When I First Picked up a Book

EN105 Essay 1

Word Count: 779

Chapman Library

I don't recall when I first picked up a book, but I do remember the ones that will be with me forever. Growing up I read comics and magazines, anything to do with Spiderman, batman, superman or any super hero. I had a brother and three sisters we all bounced around from one low income housing service to another. It was hard for my mom being a single parent working minimum wage jobs just to pay the minimum amount on the bills. Although we never had any money for trips or vacations I can say I've traveled to more worlds and places than most. She would read, and tell story's that would put us right there on top of the tallest mountains or beneath the deepest waters exploring undiscovered creatures or battling a tyrant war lord and his beasts.

Dinners were always at grammas house she usually had a big pot of chili or some kind of concoction of soup she made up for the lot of us. We all cramped into the basement of a restaurant where they lived, so there wasn't a lot of room for fun. Between the 5 of us we always managed to find something to get into. Grandpa always had the TV on lockdown so we never got to watch any thing, he was always watching the basketball games. I still here the loud roars he would scream at us "Be quit! I'm trying to watch the game". Eventually grandma would have to kick us out, which is what we wanted. Grandma and Grandpa lived next to Chapman Library so that's where we spent most of out time.

Chapman library was huge, it had music art movies and of course books tons of them. I found myself mostly in the science fiction and horror section, this is were I think I began my journey into literacy. Browsing the shelves one day I stumbled on this horrifying monster on the cover of a brightly colored book that read "Goosebumps" in a creepy font that was raised out from the cover. They say you can't judge a book by its cover but this one was way to cool looking for me to keep browsing. I immediately I found myself a corner of the library and cautiously opened the cover. It seemed like a few minutes went by and then I over heard the library intercom calling me to the front desk, my mom had came to pick us up. I guess my older sister had been looking for me for quite some time. I checked out that book, and on the way home I remember trying to read it in the back