The Adventures of Reading

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The Adventures of Reading*

Do you like to read? That’s wonderful if you do. If you don’t, that’s okay too. I hope you will be inspired to read with delight after reading this article.

I have a passport. It’s my official ID that allows me to travel around the Caribbean and to over 196 countries in the world.

Just as I can use my passport to get to New York,  Miami, England, Antigua or Jamaica so you can open a book and take off to enchanted regions of your imagination.

The world and its wonders are ready for you to touch and explore. Open a book and meet a riveting artist, grandparents on a green, leafy, colourfully rich farm, and a mother and daughter bonding through baking and sewing; discover volcanic or seismic eruptions in their horrying splendor, picture monkeys in your back yard eating mangoes and swinging in trees; meet a ginormous whale or a tiny creature on the ocean floor. Picture a mongoose fighting off a snake or a roster doing battle with a barking dog, all by turning the pages of a book!

The fun part is you don’t have to spend lots of money  to see and experience the amazing things around the world, just open a book, open your mind and use your imagination. You will be able to feel the hot, blazing sun of the Sahara Dessert in Africa or experience a close up view of Mars in an astronaut’s suit. You can even take your mind back to when the volcano erupted and see the lava flowing, cutting through the Earth and leaving it’s mark in the texture, colour and shape of Black Rocks in St. Kitts.

Close your eyes and imagine that your are climbing Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. Can you see the summit? Can you feel your fingers numbing from the biting cold? How far up are you? Climb! Climb! Keep going…

Do you want to make reading more fun and rewarding? Here are three tips to enhance your reading experience:

*Make Words Come Alive*

*Read to Friends and Family* and

*Dive Deep*

Louise Baigelman, a lady who studied reading says that you can make words come alive when you read by changing out letters in words. Let us use man for example, change the n to a p what would get? What other letters can we swap out to get another word?

 

She also says that we can say tongue twisters like ‘Peter Piper picked a peck or pickled peppers’, to make reading fun. (Try it!)

 

The second thing you can do to make reading exciting is read to friends and family. Emilie Buchwald, an award-winning children’s author, once said “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” When  you read to friends and family you can ask questions about words or ideas that you don’t understand. This will help to build your vocabulary and  develop a desire or appetite to read more on your own. You also get a chance to express to your parents or friends your own ideas on topics and they will surely give you helpful feedback. You will form memories with your parents, family and friends by just reading a book, and those previous memories you can share with your children’s children.

 

The third thing you should explore when reading is to Dive Deep. Reading is a open door to learning. When you dive deep you must be curious and inquisitive to study the book, not just read it. Reflect on what you see while you are reading. Focus on characters in the story and ask questions such as what was the author thinking when choosing the story plot or the rhymes of a poem. You would also be able to tell someone what the book is about or what statements or ideas attract your attention the most. Look again! Now try to identify patterns to help you appreciate the structure and details of the book. The next time you pick up a book, a poem or an article even a devotional track,  remember to dive deep.

 

Do you know that as a little girl I loved to read? I read everything that I could get my hands on, even now that I am an adult, I still can’t wait to read in my spare time. This passion that I have for reading helped me to write my own book. It’s called *Screaming for Your Touch.* I am also writing three more books. Each and everyone of you can become an author just like me. It is tedious but creative work and you may not feel like writing some days but you just keep at it.

 

Read and apply yourself. Why? You will become masterful readers, exceptional thinkers and brilliant writers. Just open a book. Read it. Write your own spectacular ideas down! Before you know it I will be buying your finished book. What’s next? As an author, you will take other readers on a book tour of amazing adventures!

 

Kishma Isaac specializes in language art, creative writing and reading for fun. She has been a primary school teacher for more than 14 years, and the author of a book of poem *“Screaming For Your Touch.”*

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1 COMMENT

  1. Kishma Issac’s writes:

    “Read and apply yourself. Why? You will become masterful readers, exceptional thinkers and brilliant writers …”

    Absolutely correct Kishma 👍

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