When Tamra Norton was fifteen, she read at a fourth or fifth grade reading level, failed senior English Composition, and generally kept her GPA at 2.5. Today, married and the homeschooling mother of seven, she is a respected and talented LDS author. Her first book, Molly Mormon?, captivated teenagers who want a role model who is both moral and likeable. Her second book, Molly Married?, will be released in April 2003. After reading Tamra’s story I wondered how she made the transition from struggling reader to gifted writer. She generously offered to answer some questions to help me learn more about her educational life. Her story contains a message of hope and offers insights that can help parents and children who are struggling with school. This is the first of two parts:

How did you feel about books as a child?

I liked the pictures! I know my mom read some to me, but I didn’t ever really make that transition to want to read on my own. If I was picking out a “picture book” to read, I’d go for more pictures and less text.


Do you remember when you first became aware that you didn’t read as well as other children or that school was hard for you? How did that affect you?

In my elementary school, you were either an “early bird” or a “late bird”. One group was for the poor readers, and we arrived an hour earlier at school—“early birds”, and the better readers stayed an hour late—“late birds”. I think that’s how it went. It may have been reversed some years, but I was always with the struggling readers. I think it bothered me some that I wasn’t a better reader, but I thought it was something you either had, or didn’t. It never occurred to me that I could improve in my abilities. I looked at being a slow reader as my fate in life. Being smart (a good reader) was some kind of secret ability that I could never have. It never dawned on me that if I went home and read every day instead of just watching TV, I would actually improve, and learn to like it. Actually…love it! Today, I’d rather read a good book than watch any television and most movies!

Except for fifth grade (I’ll get to that story in a bit), I always had a lot of friends, so my self-image was okay. I only ran into problems when it came time to read aloud. This really bothered me—because I would always stumble over the words. I remember as a child (and even a teenager) wanting to be an actress when I grew up, but the thought also terrified me because I’d have to read a script aloud, and I knew that would be a problem at auditions.

I think I’ve always been a fairly happy person. I was able to side-step image problems because I generally had many friends around that weren’t concerned with, or even aware of my poor reading ability.


What impact, good or bad, did teachers have on you in school over the years?

I had some wonderful teachers, and a few that were less than wonderful. I was a good kid—meaning that I didn’t have behavior problems, so I think most teachers liked that about me.


How did your parents react to your school challenges? Did their reactions affect your feelings about yourself?

Though academics really weren’t stressed much in my house growing up, my parents were always very supportive of anything I tried to do. I was involved in numerous extra curricular activities—student government, foreign exchange program and club (I spent the summer between my junior and senior year as an exchange student in Peru) drama, cheerleading, drill team, choir, gymnastics…(Of course, I didn’t do all of these at once). And to be involved in all of these things, all you had to do was maintain a 2.0 GPA. Mine was usually somewhere around a 2.5 (Sometimes higher in the Fall semester, but usually lower in the Spring semester).

Reading was never stressed in our house. But, there were a few rare occasions when I did pick up a book. I remember when Jack Weyland’s Charley came out. I believe that was the first novel I ever read…and I loved it. There was another time when I was out of school for a week with the flu or something. My mom went out and bought the first three Anne of Green Gables books to keep me occupied. I think I read the first page and gave up. I was too overwhelmed with them. Now, they are some of my favorite books. I absolutely love the character Anne Shirley. I think that some of her spunk and spirit dwells within Molly Chambers (The main character of my books).


You mentioned that you thought it was uncool to be smart. Do you remember when you first decided that or what led to that decision?

I ask myself that question over and over as an adult and it still to this day baffles me. Where did this crazy notion come from? I’m not sure! Like I mentioned earlier, I had many friends, and they always accepted me perfectly for who I was. I actually thought they all had the same notion as I did until about my senior year when I realized that some of them were taking pre-calculus, and getting all A’s and B’s, and I thought…well, wait a minute…I thought that was supposed to be un-cool. But by then high school was almost over. I had skimmed by, and these other kids were getting accepted into prestigious UC schools in California. I was very fortunate to be going to Ricks College, but it certainly wasn’t based on my academic merit. Ricks actually wanted me to come a month or so early to attend their “Three-R’s” program for students with less than perfect academic records like mine.


You credit a college instructor with changing your feelings about writing. Tell me how he made the difference for you. What did he do? How did his perception of you change how you felt about yourself and writing?


To be honest, I think it mostly had to do with the structure of the class. We were allowed to pick out our own subjects for these compositions. I think the only guidelines were involving format and length. This was wonderful news to me. I’ve never particularly enjoyed being assigned to write on a particular topic (must be my rebellious side), and analyzing other written works is even one notch farther down on my Things-I’d-Rather-Not-Do list. Maybe this is why I like to write fiction. Aside from a little research, it all comes from this wild imagination of mine.

The one thing I really liked about Brother Sanford’s teaching methods is that after writing an essay, we were required to set up an appointment with him, where we’d sit in his office as he went over our papers with us. I was actually able to see his reaction to the things I’d written…a laugh, a grin, a furrowed brow. To this day, I love to sit and watch my children read and watch their expressions.

Next week, Tamra shares how she learned to love reading and how she became a published author. Continue to Part 2.