I consider myself a young woman in her thirties and I always make fun of my “old” husband who is in his thirties. But trying to remember how I learned to read and write makes me feel older than him, because it's hard to focus on a single event that could have changed my perspective on reading and writing. The first time I thought about how I would learn to read, images came to mind of my grandmother and mother reading bedtime stories to me before I fell asleep. My passion for interesting books and magazines began with my grandmother's stories and was strengthened by my mother's encouragement to read. Looking back over the years I have a vivid memory of my bedroom at my grandmother's house, it was a large bedroom with large old ceiling to floor windows, just covered with curtains made of small strings. We didn't need to use a fan to cool the room, as it was cool enough on a hot and humid summer night. I stayed with my grandmother, a petite, dark-haired woman, because my mother had to travel when I went to school. Every evening, as I was getting ready for bed, I had to choose a book from an old rusty bookcase that my grandmother kept outside the guest bedroom. I remember choosing a book simply based on the number on the spine, when I opened one and each of these books had a particular smell, like a fresh tree in the fresh spring and the pages were not white but light yellow due to the passing of the years . These books were part of my grandmother's collection of Aesop's fables. At that time I didn't know how to read and my grandmother would read to herself about 5 minutes the book I chose and then start reading it to me. I really liked those stories with great endings and fun topics to learn about. As time went by I learned to read in school and as soon as I realized that I could read more than one page, I went to my grandmother's house and looked for those Aesop's fables that she read to me every night I spent with her. she. Unfortunately, I found that those stories I loved and enjoyed were simply boring and difficult to read.