6 a.m.

I am off to a bit of a rocky start this morning. Since it is the middle of summer I am on a college student schedule when it comes to sleep. I knew that I would have to go to bed early last night to be able to function at all this morning, which of course made it absolutely impossible to get to sleep. I forced myself to unwind by reading a couple chapters of Girl With a Pearl Earring, which worked admirably to take my mind off of today. Unfortunately, as I was drifting off some of my peers two houses down decided to throw a party. I struggled through that, and eventually went back to sleep. Then, my next-door neighbors in the apartment decided to have a fight. This is notable simply because this is the first time I have ever heard anyone else in my apartment complex after 8 p.m.

So, here I am, your under-REM-cycled, under-caffeinated host, using too many commas for my own good and preparing to tell you exactly why my blog title involves noses.

Does anyone remember this book? For me, this is where it all began. Not in the sense that this is my favorite book from early childhood, because it is not. But this is the book where reading actually clicked for me. (In fact, I wrote my college entrance essay about this book.) My mother and I used to sit together and read aloud, and I remember for some reason having difficulty pronouncing the word "nose." I had a decent grasp of the silent E, but not in this case.

One day my mother and I went through it twice in a row, and I remember managing to pronounce the word correctly the first time. And as I did it, something clicked. Suddenly spelling and pronunciation made sense to me, and from that moment on I was officially a reader.

My mother's favorite was One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and I have a soft spot for Hop on Pop, but The Nose Book will always be most fondly remembered simply because I still associate it with that sense of triumph and mastery.

And that is why this blog is titled "The Pronunciation of Nose." I want other children to have the chance to be able to have the same fondness for a book as I do for this one. So, I will be spending the next 23 hours and 30 minutes blogging to give someone that chance.