She knows what she likes, and us parents consider our job to be maintaining the flow of books. She thinks nothing of reading two 300 page books in a day, so we're talking high volume, and we use the library extensively to keep costs down. own these ones)
at least you're the one thinking you are the personal book service - my DS5 pretty much says that to me all the time - did you go to the library today!!?? Although DS and I agree that we like it better when I go for him. He will pick up the first book that catches his eye and sit down and read it like drugged, he can't continue!
I like doing it because I like controlling one aspect of his intake - age inappropriateness of sexual content which we are dispensing as asked - and from his point of view - scary content. He has agreed that he has gone up a level of scary - but not too much mommy! So for us, I try to spread the field wide and deep. On science he is reading stuff labeled for 9-12 year olds and is learning the vocabulary. He reads books from picture books to encyclopedia's with preferences in heroes, and science but I dribble in stuff about manners and friendship and grammar - all sorts of stuff. Occasionally he will put a book back in his bin unread - like the 39 steps - is intrigued by the story on the cover but not yet comfortable by the amount of words on the page - he really likes graphic novels because it allows him to enjoy the visuals.
I try to find where he is and then slightly nudge him beyond - but sometimes he does that too - he read a good collection of the Magic Tree House a few months ago and then announced he is done. But he is anxiously awaiting the new Ron Roy books because he likes the characters.
As for comprehension - I noticed he was skipping around - he has the odd habit of looking for pictures in books that have them - like the heroes in Ordinary Boy and read those first - or he'll read the end to see how it turns out - this bugs me - at first because I thought he wasn't getting the story, sort of cheating, but no, that's just how he does it, he eventually reads the whole thing - but because it was bothering me I actually opened a book, asked him a ludicrously picky question that would never make it into a comprehension test and he got it exactly right I was flabbergasted - makes us wonder if he has a close to photographic memory.
We picked up a book called Max Disaster which is an awesome looking book about Alien Eraser and Max, but the subtext of the story is about divorce and he got it, to the point of starting to ask about the state of our union!! And the older give and take of 4th and 5th graders, bullying etc, concerns me.
But then we just had soccer practice and this 7 year old boy was gyrating inappropriately and making jokes with sexual innuendos, so maybe I shouldn't' worry so much about what he is reading!!!
DeHe
