did anyone else ever take part in a Reading Is Fun program as a kid?
I had become an avid reader as a child, mostly through my dad reading through the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy to my brother and me, each night before we went to bed. I was one of those dorky little guys who had a bedside flashlight that I'd fire up after bedtime and crawl under the covers to read an entire Hardy Boys mystery. I don't know how many times I'd hear "turn off your flashlight and go to bed, Bryan!" Every time my mom hollared that at me I was amazed that she knew I was still awake.
I can remember my first read-a-thon. I was in the 4th grade and I was in an advanced reading program along with one other kid in my class. Mrs. Garrett announced the read-a-thon where we were supposed to get people to pledge a certain amount for every book we read. I don't remember where the money actually went, but I have a vague recollection that I mistakenly assumed that I would be receiving the money because I had gone to all the work of gathering pledges and reading all the books. Regardless of who ended up the beneficiary of this literary equivalent to sweat-shop labor, I was motivated. I knew that Kevin (my friend/nemesis) would be very busy, so I had lots of work to do on both ends.
I immediately began hitting the pavement and knocking on neighborhood doors (unsupervised too, I might add -- a thought of allowing my own children to do that today absolutely terrifies me). I remember that our next door neighbor refused to sponsor me. I think this was my motivation to begin shoveling our dogs' droppings into their yard whenever i had pooper scooper duties in our own. And up the street and around the corner I remember knocking on one door and literally being stunned speechless by the beauty of the woman who answered the door. I could take you to her exact door to this very day, though I couldn't tell you a single thing about what she looked like, other than she had dark brown hair. I remember that she opened up the door and greeted me with a friendly smile. I had my pledge sheet in one and and a pencil in the other, and my lower jaw hanging like the hinge had just broken. After what must have been an extremely uncomfortable silence, she asked, "may I help you?" This primed the pump of my mental circuitry, for I answered, "uh...yeah...i'ma....yeah...uhhhh..." and thrust both the paper and the pencil to her. She by this point thought I was a Special Olympian, and sympathetically took both from me and wrote quickly filled a pledge.
$2 per book!
looking back, I should have recognized that I had stumbled on to quite a formula for making some serious money. but i didn't. I managed to thank her, standing agape at her door for at least five minutes after she had shut it and had returned to her regular day.
here's what else I remember from that first read-a-thon:
i got the most pledges for the whole 4th grade.
i read the most books for the whole 4th grade.
i spent that spring spending hours upon hours in the library, reading 3,4,5,6 books a day. And I'm not talking about these little 32 page pulp mill products with 10 words on a page and giant pictures. I was reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Charlotte's Web, SuperFudge...you know, real books. I rocked! Well, as much as a fourth grade reading dork can rock, that is.
And I remember that when it really comes down to it, many adults who pledged a certain amount of financial reward for every book you read change their tune when you come knocking on their door announcing that you read 217 books. This is when they declare that the real reward should be the gain of knowledge that comes from reading 217 books, or that they don't believe that i read 217 books, or that there is no stinking way they're going to pay anything more than 5 cents a book when the total is 217 books.
yessir....i learned a lot from RIF.
and i learned that even a stunningly beautiful lady won't pay, when she feels like a victim of a bait-and-switch prepubescent scam artist.
oh, and by the way, this little trip down memory lane was inspired by the discovery of Planet PDF's Free E-book Classics.