Text: Solveig Hansen

April 23 is World Book Day. A day to promote the enjoyment of books and reading. Every child has the right to experience that joy.

Do you remember the moment you cracked the reading code? I remember mine.

I was five when I finally figured it out. And about time too, if you ask me. I’d been frustrated. I knew all the letters, but I just couldn’t combine them into words.

I had learned the letters from my older sister. She was in first grade. She read her ABC book out loud at the kitchen table. I sat opposite her. I must have learned the letters upside down.

I still remember some of the pictures and words, always in the same order: mother, father, ball, boat, house, door…

I remember my brother, too. Reading a comic strip. I just stood and watched. That’s when I decided to give it a real try. To kick the door open.

So I made an extra effort. I read each letter — right side up — in a story slowly, slowly, sounding them out: a-a-a l-l-l…

Then, all of a sudden, the door flung open. Letters formed into words. Words formed into stories. You know how it is when the fog lifts and you suddenly see the landscape around you? Or when you draw back the curtains in a hotel room and get your first look at a city you arrived in late the night before? That’s how it felt, looking back.

It was a life-changing moment. I became a reader in an instant. One second, I was just an ordinary child, the next an explorer in a new world that had been there all along — but until then, out of reach. I know exactly what Neil Armstrong must have felt the moment he put his foot on the lunar surface. A giant leap. Nothing less.

Not that I reflected on it at the time. I didn’t cheer. I didn’t tell anyone. I just felt a quiet satisfaction and thought, “Finally. About time.”

The first thing I read was a Donald Duck magazine.

I lay flat on my back.

***

“I Met a Dragon Face to Face” by Jack Prelutsky:

Image: Pixabay.com