One line in my official biography always leaps out at people who are introducing me at readings. “At the age of three, Gail Bowen learned to read from the tombstones in Toronto’s Prospect Cemetery.” This is strange but true. I loved to be read to, and my grandmother was almost endlessly patient about indulging me. She also had the proper British respect for children being out in the open air for at least an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. So, as a child, I was constantly being read to and/or aired.
We lived in the west end of Toronto and the closest green space was—you guessed it—Prospect Cemetery. The letters on many of the tombstones were large and clear and one day I surprised my grandmother by connecting the squiggles on one of the tombstones with the squiggles in the books she read me. I sounded out a word and then another and then another. She was delighted. She could now go back to reading the books about the monarchy that she so loved. As for me, I was on my own. I had been given the keys to the kingdom.
I mention all this because tomorrow morning I’ll be doing an interview on CBC talking about why I wanted to write a book for Raven’s Rapid Reads series – a series aimed at people who face challenges reading or who are learning to read a second language.
I cannot imagine not reading. Reading is my joy, my solace, my antidote to boredom, my salvation. But over the years, I have taught many students whose ability to read was limited and who were deeply ashamed of that limitation.
Many of my students were First Nations people from remote areas of our country. They could do with ease and skill a hundred things I could never dream of doing, but because they were hesitant readers, they were dismissed as ‘slow’, and they internalized that assessment of themselves.
Over the years, I spent hours trying to find books that would be accessible to these students without being condescending. It was tough sledding. So when Bob Tyrrell approached me about writing something that would excite reluctant readers I knew I’d been given a terrific opportunity. My Rapid Read, “Love You to Death”, was on Bob’s desk within a month.
If my book can
transform the life of a single reader as dramatically as the letters on those
tombstones in Prospect Cemetery transformed my life, I will be a very happy
writer.