The Lands Hidden in the

Bindings
There and Back Again
By: Emily Jackson

Dedicated to my mother, Michelle Jackson,

who always read me on my adventures as
a kid.

Emma loved to tell stories. She would tell

a story where she was a knight or a fairy.
She always got so lost in the stories that
she never wanted them to end!

She would tell stories of the flying fairies

that came to tuck her little sisters in at
night. Emma would pretend that their tree
house is where Peter Pan lived, or that
their wagon was a pirate ship!

Second star to the right

and straight on till
Morning!

But when she tried to read these

wonderful stories in the bindings of books,
she would yell and scream because it was
too much work!

Her teachers tried to provide multisensory

strategies to teach her. She followed along
her teacher auditory with her ears and
visually with her eyes. This helped some,
but she was still struggling.

Here, Emma. Read

with me, so that you
can see.

One day, her mommy opened up a book

called The Hobbit. She had so much fun
going on adventures with Bilbo and the
Elves and all the wonderful creatures in
that world of Middle Earth!

Her mommy would read it in a British

accent since the author was British. She
changed her voice for all of the
characters, and if she mixed them up
Emma remembered! She would say, No
Mommy! Gandalf talks like this!
Good job Emma, you
just remembered how Gandalf
speaks.

Then they got to the Lord of the Rings

books. Emma would take her shoes off to
walk around like the hobbits, or try to run
as fast as the Elves could. She would dig
in the dirt like the dwarfs and run away
from the trolls.

Orcs were her enemy and elves were her

friends. Whenever someone was mean to
Emma, she called them a smelly, old orc.
But when Emmas friends came over, she
invited them into her elven kingdom!

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Emma was having so much fun that she

never wanted her mommy to stop reading.
But her mommy could only read to her a
chapter or two each night because she
was very busy. Emma practiced outside of
class with an individual tutor for a bit on
Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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Emma did not want to leave the world of

Middle Earth when her mommy had to, so
she picked up the book and tried to read
it. She practiced the way her teacher
taught her, read one line at a time, so
that it did not seem as scary.

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She kept getting so frustrated and

throwing the book down. All of the letters
kept twisting and turning around. When
she was battling to read about the battles
against Sauron.

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But every night her mommy would read to

her a little more, and eventually Emma
could not wait for her anymore. She had to
know what happened to Bilbo! She used
the charts that her teacher had taught her
to make to keep track of everyone. This
helped a lot!

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After she finished the final venture in

Middle Earth, her mommy read to her from
Harry Potter and she was taken into
another world! Her mommy started
handing her the book to read some of the
story out loud.

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She kept waiting for her letter to Hogwarts

to train to be a witch, and she had to read
that one after her mommy put it down
also. She got lost in the Leaky Cauldron
and listening to funny Hagrid. She still
had to push herself, but it was too much
fun not to try!

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Emma felt like she was in the Ravenclaw

house, so she bought a blue and bronze
scarf, the colors of Ravenclaw, to wear
with her school uniform. When she got
stuck on a phrase, she would show her
mommy.
What is this word?
Remember, I showed you
yesterday what this sound
makes? thou
Right! Ive got it!

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While so much of her time reading was a

struggle, she taught herself how to turn
the words around and make these magical
stories make sense! Her mommy was
proud of her.

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Every night when she went to sleep, she

drifted off imagining that she was flying on
her broomstick or climbing to the top of
Mount Mordor. She fell in love with
reading because reading was where she
could disappear to lands with all of her
favorite things!

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