Click...

Sam is right on the edge. Right on the cusp.

Of reading.

He is so ready.

Tonight, I brought home a used set of Bob books.

He opened one and started to read.
His face lit up as he read the simple story.
And then he read the next one.
And the next.
And he couldn't stop.
"Can I read the next one?"
He didn't want to go to bed.
He read one on Facetime to his grandparents.

Finally, it was bedtime.

"Can I take them upstairs and read with Yael?"
Um.... how can I say no?

A few minutes later, they're back.
"We need a little light."
(Now, let me tell you, it was waaaaay past bedtime. But I know the feeling. When you're on a roll and you just can't go to bed.)

I listened at the door.
"Look, Yael, that says 'Dot'. Say 'Dot.'"
Not only did he learn how to read tonight.
He taught his little sister too.

Because it's way more fun to read with a friend.

 

Do you remember that feeling?
The beginning of reading....the opening of that big, amazing, exciting world?
Let the adventure begin....

End of an Era?

Tonight David and I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

If you're a friend or a blog follower (or both), you know how much I love this series, both the books and the movies. I actually noticed that I have a Harry Potter "tag" for blog posts! (For the record, this post makes #4 in my posts about the Boy Wizard.)

I personally felt horribly bittersweet when I finished the series. I wasn't ready for it to be over but I was so happy to find out the ending.

Now I feel the same way about reading the books with David. He is 9 years old and a very well-read child. He loves to read, and would stay up til all hours of the night reading if I'd let him. He knows that he can read much faster on his own than I can read to him out loud, but I adamantly insisted that the Harry Potter books had to be read out loud together.

But now it's over. And I feel bittersweet. I'm so happy to have shared these books with him but I'm sad that this compulsion to read together has ended. He's just not as excited for me to read anything else out loud...he'd rather read it to himself. He didn't need Harry Potter to instill in him a love of reading but it was certainly a fun part of his reading history. I'm so hopeful that for the rest of his life he'll remember how we read these books together.

(Side note: I'm that crazy mom who absolutely insists that one should, if at all possible, read the book before seeing the movie. Any book, any movie. David is beside himself with delight that he will be able to see the final Harry Potter movie in the theaters this time. He's finally caught up to Hollywood. I can't wait to take him! And I hope I've taught him the important lesson that the book is (almost) always better than the movie.)

On the bright side: soon Sam will be old enough to read these books with and I can start all over again at the beginning! And then Yael! And then Solly....so it's not quite over yet....

How to Raise a Reader, Revisited

I've talked before about how much my kids love to read.

My oldest is definitely a reader.

He
loves
to read.
All the time.

He does not love to write.
So we've embarked upon a new venture...like mother like son....
a blog.

(It helps that Zeyde offered to pay him 50 cents a post. The kid is making more money blogging than I am!)

If you're interested in being one of David's readers, feel free to drop me a line. He recently complained to me that he doesn't get very many comments. I must admit that I said "join the club, kiddo!"

I'm pretty excited to have another blogger in the house.

How to Raise a Reader

I love to read. Perhaps I've mentioned that before.

But I've always worried that my own love of reading (and that of my husband) would not be enough to create little readers.

Our oldest loves to read. He's 8 years old, and he's zipping through books. He has read some of the Harry Potter books, he's read the Little House books, and he's currently devouring every Encyclopedia Brown book I can get him.

Sounds good, right? But it's not enough for this Ima. Now that I've created one reader, I'm onto the next...and it seems to be working pretty well!

We are trying the same path with Sam as we did with David, and it seems to be following quite the same course. Nevertheless, it still makes me giggle with delight that he's so into the books we're introducing. What's the secret we've found? The Magic Tree House books.

David loved them and now Sam does too. I can't quite figure out what the draw is, except that there are a lot of them, and they have various topics that are all interesting to little boys. (We haven't quite gotten Yael on the Magic Tree House bandwagon yet, but as you'll see, she's doing fine on her own as well.)

We are currently spending a brief amount of time visiting my parents. When I say brief, I mean that we will be home before Shabbat. Less than 4 days will be spent away from home.

Sam packed some cars:

But he also packed some books:

And when we arrived, he laid them all out on the floor. To be fair, the top row (7 books) were packed by Yael with help from her Abba. But the other row, the long row, with about 20 books, was packed entirely by Sam himself.

Think he brought enough?

David packed about 8 books. (And I threw in 2 extras for him in my bag.)

And what about me? Four.

Guess it just runs in the family!

I ♥ to read

I don't know if you've ever looked to the left on my blog, down near the bottom. Go ahead, I'll wait while you look and then come back.

Saw it? I'm referring to the list of books I've read in 2008. So far, 74. Not bad for a mom of 3 with a full-time job, ya think?

Back in January, I made a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I tried to think of things I've always wanted to to do but never did. I love to read. I mean, I really love it. I am never without a book to read, sometimes I'm reading two at once! I've never kept track of what I read. I really wish I had a list dating back from the beginning....

I remember the day my mom brought my first "chapter book" home from the library. It was B is for Betsy, a book originally published in 1939. (They've been recently re-released, although never out of print, with pretty new covers.) I remember sitting in the living room of our house when she walked in from work with the book. I remember how excited she was to share it with me, to welcome me into the Club of Readers.

And I remember learning my way around our local public library, and discovering that Carolyn Haywood had written a lot of books. I can still visualize the shelf at the library where I found them. When I finished the Haywood books, I moved onto the rest of the library. I would search the shelves for long series, for thick books, for interesting titles. I read my way through most of the children's department and then joined my mom in the fiction section, discovering authors like Jean Plaidy (then my mom's favorite) and learning to love historical fiction among other genres. Go back and look through my list -- you'll see a very varied list!

I really wish this post was the launch of a new blog. I'm really dying to write a blog called The Reading Rabbi. I have even saved the URL with Blogger. But I just don't have the time right now. I just have to enjoy reading and occasionally sharing the books I read with you all! (And the book discussions we do at the synagogue.)

I just finished The Search Committee by Marc Angel. It was excellent - a great look into the Orthodox Yeshiva world. If you are interested in buying it, consider clicking over to my new Amazon Affiliates shop.

Not that I don't have anything to read, but if you have a great book for me, please share!

Books and Tzedakah - What Could Be Better?

I am so excited to have found this project that Skip to My Lou is doing. Sign me up!

From Skip To My Lou's post:
While we are encouraging our children to read this summer we can be helping poor families all over the world! Read to Feed is a reading motivation/service learning program from Heifer International. Children are inspired to read more books for pleasure, while raising money, through sponsored reading, to help end world hunger and improve the environment.

I am so in love with this idea for so many reasons.

1. I am always looking for cool ideas to encourage my son to love to read.
2. I am always looking for ways to help my kids learn about tikkun olam, our responsibility to repair the world.
3. I love Heifer International and all that they do. I think their concept is so simple and yet so amazing. I use their animals-as-gifts idea for so many things (including Father's Day....) and I'm always recommending them to Bar and Bat Mitzvah students.
4. How amazing to put these things all together into a summer project!

The Read to Feed site is not working quite yet, but you can go check out Heifer's site as well as Skip to My Lou's site and join in the reading-and-helping-others party!

(I'm actually drawing a link-blank on how I got to this project, so to the great blogger who sent me her way -- thank you! I'd also like to point out how things work out...I have been catching up on blog reading, trying desperately to think about what Wednesday's post would be...and then I found this! The blog-world works for me!)