. To my parents, my prone position was a source of amusement, but for me it was simply a practical solution. How else was someone so small supposed to manage such a large piece of paper?
As I lay on the floor and looked at the comic strip’s panels, I realized what the voice had meant. I could “read” Henry, the comic with the bald boy in a red shirt, because it consisted entirely of pictures. In between panels of Henry walking, there were panels of him standing still, scratching his hairless head. I didn’t find Henry funny at all. I wondered how that pale forerunner of Charlie Brown had earned a prime spot in the funnies. Still, I was glad he was there. He was the bridge that led me to the written word.
Reading the wordless comic strip Henry for the first time was the beginning of a years-long habit of stretching out on the floor with newspapers and large books—not thick ones but ones that were tall and wide, among them one of my childhood favorites: The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense. My sister and I spent hours lying on our bedroom floor, the pink shag carpet tickling our legs as we delighted in the antics of Rebecca, the mischievous title character of one of the poems.
Carl Thomas Anderson’s comic strip character Henry
“Rebecca”—which my sister read to me before I could read it myself—introduced me to the word “abhors,” the very sound of which appealed to me. Sometimes before Jo had finished reading the opening lines, my uncontrollable giggles collided with her perfect mock-serious delivery. As the last word in the first line, “abhors” serves as a lead-in to an enjambment: the continuation of a sentence or clause in a line break. It would be years before I learned the term “enjambment,” but I was immediately swept away by its effect in the opening lines: “A trick that everyone abhors/ In Little Girls is Slamming Doors” (Belloc 61). The first line lured me into the second one, and so on and so on. I was drawn both to the individual word “abhors”—with its side-by-side “b” and “h,” rare in English—and the way the words joined, like links in a chain, to yank me giggling through Rebecca’s cautionary tale:
It happened that a marble bust Of Abraham was standing just Above the door this little lamb Had carefully prepared to slam, And down it came! It knocked her flat! It laid her out! She looked like that.
Her funeral sermon (which was long And followed by a sacred song) Mentioned her virtues, it is true, But dwelt upon her vices too, And showed the dreadful end of one Who goes and slams the door for fun. (61)
Why these particular early memories visit me now, I don’t know. Perhaps rereading Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus with my students has roused the wordless Henry and the word-filled Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense from the corner of my brain where they’ve slumbered. The former wakes and stretches out in my mind as a bridge to the latter: a spot in the world of words I’ve inhabited ever since.
At the beginning of class on Wednesday, you will submit your worksheet for the second lesson in the Check, Please! course. After that, I will return your handwritten drafts, and you will have the remainder of the period to begin typing your revisions on your laptops. You will have an additional week to continue revising before you submit your literacy narrative to Blackboard and WordPress. The due date is Wednesday, February 7; the hard deadline is Friday, February 9.
This morning in class, after I collect your third Check, Please! assignments, you will compose a short essay in which you reflect on the processes of planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative. Questions to consider include the ones below. You don’t need to address all of the questions, focus on the ones whose answers reveal the most about your work.
What aspect of the writing seemed the most challenging? Determining the focus of your narrative? Developing the story? Crafting the conclusion? Why did that aspect of the writing seem the most challenging?
Did you change the subject of your narrative? If so, what was the original subject? What did you change it to? Why?
Did you change the organization of the narrative? For example: Did you initially present the story chronologically, then change it?
Did any of the sample essays we examined (“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into My Life,” “A Bridge to Words”) prove helpful to you as a model? If so, how? (Offer one or more concrete details to support your claim.)
What do you consider the strongest element of your literacy narrative?
At what point in the process did you decide on a title? Did you change the title during the writing process? If so, what was the original title?
What image did you include that documents part of your writing process away from the screen? Why did you choose that particular image?
What relevant website did you link to your blog post. Why is that particular site relevant to your narrative?
In addition to metacognition, did any of the other habits of mind of successful college students play a significant role in your writing process? If so, which one? The other seven are curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, and flexibility.
Students who have their physical copies of Writing analytically have the option of integrating a quotaion from the textbook into their reflection. See the directions and the example below.
Directions
Read the section of Writing Analytically titled “Writing on Computers vs. Writing on Paper.”
Choose a short passage from the section that is relevant to your writing process and include it in your reflection.
Introduce the quotation with a signal phrase and end the sentence with a parenthetical citation. At the end of your reflection, include an MLA-style work cited entry. See the example below.
Example
The authors of Writing Analytically note that beginning a piece of writing on a computer can “lock you into a draft or a particular idea too soon” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 124). Early in the process of writing my literacy narrative, I found myself locked into an idea that I was able to discard only after I resumed writing longhand.
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Writing on Computers vs. Writing on Paper.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 124-25.
Postscript
Here is my version of the Check, Please! lesson three assignment that you submitted at the beginning of class this morning:
Check, Please! Sample Assignment Lesson Three
In the third lesson of the Check, Please! Starter Course, Mike Caulfield, author of the course and research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, continues his instruction on the second step in four-step SIFT approach to determining the reliability of a source. Lesson three, “Further Investigation,” covers these topics: (1) Just add Wikipedia for names and organizations, (2) Google Scholar searches for verifying expertise, (3) Google News searches for information about organizations and individuals, (4) the nature of state media and how to identify it, and (5) the difference between bias and agenda.
One of the most instructive parts of lesson three focuses on two news stories about MH17, Malyasia Airlines Flight 17, a passenger flight scheduled to land in Kuala Lumpur that was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. While the second story, a television news segment, appears to present detailed investigative reporting challenging the conclusion of the Dutch Safety Board and Dutch-led joint investigation team–the conclusion that Russia was to blame–a quick just-add-Wikipedia check reveals that RT (formerly Russia Today) is a Russian state-controlled international TV network, a government propaganda tool rather than a source of fair and balanced news. The first video, the one produced by Business Insider, a financial and business news site, delivers accurate coverage of MH17.
Another notable segment of “Further Investigation” addresses the important distinction between bias and agenda. There, Caulfield observes that “[p]ersonal bias has real impacts. But bias isn’t agenda, and it’s agenda that should be your primary concern for quick checks,” adding that “[b]ias is about how people see things; agenda is about what a news or research organization is set up to do.”
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the posts on my blog devoted to Scrabble tips.
Hilaire Belloc’s “Rebecca,” illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen
As you continue to revise your literacy narrative, look to the one that follows as another model. This narrative, “A Bridge to Words,” is one that I wrote as a sample for my students in 2021.
A Bridge to Words
To a small child, the pages of a newspaper are enormous. Looking far back through the years, I see myself, not yet school age, trying to hold up those long, thin sheets of newsprint, only to find myself draped in them, as if covered by a shroud. But of course, back then, my inability to hold a newspaper properly was of little consequence. Even if I could have turned the pages as gracefully as my parents did, I couldn’t decipher the black marks on the page; thus, my family’s ritual reading of the newspaper separated them from me. As the youngest and the only one who couldn’t read, I was left alone on the perimeter to observe. My family’s world of written words was impenetrable; I could only look over their shoulders and try to imagine the places where all those black marks on the page had carried them—these people, my kin, who had clearly forgotten that I was in the room.
My sister, who was three years older, had her very own news source: The Mini Page, a four-page miniature paper that arrived at our house as an insert in the Sunday edition. While our parents sat in their easy chairs poring over the state and local news, my sister, Jo, perched at the drop-front desk and occupied herself with articles, puzzles, and connect-the-dots.
Finally, one Sunday, someone noticed me on the margin and led me into our family’s reading circle. Whether it was one of my parents or my sister, I don’t know. I remember only the gesture and the words: someone handing me the Sunday comics and saying, “You can read part of the funny pages, too. You can read Henry.”
I took the giant page and laid it flat in the middle of the oval, braided rug on the floor of the den. Once I situated the page, I lay on top of it with my eyes just inches above the panels of the comic strip. To my parents, my prone position was a source of amusement, but for me it was simply a practical solution. How else was someone so small supposed to manage such a large piece of paper?
As I lay on the floor and looked at the comic strip’s panels, I realized what the voice had meant. I could “read” Henry, the comic with the bald boy in a red shirt, because it consisted entirely of pictures. In between panels of Henry walking, there were panels of him standing still, scratching his hairless head. I didn’t find Henry funny at all. I wondered how that pale forerunner of Charlie Brown had earned a prime spot in the funnies. Still, I was glad he was there. He was the bridge that led me to the written word.
Reading the wordless comic strip Henry for the first time was the beginning of a years-long habit of stretching out on the floor with newspapers and large books—not thick ones but ones that were tall and wide, among them one of my childhood favorites: The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense. My sister and I spent hours lying on our bedroom floor, the pink shag carpet tickling our legs as we delighted in the antics of Rebecca, the mischievous title character of one of the poems.
Carl Thomas Anderson’s comic strip character Henry
“Rebecca”—which my sister read to me before I could read it myself—introduced me to the word “abhors,” the very sound of which appealed to me. Sometimes before Jo had finished reading the opening lines, my uncontrollable giggles collided with her perfect mock-serious delivery. As the last word in the first line, “abhors” serves as a lead-in to an enjambment: the continuation of a sentence or clause in a line break. It would be years before I learned the term “enjambment,” but I was immediately swept away by its effect in the opening lines: “A trick that everyone abhors/ In Little Girls is Slamming Doors” (Belloc 61). The first line lured me into the second one, and so on and so on. I was drawn both to the individual word “abhors”—with its side-by-side “b” and “h,” rare in English—and the way the words joined, like links in a chain, to yank me giggling through Rebecca’s cautionary tale:
It happened that a marble bust Of Abraham was standing just Above the door this little lamb Had carefully prepared to slam, And down it came! It knocked her flat! It laid her out! She looked like that.
Her funeral sermon (which was long And followed by a sacred song) Mentioned her virtues, it is true, But dwelt upon her vices too, And showed the dreadful end of one Who goes and slams the door for fun. (61)
Why these particular early memories visit me now, I don’t know. Perhaps rereading Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus with my students has roused the wordless Henry and the word-filled Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense from the corner of my brain where they’ve slumbered. The former wakes and stretches out in my mind as a bridge to the latter: a spot in the world of words I’ve inhabited ever since.
Today in class we will return to David Sedaris‘s essay “Me Talk Pretty One,” and you and three of your classmates will collaborate on an exercise that asks you to examine–and subsequently address in writing–these elements of his literacy narrative:
scene and summary–you will examine how and where Sedaris shifts from one to the other
metaphors and similes
hyperbole
conclusion–specifically how the conclusion conveys the story’s significance without stating explicitly, this experience was significant because. . . .
Each of these elements plays an important role in narrative, none more so than scene, which is vital to a story’s life. Without it, a narrative falls flat. With summary, a writer compresses time to offer an overview of events. Through scene, a writer lets time unfold in front of the readers’ eyes, which is what readers prefer. They are drawn into a narrative when they can see for themselves what is happening.
Along with continuing our study of Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” we will begin to examine “The Day Language Came into My Life,” the first pages of Chapter Four of Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life.
Together, these two essays by David Sedaris and Hellen Keller demonstrate two vastly different ways to present a literacy narrative. “Me Talk Pretty One Day” offers a quirky look at the challenges of learning French from a sarcastic, soul-crushing instructor. Keller’s story poignantly recounts learning to make meaning through the sign language of her teacher, Annie Sullivan, learning that certain finger positions mean “water” for those who cannot hear it, and for others, like her, who can neither see nor hear it.
And by the Way
Last week in class, I mentioned that David Sedaris’s sister Amy is an actress who is perhaps best known for her role as Deb in the movie Elf (2003). Here is a picture of her and her brother:
On Wednesday you will continue to work on your own literacy narratives. At the beginning of class, after I collect your second Check, Please! worksheets, I will return your handwritten drafts. You will have the class period to revise on your laptops and an additional week to continue revising before you post your revision to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog. The due date is Wednesday, September 13; the hard deadline is the morning of Friday, September 15.
Today is class you will begin planning and drafting your first essay assignment, a literacy narrative, which is an account of a learning experience involving reading, writing, or learning to speak a language.
Begin by asking yourself some of these questions: How have you come to think about yourself as a reader or writer? What were some of your most formative experiences as a reader or writer? What are some of the do’s and don’ts you have learned about writing? How has what you have learned about reading or writing enhanced your confidence and skill in that role? You don’t need to respond to all of those questions. Try picking one or two as a starting point, then move to bringing your experiences to life.
Your aim is to recreate your experience on the page and then to reflect on its significance. Your focus may be any one of the following:
a memory of a reading or writing assignment that you recall vividly
someone who helped you learn
a writing-related school event that you found humorous or embarrassing
a particular type of writing that you found (or still find) especially difficult or challenging
a memento that represents an important moment in your development as a reader or writer
Detailed instructions are included in the assignment handout that you will receive in class today. An additional copy of the handout is posted on Blackboard in the Essay Assignments folder.
Next Up
Friday marks the second Wordplay Day of the semester. To prepare for class, review the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website. Also review the posts on my blog devoted to Scrabble tips.
Mike Caulfield, author of Check, Please! and Director of Blended and Networked Learning at Washington State University. https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/ front-matter/updated-resources-for-2021/.
At the beginning of class on Wednesday, August 30, I will collect your worksheets for Lesson One of the Check, Please! starter course. My sample version of the assignment appears below, as well as on your worksheet and on Blackboard.
Sample Check, Please! Assignment
Check, Please! Lesson One Assignment
In the first lesson of the Check, Please! Starter Course, Mike Caulfield, author of the course and Director of Blended and Networked Learning at Washington State University, introduces the four-step SIFT approach to determining the reliability of a source: (1) “Stop,” (2) “Investigate,” (3) “Find better coverage,” and (4) “Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”
One of the most useful practices presented in lesson one is what the author terms the “Wikipedia Trick.” Deleting everything that follows a website’s URL (including the slash), adding a space, typing “Wikipedia,” and hitting “enter” will yield the site’s Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia entry that appears at the top of the screen may indicate the source’s reliability or lack thereof.
The most memorable segment of lesson one is the short, riveting video “The Miseducation of Dylann Roof,” which begins with the narrator asking the question, “How does a child become a killer?” Produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, it documents how algorithms can lead unskilled web searchers down paths of disinformation. In the worst cases, such as Roof’s, algorithms can lead searchers to the extremist propaganda of radical conspiracy theorists.
As a model for your own literacy narrative, today in class will examine “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” originally published in Esquire magazine and later as the title essay in David Sedaris’s 2000 essay collection.
To read more of Sedaris’s essays, see the list of links under the heading Writing and Radio on his website.
Next Up
As you begin work on your own literacy narrative on Wednesday, study Sedaris’s essay as a model, and consider how he uses the following:
Shifts from summary to scene and vice versa
Figurative language
Hyperbole
Vivid detail
Look for opportunities to use those elements in your own essay.
As a writing teacher, I have often imagined myself as Yoda, the irascible Jedi master who trains her students to express their ideas with light-saber accuracy. But although Yoda and I are roughly the same height, the similarity ends there.
I grew keenly aware of just how un-Yoda-like I am when I began teaching online synchronously for the first time last month. Initially, I found solace in the knowledge that I would muddle my way through Microsoft Teams for only a couple of weeks before in-person classes resumed. Then two weeks became five, and then five became eight.
Now as we begin week seven online, my true identity as a teacher has moved into sharp focus. While for years I have envisioned myself as Yoda, I am in fact Aunt Clara.
For Gen Z readers, Aunt Clara may require a bit of explanation, or—dare I write it?—Clara-fication: Long, long before George Lucas dreamed up the Star Wars galaxy far, far away, Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne) entered the lives of TV viewers as the well-meaning but bumbling great aunt of Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery) on the sitcom Bewitched. Though Clara shared her great niece’s supernatural powers, she inevitably flubbed her spells, always conjuring or morphing something but never what she intended. That has been my modus operandi for the past six weeks.
And now as I stare into the screen of my laptop for the seventh week, I find myself wondering once again whether breadcrumbs is the correct term for those little icons for the microphone and the camera, and then my mind wanders into an enchanted forest because breadcrumbs make me think of Hansel and Gretel, not computer applications, and then I realize I’m lost in the woods—but in this case, the woods is the lesson plan. (If only the figurative breadcrumbs could morph into real ones and lead me back.) As Aunt Clara would say, “Oh, dear.”
Once while Aunt Clara babysat her grand-niece, Tabitha (Erin Murphy), she resolved to stop the toddler’s tears by playing a lullaby on the piano. But the size and location of the piano—a grand one, no less—presented a problem. Clara’s solution: cast a spell to shrink the piano and carry it upstairs to Tabitha’s bedroom. Clara’s plan worked—until it didn’t. As she carried the Schroeder-sized piano upstairs, it ballooned to its original size. Wedged halfway up the stairs, Clara wrestled with the piano and plunged the entire Eastern Seaboard into darkness.
At this point, I should mention that none of my technical blunders are to blame for the recent power outages—at least as far as I know, but perhaps you shouldn’t take the word of someone who still imagines she’s on Dagoba.
The words that my students want to write seem out of reach. With a little coaxing, I help bring those words to the surface. Voila! There they are, shining out from the darkness, rising like the X-Wing fighter from the swamp. To the students who are reading this: The last part is real. The writing force is strong in you; with persistence, you will find the words you seek. In the meantime, the struggle is real. Take it from the woman wedged on the staircase, trying to move the piano.
“No. Try not,” Yoda says to me, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”
After I catch me breath, I answer him. “Fair enough, Yoda—then again, you never had to teach online.”
Work Cited
Star Wars: Episode V-The Empire Strikes Back. Directed by George Lucas, performances by Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Frank Oz, Twentieth Century Fox, 1980.
Hilaire Belloc’s “Rebecca,” illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen
To a small child, the pages of a newspaper are enormous. Looking far back through the years, I see myself, not yet school age, trying to hold up those long, thin sheets of newsprint, only to find myself draped in them, as if covered by a shroud. But of course, back then, my inability to hold a newspaper properly was of little consequence. Even if I could have turned the pages as gracefully as my parents did, I couldn’t decipher the black marks on the page; thus, my family’s ritual reading of the newspaper separated them from me. As the youngest and the only one who couldn’t read, I was left alone on the perimeter to observe. My family’s world of written words was impenetrable; I could only look over their shoulders and try to imagine the places where all those black marks on the page had carried them—these people, my kin, who had clearly forgotten that I was in the room.
My sister, who was three years older, had her very own news source: The Mini Page, a four-page miniature paper that arrived at our house as an insert in the Sunday edition. While our parents sat in their easy chairs poring over the state and local news, my sister, Jo, perched at the drop-front desk and occupied herself with articles, puzzles, and connect-the-dots.
Carl Anderson’s Henry
Finally, one Sunday, someone noticed me on the margin and led me into our family’s reading circle. Whether it was one of my parents or my sister, I don’t know. I remember only the gesture and the words: someone handing me the Sunday comics and saying, “You can read part of the funny pages, too. You can read Henry.”
I took the giant page and laid it flat in the middle of the oval, braided rug on the floor of the den. Once I situated the page, I lay on top of it with my eyes just inches above the panels of the comic strip. To my parents, my prone position was a source of amusement, but for me it was simply a practical solution. How else was someone so small supposed to manage such a large piece of paper?
As I lay on the floor and looked at the comic strip’s panels, I realized what the voice had meant. I could “read” Henry, the comic with the bald boy in a red shirt, because it consisted entirely of pictures. In between panels of Henry walking, there were panels of him standing still, scratching his hairless head. I didn’t find Henry funny at all. I wondered how that pale forerunner of Charlie Brown had earned a prime spot in the funnies. Still, I was glad he was there. He was the bridge that led me to the written word.
Reading the wordless comic strip Henry for the first time was the beginning of a years-long habit of stretching out on the floor with newspapers and large books—not thick ones but ones that were tall and wide, among them one of my childhood favorites: The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense. My sister and I spent hours lying on our bedroom floor, the pink shag carpet tickling our legs as we delighted in the antics of Rebecca, the mischievous title character of one of the poems.
“Rebecca”—which my sister read to me before I could read it myself—introduced me to the word “abhors,” the very sound of which appealed to me. Sometimes before Jo had finished reading the opening lines, my uncontrollable giggles collided with her perfect mock-serious delivery. As the last word in the first line, “abhors” serves as a lead-in to an enjambment: the continuation of a sentence or clause in a line break. It would be years before I learned the term “enjambment,” but I was immediately swept away by its effect in the opening lines: “A trick that everyone abhors/ In Little Girls is Slamming Doors” (Belloc 61). The first line lured me into the second one, and so on and so on. I was drawn both to the individual word “abhors”—with its side-by-side “b” and “h,” rare in English—and the way the words joined, like links in a chain, to yank me giggling through Rebecca’s cautionary tale:
It happened that a marble bust Of Abraham was standing just Above the door this little lamb Had carefully prepared to slam, And down it came! It knocked her flat! It laid her out! She looked like that.
Her funeral sermon (which was long And followed by a sacred song) Mentioned her virtues, it is true, But dwelt upon her vices too, And showed the dreadful end of one Who goes and slams the door for fun. (61)
Why these particular early memories visit me now, I don’t know. Perhaps rereading Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir, Maus, with my students has roused the wordless Henry and the word-filled Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense from the corner of my brain where they’ve slumbered. The former wakes and stretches out in my mind as a bridge to the latter: a spot in the world of words I’ve inhabited ever since.
Work Cited
Belloc, Hilaire. “Rebecca.” The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense, edited by Louis Untermeyer, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provenson, Golden Press, 1970, p. 61.
Jane Lucas 