My Little Bookworms

We’ve always known that CootieBoy loves books – during Kindergarden when asked what he wanted to be, he said “Librarian,” which is awesome.  CootieGirl, on the other hand, has hated reading ever since being forced to learn how.  She struggled and for a while we thought she might be dyslexic.  But patience and perserverance, with a dose of tutoring and hard work, has resulted in my daughter slowly but surely gaining confidence with her reading.

The result? Since Thursday she has been carrying a book with her everywhere she goes.

Thursday night I broke up the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” books at their request (I bought them last year thinking they’d read them in the 4th grade). They each grabbed one and started reading. CB, of course, had no problem and got through the first 80 pages before bedtime. CG went a bit slower, but took in some advice I gave her: if she comes to a word she doesn’t know, take a pencil and underline the word so that we can figure it out together.

She seemed distressed at the idea of writing in the book, until I reminded her of my copy of “Leo the Late Bloomer” that we read sometimes. It’s a book I had as a child, and my scribbles can be found through the whole thing. When I reminded her of that, she said, “So when I give MY daughter ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid,’ I can tell her that I made the underlines in order to learn how to read better!” She was elated that she could pass down the “tradition” of writing in her books (don’t know what I might have started there).

So on Thursday night she made it through about 35-40 pages of her DoaWK book. On Friday night she read a bit more. Then on Saturday, while running all over town running errands and enjoying “Girl’s Day Out” together, she kept the book with her and would occasionally read out passages that made her laugh or spell out words she didn’t know.

Somehow, somewhere, she became a bookworm. I don’t know what made her turn a corner, but she doesn’t even mind anymore the fact that CB is a more advanced reader even though he’s younger. In fact, today she was writing another letter to our sponsor child, OA in Uganda, and kept asking CB how to spell words she didn’t know how to spell.

Now if I can get her to stop complaining about doing her reading homework we’ll be all set. I predict that’ll never happen though. *lol*