I was going to suggest that while I agree that early reading is not required for GTness--not even HG+ness--I'd definitely recommend keeping tabs on her vision.
It may be a different situation, but here's what I was seeing with DS4.5: very verbal, but not looking at books. Reading seeming stalled out, not just that he was focusing on other things. Sounding out spoken words and writing them on paper, but not reading them in books. Etc....
Something just didn't sit right with me. Though I have read a lot about GTness, still I alternated between thinking he was clearly GT and thinking that he wasn't GT at all. (This is apparently very common for parents of kids with 2E issues, including visual processing issues.)
At the suggestion of many friends here, I decided to take DS4 to a developmental optometrist. It was a good move. DS4 now has reading glasses and may eventually need vision therapy to help with his "immature" visual processing ability. His reading has improved markedly just in the past couple of months, so I'm hoping we might not need the therapy. But it's nice that it's available now if he does need it.
I'd recommend that you check out
www.covd.org to see if there's a developmental optometrist near you, just to rule out vision issues. These are much more than just reading an eye chart--which is all that most pediatricians do with kids at this age.
Now, kids definitely develop at all different speeds, and I am a staunch advocate of not pushing kids if they're not ready to read. Please let me be clear about that! But I think that most highly verbal kids don't completely stall out on reading for 18mos-2+ years. It seemed weird to me. I think it's at least suspicious enough to merit a look-see. If there is a problem, then catching it sooner (at 4) rather than later (like in mid-elementary) can make a huge difference in how a child deals with the problem.
Not trying to worry you. Just another thought.
