Thanks, Dad

More than anyone else, my father shaped my reading history.  My father did graduate high school, but he didn't go to college.  He should have, but boys who grew up on tobacco farms in rural Guilford County in the 1940's didn't usually graduate high school, much less go to college.  Plus, he and my mother started a family and got married, in precisely that order, right out of high school.  Lucky for me, unlucky for Dad.  Dad didn't go to college, but he read all the time, right up to the day he died.  Kipling, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Poe.  He didn't borrow these books from the library, he bought them and kept them in a bookshelf by his bed.  No paperbacks for him either; only hardbacks with the brightly illustrated dust jackets.   And I saw him read.  I saw him, often, in an easy chair, under a bright light, his reading glasses sliding down his nose, completely absorbed in a book.

Dad would call me over to that easy chair, with a book in his hand, and say " I think you are ready to read this, I want you to give it a try and tell me what you think".  It started with Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.  Not a Walt Disney picture book, but the actual book.  Then the Just So Stories, Riki-Tiki-Tavi, and then, Kipling's poems.  Then it was on to Edgar Allen Poe's poems, then Poe's short stories, and then, when I was twelve years old, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

I remember starting that book in my room one Saturday morning and the next thing I knew it was dark nighttime.  I had read the entire day through, not stopping for meals or to go outside or anything, but being completely unaware of the passage of time at all. That was probably the first time a book had had that effect on me.  I remember feeling stunned, disoriented even, by the power of that family's story.  And in the process, I learned a lot about the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, exploitation of migrant workers, labor unions and strikes.

It seems to me as teachers we must find and recommend literature that will make the subject matter come alive for students.  I can think of no  text better to teach the Great Depression than The Grapes of Wrath.  I think that we all hope, as teachers, that what we are doing is opening a door to learning that the students will push open wide when they leave our classrooms.  The best way for them to push open that door and to continue their education beyond the classroom is through reading.  I feel that it is the duty of teachers everywhere to assign books and readings that are both accessible and inspiring so that our students will continue to read in the content area we teach. Perhaps one of the most valuable tools with which we can equip our students is a comprehensive reading list of great books in our content area to take with them and to read from for the rest of their lives.

When Dad died, I inherited all of his books.  I can think of no other legacy that could have meant as much to me.  I re-read them often, and I think of him reading those same books and I am grateful.  Thanks, dad.