Guess the right tale if you can

Clues from the chosen one have been banned

 

Trails of peas and lentils I have not

Nor a sinister, cannibalistic plot

 

No frantic cleaning of tainted eggs

Nor piecing together sisters’ heads, arms, and legs

 

No fictitious dreams dramatically retold

Nor Lady Mary proving she’s “too bold”

 

No maidens drinking white, red, or yellow wine

Nor big reveals when sitting down to dine

 

There are no fiances hiding behind barrels or casks

Can you tell which version now, if I ask?

Hello again! I’m Jaurele Roberts, and if you’re curious I was named after Superman’s dad in the comics. I find that sometimes helps people remember my name. I’m from Eureka originally but I’ve been in Chico for 14 years now. You could call me a Chico transplant. I moved here out of high school to attend Chico State and stayed because I love the area (and met my awesome husband here). I completed the Literary Editing and Publishing Certification Program since I originally wanted to work in publishing, but I now plan to pursue my Masters in Library and Information Science. I love everything about books and finally figured out that I need to make sharing, preserving, and digging into them my life’s work. I would prefer to run a children’s library to help foster a love of reading for future generations and I look forward to seeing how this class may better prepare me for that challenge.

I work full-time at Build.com and I spent 7+ years as a bookseller for Barnes & Noble prior to that. I spend my spare time reading, playing with my niece and nephew, catching up with friends, and taking road trips with my husband whenever possible.

I’ve always thought of “a reader” as someone who reads for pleasure rather than out of obligation, whether for work or school. After some of our class discussion last week I realized I was also limiting that definition to readers of traditional sources like novels, poetry, and literary non-fiction. I see now that this is a narrow-minded take on literacy and I’ll be challenging my views to be more inclusive in this regard.

Since this is my first time back to school for several years I have been reading solely for pleasure. I’m basically a binge reader. I try to read a little bit each day and I typically have at least three books in progress at any given time: novels, biographies, history, science, basically anything that catches my eye. I switch back and forth based on what is interesting to me at the moment. If I’m busy and don’t make time to read for a while I find myself going through a book in one sitting, or in a few days if it’s meaty. I’ve taken a number of literature courses and I was always excited to get the reading list each semester. I didn’t love everything on the list but I was lead to some of my favorite books by branching out from the course requirements. I also worked in a bookstore for years and was exposed to great contemporary authors, which was a nice break from some of the more traditional class texts I was reading. The main difference between assigned and voluntary reading for me was forcing myself to slow down and read an assigned text with a very critical eye, whereas reading for pleasure was more casual.

In his article, “Why Johnny can never, ever read: The perpetual literacy crisis and student identity”, Bronwyn T. Williams asserts that there seems to always be fear of a new literary crisis on the horizon for the current generation of students. And yet, he points out, each generation is able to grow into adulthood and keep society functioning, so these fears must be unfounded. Williams argues that “middle class anxieties about status and priveledge” fuel this fear because the middle class is preoccupied with keeping up appearances. Williams argues that the affluent can afford to educate their children and the poor have no voice, so it is the middle class who raise the alarm as they begin to fear that their children will not gain the level of literacy to get into college and find a well-paying job. The type of literacy sought after seems to be mostly regurgitating the Western canon and memorizing static rules of grammar, and dismisses entirely the less traditional communication increasingly required by advancing technology. Williams notes that this idea of literacy is too strict, and that student literacy cannot be judged solely on the grammar displayed in non-traditional writing like instant messaging. Instead students should be taught “that grammar is not a rigid set of rules but a set of conventions that connect identities and status to language”. He hopes that teaching students a broader, more flexible definition of grammar and helping them identify the appropriate writing conventions needed based on their audience will encourage confident, knowledgeable readers and writers.