I’m sitting on my bedroom floor with a book in front of me, eagerly awaiting my father’s entrance into the room. I am five years old, and there is just enough time for some reading before bedtime. I would say a story, but this particular book was too long for me to finish in just one night. I trace the drawing on the bright red cover of the book and look up as my dad walks in. He sits down on the floor and I lean against him. The book is Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, a Hale family favorite. My dad read it as a child, my sister read it as a child, and now it is my turn. Well, this isn’t my first time hearing the story, but tonight I tell my dad that I want to do the reading instead of just listening to him.
We open the book and I survey the paragraphs in front of me. At 48 pages, this is the longest book I have read so far, but I’m excited for the challenge. I follow the words with my finger to keep myself on track. Each page takes a painstaking amount of time to get through, but my dad waits patiently while I sound out long words and look at the pictures. After a while, we put the book down. It is late for me, and my dad promises we can finish it the next night.
Just as my dad said, we pick Mike Mulligan back up the very next night. As we neared the end of the book, Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel were working on digging a hole that would become the foundation for the new city hall. However, Mike Mulligan forgot to leave a way for his steam shovel to get out of the hole they had just dug.
This is my first experience with a climax of a story, although I don’t know it yet. I feel the suspense build in my stomach – will Mike Mulligan find a way to get his trusty steam shovel out of the hole? My dad urges me to keep reading. He’s read the story several times, both himself as a child, to my older sister, and to me. Yes, I’ve heard the story before, but somehow reading the book myself instead of having it read to me elevates the suspense I feel.
I return to the words on the page, pushing my apprehension aside. My dad patiently listens as I read about how Mike Mulligan works out a deal with the townspeople so that his steam shovel can be repurposed as the town boiler, a part of the city hall building. This solves the main conflict. I breathe a sigh of relief and turn to my dad, telling him how happy I am that the story ended on a happy note.
In this way, before I even knew what a plot structure or literary element was, I learned how authors create emotion in their readers through conflict and resolution. It will be a few years before these terms become a part of my vocabulary, but it always helps me to remember how I felt reading Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel when analyzing specific elements of a piece of literature.
I loved the way you constructed this piece Alyssa! The way you intertwined the chronology of your own life with the timeline of the story you were reading was really interesting and engaging. I have personally never read this book, but I loved how you expressed your family’s unique connection to it. I can see that the message of the book clearly holds value for you, and I appreciate the passion your harbor for it. Additionally, I liked that you included how you were concerned about the length of the book, which is a fear I can certainly relate to, growing up in a family that expected the children to read increasingly complex pieces of literature. Overall, I thought that you did an amazing job of bringing me into the scene of your piece, where I could truly see myself and the ways that I would struggle too.
Alyssa,
Reading your post made me incredibly happy. I found joy in the fact that your family impacted your reading journey in this way and I really enjoyed how you made the entire experience feel so warm and welcoming. My parents were never big readers, so the fact that your dad managed to pass this small tradition down really touched me. I also totally understand your feelings of excitement and desperation toward wanting to continue reading, and I found it interesting that you were able to connect it to information that you learned later in life. It’s really interesting to me how cleverly children’s books are designed to introduce us to our future. My question for you is: did you think about Mike Mulligan when reading The Namesake this summer? I think I’m going to have to pick up a copy of this book…
I think it is great how you realized you were building your literary analysis skills long before you knew what that even meant. Your story is a great example of putting in perspective how the skills we learn early in our lives serve as the foundation for more advanced applications of those skills.
Family is an important part of how we develop many of our early skills, reading in particular, and I like how there is a sort of tradition with reading this particular book. I wonder, if you asked your sister to write about what she remembers about reading Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel with your dad, how would her story differ?
I like how you showed your growth with reading early on as you read on your own your first story. I would like to know more about that feeling of accomplishment and what your views on reading are like today. Have you been able to replicate that feeling of conquering your first book? Or has there been a downhill trajectory in your feelings toward reading?
When I read your post, it brought back so many great memories of my own experiences in reading, and how it came to be something that I looked forward to in life The quality of your writing and your story definitely points at the fact that you were raised with a strong literary background, and this story is a perfect example of that upbringing. Another aspect of your story which stands out to me is the involvement of your family. In so many other stories and through personal experiences, family a lot of the time serves as a spark for learning and growth, and in your case this growth is definitely observed through your writing style and complexity. Do you think that this experience, when looking at the present, has made you enjoy reading? Has it made you indifferent to reading? What are your plans when it comes to your future with reading, writing, and other forms of literary expression?
I liked how your father was a player in your reading interduction. It sounds like Mike Mulligan was a family favorite. A family affair in reading. This is important to appreciating reading. Thank you for a sharing