I was born in the capital of the state of Durango, Mexico. Since birth my predominant language was Spanish, at the age of nine my family and I moved to the United States. Due to my young age I had received no formal education of the English language, making the first years in an English speaking country seem close to impossible to get through. My first day of fourth grade (at Paul Ecke) is still a mystery to me, I have no clue how I got through a school day without knowing anything about English, but I do know that I had great support from my teachers and peers to progress and learn the language for the rest of my formal education. Since young I was fascinated by books thanks to my mother, she only reached a fourth grade level education, but she loved to read, and encouraged my older sister and I to read, anything that was available in Spanish in Mexico, and only English once in the United States. My father never received any formal education, so for him encouraging reading was not something he knew how to achieve.
During the fifth grade at Pacific View, I began to develop the love to read non-fiction books, but books that had a lot and big illustrations; for me, visualizing the information was key. An environmental science teacher in fifth grade only encouraged my interest in books, and from then I read anything that was about the environment. But during middle school (Diegueno) and high school (SDA), my desire for reading was impacted by district mandated fictional reading. I began to turn away from books. I only enjoyed reading one book from middle school and high school, The Grapes of Wrath, was that book (even though fictional, it had some historical truths.)
In college I had a renaissance in reading, but primarily in non-fiction history. To this day I enjoy reading any historical book/magazine, enviromental book/magazine. Well I ran out of ideas, so Ill end with, encourage the young to read what they enjoy reading.