13 April 2007
"I cried for twenty pages"
That's what Katherine said after she finished Book Six of the Harry Potter series yesterday.
I had been thinking that something was wrong. That maybe Katherine had been switched at birth. Paul and I were both voracious readers as children and Katherine had shown little interest in books. In third grade she kind of got into the American Girl and Animal Ark series, but nothing very challenging. We require her to read at least 30 minutes a day and those books sufficed to fill that time. That is until I started reading the first Harry Potter book aloud to William over winter break. She got into it and started reading on her own. I bought the second Harry Potter book at the school book fair on February 9th. She finished the sixth yesterday. She started book five three weeks ago when she was home sick. That one is almost 900 pages. At first we thought it was cool that she had learned to love reading. It even took precedence over video game time. Then it started cutting into homework time, and yesterday at school she chose reading over participating in a game day party. Now I'm all into reading, but I spent my childhood as an outcast. And no child of mine is going to voluntarily choose reading over socializing. So there.
I had been thinking that something was wrong. That maybe Katherine had been switched at birth. Paul and I were both voracious readers as children and Katherine had shown little interest in books. In third grade she kind of got into the American Girl and Animal Ark series, but nothing very challenging. We require her to read at least 30 minutes a day and those books sufficed to fill that time. That is until I started reading the first Harry Potter book aloud to William over winter break. She got into it and started reading on her own. I bought the second Harry Potter book at the school book fair on February 9th. She finished the sixth yesterday. She started book five three weeks ago when she was home sick. That one is almost 900 pages. At first we thought it was cool that she had learned to love reading. It even took precedence over video game time. Then it started cutting into homework time, and yesterday at school she chose reading over participating in a game day party. Now I'm all into reading, but I spent my childhood as an outcast. And no child of mine is going to voluntarily choose reading over socializing. So there.
