I have no idea how I learned to read. It just happened, and very young. My parents are both avid readers and I grew up in a home full of books and magazines...and they read to me every night. Even they don't really know how I learned to read, they just know when they realized I could read. (I mentioned something about a Newsweek or Time article involving helicopters...which they discovered didn't have pictures.)

All the "building blocks" of reading? I learned them later, if I learned them. I was reading college textbooks before I knew the alphabet song. My spelling is mediocre (and was downright terrible before I had access to computers - spell check is probably the most effective spelling education I've had), and what I know of "phonics" is a second-hand sort of thing.

The love of reading - of stories and information and all of that - that's what gets people reading. And keeps them reading.