I actually remember the first word I learned to read. We were living in base housing in Annapolis in the early '70s, and one day I was flipping through an Archie comic book. I knew the white balloons with the weird symbols in the pictures were the words being spoken by the characters. Since at that time I still couldn't read, the words may as well have been Greek. I was satisfied just simply flipping pages and checking out the pictures.
One day, I noticed a particular panel on a page had only one of those white balloons. It was hovering over a character I later learned was named Moose, and it contained what looked like a very, very short word. Four-year-old me suspected short words were easy, and every four-year old likes easy. I picked up my comic book and ran excitedly to Mom.
"Mom! Hey, Mom! What's this word say?" Mom stopped what she was doing and looked down to where I was pointing.
"Umm. That word is......'No'." I looked from her back down to the page and tried to sear those cryptic characters into my memory.
"Hmm. 'No'....'No'". I'd just learned to read my first word at it was from the well-rifled pages of a classic Archie comic book. Take this as an FYI to not dis your kid's or grandkid's comic book collection.
We soon moved from Annapolis to Gulfport, Mississippi, where I eventually learned to read not just comics but whole books. I became a voracious reader, and one of my favorite destinations in my new home town was the Gulfport Library.
I just thought it was the coolest building. It had white columns out front and the facade was clad in dark green marble. Inside it had an expansive atrium, large, pendulous '60s style lights, and a grand spiral staircase. Though the building was just 10 years old at the time, it still gave off cool retro vibes even in 1976. The juvenile section on the main floor was my second home during the summers.
I always checked out the max allowable number of books and was back for more the following week. While the librarians looked on, smiling, Mom was less enthused as she had to help me schlep the piles of books back and forth.
Learning to read early on and my subsequent love of reading has been a lifelong gift that's opened up countless possibilities and drastically expanded my horizons.
"Well, gee, Wayne, too bad you come from Mississippi, one of the most illiterate states in the country."
Pfft. Slow your roll, Boudreaux. Surely you can't be talking about my Mississippi? The Magnolia State? Home to Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, And William Faulkner? I recognize I may be biased, so here's a quote from the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank associated with, among other pursuits, advancing education reform.
Between 2013 and 2019, Mississippi posted the largest gains in fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) of any state in the country, a shift so dramatic that it’s now referred to as the “Mississippi Miracle”.
Did you mean that Mississippi? Or did you mean this Mississippi called out by the US Department of Education?
Achieving this "Mississippi Miracle" wasn't easy. And it didn't happen over night. Starting in 2013 with the passage of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, it took a sustained and concerted effort from the state legislature, teachers, administrators, and parents. However, the results are undeniable and my home state is now touted as a model other states should emulate.
I'm very proud of my home state, and I salute her teachers. I hope a new generation has learned to love reading as much as I have, and my wish for them is for their own horizons to be expanded far beyond the current world of their hometown. Perhaps there's even another Nobel Prize writer out there now, schlepping piles of books back and forth from their local library just like I once did.
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