On January 3rd of the 94th year in the 19th century, an intelligent young boy later named Niquis Garland was born. He was a decendant of lawyers and doctors from his mother's side of the tree. There isn't too much educational background on ...my father's side, but my dad is pretty smart even though he never finished college. I also have an older brother who was a diligent student throughout most of the early part of my childhood. These are things I think contributed to me having a good start in my educational career.

My dad started reading to me before I was two and by the time I was around two and a half I was able to read. He had a big stack of Seama Street books that he used to read to me every night before I went to sleep. I always will remember that my favorite of all of these was a volume called "The Case of the Missing Rubber Ducky". I used to want him to read that one to me all the time. He read it to me so many times that he eventually made me start to read it by myself without him in the room. I don't really remember too much about the books because it was at such a very young age, but I do remember that Ernie was the main character of my favorite and most of the books. Also of course the famous Big Bird and the Cookie Monster in other volumes. I was enrolled in Mount Calvery Christian school and skipped to kindergarden at three, graduating when I was four. I was good with reading and writing for my young age.

During elementury nobody read to me anymore except my teachers at school. I began to become more independant with my education. I didn't need my parents help to read to me or help me with homework. We read in our textbooks in class and sometimes I would have books from the school library. My favorite books to read were the "Magic Tree House" books by Mary Pope Osborne. They were fiction of course, but they were so very interesting to my young mind. I used to follow Jack and Annie on their exciting adventures through different regions and era's of Earth. As I look back on it now, I realize that those books taught me geography and history that I could add to my common knowledge to make me smarter. Those were child books though. When I got into the fourth grade, I read my first "big kid book" called "Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry" by Mildred D. Taylor and loved it. It is still to this day one of the most interesting book I ever read. In the 5th grade I read the sequeal "Let The Circle Be Unbroken" which wasn't a slack off from the original.

Reading those books set the foundation from that point on that there was no more reading books like Magic Tree House which contained around 100 pages with child friendly sized words. In middle school I picked up the love for the Harry Potter series that I got from my brother. Even though I was very late ( he was on the 4th book before I got interested) I was hooked. This was time I loved to read the most. Nobody told me to do it or pushed me to go get some reading time in. I just did it because I was so fascinated and anxious to know what was going to happen next. Due to this, I sped through all of the books so quickly that I was awaiting the 6th book's release as my brother was for a good period of time. This was the last part of my life where I was heavyly endulged in reading books. When I got to high school, it kind of fell off a tad bit. I didn't read so much on my own as I used too. I didn't see to many books that just caught my eye/interest and this is what kind of turned me off to books. I wasn't so much turned off, but there was a lost of interest.

This is about to change though. I am going to get back into books because it gives you free feeling. If your fully endulged in reading, it takes you away from everything that is going on in this world, and takes you to a different world where your characters are. You follow these character on there daily adventures like a tour and it feels like you blackout. Your mind is only on the events occuring in the book which is a thing only an artist has the power too do.

There are many great works of literture that have been sold across this country. I haven't read any where close to all of them, but I read quite a few that has affected me mentally in a way that I didn't know was possible from writing. From all the many great books that I read, one that i was most intrigued by was a book called "Native Son" by Richard Wright. It actually started as just an over the summer reading assignment for my upcoming English class of the 11th grade (My old school). But as I began to read the book, from the very begginning I no longer saw it as an assignment. It was that interesting .

The novel is about a young black male growing up in the rough, segregated town of Chicago. It takes place in the 1930's, so this was a time where there hadn't been any effort to improve/change the way of society. The main character's name is Thomas Bigger of the Bigger family of four. It is a single-parent home headed by a mother who has a younger son and daughter. This novel is so interesting to me because it is about a 19 year old man trying to find himself in a time of lost hope for most. The author writes in a style that truely reflects who Bigger is and how he thinks. Sometimes I felt as if I was lost in Bigger's thoughts while reading. Bigger has a gang of four that he used to endulge in crime around the town with, but his mother who knew this found him a job to be a chauffer for the rich white Dalton family of three.

Thomas refused at first but then was of course convinced by his mother because she wanted him to bring in some money to help the struggling family.Mr. Dalton, the head of the family who gave him the job welcomed him in, and wanted to make Bigger feel as comfortable as possible. Which was a close to an impossible task seeing that Bigger was black and he was white in the 30's.
Mr. Dalton gave him his first job to drive his daughter to night school and Bigger hoped on the task. This changed Bigger's life forever. She had him make a detour to go see some friends and by the end of the night he ended up killing her on accident, which lead to a life of lying and on the hide.