The Reader That I Am: Ordinary People
Required reading for freshman high school students includes texts such as The Great Gatsby,Romeo and Juliet, and even The Canterbury Tales. These are titles I am sure many of you have read and reread; some of you might even love these classic books. However, when I was a freshman my reading level and vocabulary were those of a fifth grader. I was one of the many students who stop reading for pleasure and start to despise reading when it is required. Since my interest had dropped off, I had not built up the base I needed to understand the required texts as a freshman in high school.
Almost halfway through my freshman year an amazing teacher, Mrs. JoAnne April Fox, showed me another way to learn to love to read again. Mrs. Fox saw me struggle as a student and recognized that I was not lazy, but I was at a lower level of reading and comprehension than the rest of the class. Instead of pushing me to catch up or giving me a lower-level text to read, Mrs. Fox gave me a book she thought would speak to me on an individual level. Ordinary People by Judith Guest was the first book that I had read in a very long time that spoke to me. The characters felt real through their struggles as a family and individually. Conrad was a teenager like me, living his days out in high school, in his family dynamic, and in his own mind.
Reading Ordinary People made me feel as if I had finally found words that made sense to me again, a story that spoke logic, and characters I could actually relate to. There was also a teacher who knew exactly what I needed to make it in high school and through the rest of my life as a reader. Mrs. Fox passed away two days after my 23rd birthday, and I never had the chance to thank her. Without her acknowledgment of my struggle as a reader and her amazing gift of a book that would change my life forever, I doubt I would be working for a children’s publishing company today.
I am now proud to call myself an avid reader of children’s and adult books. I carry a book with me wherever I go, and have started to catch up on all the great books I missed out on as a student. I recently read The Giver and The Catcher in the Rye, and am now reading The Phantom Tollbooth for the first time. Thank you, Mrs. Fox, for helping me to find the book and to find myself to be the reader I am today.
Written by Caitlin Casey, Lucky Book Club Editor
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