Learning to Read

 By Martin Sercombe

Gibberish. That was all the letters on the page seemed to be to Tom. They were just meaningless shapes that somehow were supposed to come together to make words.

He sat there, staring at the page, feeling more and more frustrated with each passing second. The words seemed to be mocking him, taunting him with their indecipherable shapes.

But Tom was determined. He refused to give up. He knew about the magical world of books and he wanted to be a part of it.
 
So he kept at it, day after day, slowly but surely making progress. At first, the words were just a meaningless jumble of letters. But gradually, they started to make sense. He sounded them out, slowly at first, but then with growing confidence.

As he read more and more, the words began to come alive. They danced across the page, taking him on wild adventures and introducing him to new friends. He read about pirates, wizards and dragons and he loved every minute of it.

Soon he was writing his own stories, and creating whole new worlds of his own.