M J Auch

Mary Jane Auch is perhaps best known for her "chicken books" like Peeping Beauty and Bantam of the Opera. She's also a gifted author of novels for young adults. Two recent titles are Journey to Nowhere and Frozen Summer. To log on to Mary Jane's web site, click here. M.J., as she is known to her close friends, tells this story about how she learned to read:

"I didn't learn to read in school. The year I was supposed to go into second grade, we had a polio epidemic in Rochester, New York. There wasn't a vaccine back then, and the disease was very contagious, so we were warned not to go to places where there would be lots of people. That meant we couldn't go to the beach that summer, and when it was time for school to start, many parents kept their kids at home.

"I was lucky, because my mother had been a second grade teacher before she was married. We spent every day working on reading. (The only bad part was that I didn't get the weekends off!) When the weather got colder, the polio scare died out, so I went back to school after Christmas. Now I had a problem. My mother had taught me so well, I could read at a fourth or fifth grade level. In second grade we were supposed to be reading those "Dick and Jane" books. "See Spot. See spot run. Run Spot run." This was supposed to be a story? BO-RING! I thought the stories were stupid and I didn't hesitate to say so--out loud!

"Luckily, my teacher was very understanding. Instead of treating me like the obnoxious little kid that I was, she challenged me. She had the whole set of Frank Baum "Oz" books on a bookshelf in the back of the classroom. When the other kids were reading their Dick and Jane stories, she let me sit in the back of the room and get lost in Oz. Then when the others were doing work sheets, my teacher would ask me questions about what I had read. By the end of the school year, I had learned that reading was magic. Though I didn't know it then, the writer in me was probably born the year that I almost missed second grade."

BACK