As a child, reading was one of my favorite pass times. I read a wide variety of books; it was hard to count the number of books I read! From when I started, I went on a steep incline, reading more and more as time went on. However, I hit a climax, and my reading began to decline from there.
My reading history began as a toddler, around the age of three years. Every night before bed, my mother would read a short children's book to me. After a while of me just listening to the story, she decided it was about time for me to read some of it myself; so I did. I could not read the whole story on my own at first (I needed some help), but over time, I could read the short stories independently. This was just the start of my reading.
By the time I was in first grade, around the age of six, I was reading small children's novels with little to no help. All through first and second grade, my absolute favorite books were the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne. Once I was introduced to the first book, I was hooked. I read nearly every Magic Tree House novel ever written (at the time). I thought I couldn't find a better group of books.
When I was introduced to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J. K. Rowling, my love for the Magic Tree House books was over; I moved on quickly. For the next several years, I read every Harry Potter book and became a huge fan of the series. I loved the books so much that I read some of them more than once! I also went to the midnight opening of the seventh and final book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Once I finished this novel, Harry Potter was over, and my reading began to decline.
I still read after the end of the magical series, but the amount of books and frequency of my reading decreased, and started on downhill slope. Our school's reading program, A.R. (Accelerated Reading), began to be counted as a grade in middle school, which added a tremendous amount of stress to reading. Students would have to struggle to read a certain amount of books on a certain reading level in a certain amount of time, and if they didn't achieve their goal, the did not recieve a good grade. On top of that, the advanced reading class, of which I was a part, began to have reading assignments over the summer. We had to read books and short stories, such as "Sleepy Hollow" and "Silas Marner", that bored us all to death.
Over the next few years of having no fun whatsoever when reading, I slowly, but surely, came to a point where I read no more. I read some things, such as newspapers (mainly the sports section), but I currently will only read books when I have to for school; otherwise, I have no interest in it.
