As an adult who reads frequently (I count social media reading as high quality lirtature), I am pleased that the boys really enjoy reading. Our house is filled with books and we have tried to enrich our children with a wide variety of books from Rainbow Fish to the Dumb Bunny series. I'm not quite sure where they get this desire to read from since when I was their age the only thing that I would read was Garfield, Charlie Brown, and Calvin and Hobbs. I would not be deterred by any teacher or adult around, I would only focus on reading comics and comics alone. I found books to be dreadfully boring and would push off assigned reading until it was absolutely necessary to read a book, usually the day before a report was due. This has contributed to my uncanny ability to read books at an extremely slow pace so that the books that I read throughout the year is usually in the single digits (around 1 or less). The only book that I remember reading as a kid was Bunnicula, a riveting story about a vampire rabbit. My third grade teacher really tried to get me to read more books than Bunnicula, but to no avail, I had reached my yearly quota. I'm not even sure if I finished that book, though I did eventually buy it for the kids.
Kara and I have filled our house with books and worked on reading to the kids at an early age, and when I say the kids, I really mean only the first two because by child number three you stop trying. The books that we purchased come from good quality bookstores such as Goodwill and The Salvation Army, because books are expensive and you never even know if they are going to love the book or just ignore it completely. Whenever we go to the thrift store we look at the children's book section and try to find some interesting piece of literature that is also not covered in boogers or crayon. At this point though, there are books piled on books so that they are falling all over the floor and placed in small towers lined up against the walls.
When we bring the kids home a new book from the local bookstore dollar bin one of the boys will grab it and sit there and read it until it's finished. After that, the other
boy will find it and start reading it. There are times we go to the library before church on Wednesdays and they are lost in their reading while eating dinner, waiting for class to begin, during class, and waiting to leave, completely ignoring everything else around them. Me on the other hand after having read two whole pages of some novel my mind starts to wander and I start thinking of what more important thing I should be doing instead of reading.
Juliana is finishing up Kindergarten this year and is just starting to read. The boys did not start reading this much until the first grade. The powers that be have updated the curriculum so that the kids will be able to read Shakespeare by the third grade, or at least that’s where it seems that it is headed. It is nice that the kids know how to read, but the learning how to read is absolutely horrendous to endure. Weston, thankfully, was taught in the first grade how to read so that we (as all good parents should) did not have to do much of anything to help him learn to read. There was a massive amount of homework, but it was worth it to not have to try and teach him ourselves because listening to the Cat In The Hat at five minutes per page is one of the nine circles of Hell As described in Dante’s Inferno.
Soon Juliana will be up there with the boys in her desire to read and Ryland will be reading Dostoevsky, but for now I can still boast in the vast number of books that I have read compared to them and my ability to read novels without pictures.
Right now, we still read books to her. Some of our favorite books are the What Should Danny Do? series, which
includes the What Should Darla Do? They are a choose your own adventure set of books where the kids get to choose what he or she should do. We begin by making the right choices, then they want to read it again and make all
of the bad choices to see what trouble he can get himself into. Some of their
other favorite books are The Book With No Pictures, The Little Blue Truck, and Alexander And The Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. I’ll place a list with links to some of the kid’s favorite books at the bottom of the page. What are some of your kids favorite books that we should know about? Feel free to drop a comment on the blog so you can share them with other.
The list of some of our favorite books and links:
What Should Danny Do? https://amzn.to/40P96C5 or What Should Darla Do? Featuring the Power to Choose (The Power to Choose Series) amzn.to
The Book With No Pictures by BJ Novak The Book with No Pictures amazon.com
Little Blue Truck Little Blue Truck Board Book amzn.to
Dairy of a Wimpy Kid - you can find these almost everywhere, but here's a link to the box set - Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #1) amzn.to
Alexander And The Horrible No Good Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst and Ray Cruz - https://amzn.to/3Ht9a3x
Indescribable: 100 Devotions for Kids About God and Science by Louie Giglio. We try to read this or one of his other books to the kids every night, but sometimes we are tired. - Indescribable: 100 Devotions for Kids About God and Science (Indescribable Kids) amazon.com
There are more books that the kids enjoy, but honestly the list has to end somewhere or it would go on and on and on and on and on and...