Day To Read

Yesterday, per Soccer Mom In Denial's request, was a Day To Read!

She requests:

Write about this. About what books, magazines, newspapers mean to you. Write a couple of posts about writings that have taken you to another place. And mark Thursday, January 10, 2008 as Day to Read. Then on Friday, January 11th, write a bit about what you read.

And so yesterday, I read.
First I read to the Children. We discovered The Spiderwick Chronicles thanks to a book inserted into our box of cheerios. (Today we checked out what we thought was book 1 because we enjoyed it so much, but turns out is really book 5. We already read 2 chapters today but we are feeling a bit lost adn might have to break to go get books 1-4 first!) So we finished the minibook from the cereal box. Then we read three stories all by Peter H. Reynods: The Dot, Ish, and
So Few of Me. We enjoyed those books tremendously as well. At first the 8 year wasn't too excited, saying they looked like books for younger children. But she sat there captivated by all three of them just as much as the 5 year old did! And even I really enjoyed them!

And when the kiddos were in bed, I read. This may not come as a shock because I read a lot. But lately I've been obsessed busy with podcasts. I have a lot I wan to listen to and I have been trying to listen to them all.
So yesterday, I put down the iPod and picked up a book. And I started to read Amanda Bright @ Home. And then I stayed up much to late and finished Amanda Bright @ Home. This is not uncommon for me.

Even when I was young, I remember reading through books. Being so captivated by them, that I couldn't put them down. I would bring a stack home from the library and read them all over the weekend. Homework, although I did it, just meant less reading time. I remember my grandma making me put down the books and "get up and play!" I have always loved reading! I have the loved the escape it offered. I wanted to be a part of the Babysitter's Club. I wanted to hang out with the Box Car Kids. I wanted to join forces with Encyclopedia Brown and then we could solve even more mysteries! Bridge to Terebithia made me cry, I couldn't believe the end. I just cried. I tried so hard to figure out the Westing Game before the end. I quickly outgrew the children's section of the library. I had read so many of those books! In eighth grade I was cut off in the middle of a book report, apparently, my book was too adultish? I wish I could remember the title. I just remember it was a (fiction) story about trying to locate a sniper in southern Florida. Apparently, 8th graders are not supposed to read books about such cold-blooded murder?

I have always loved reading. In my senior year of high school I had the Norton's Anthology of English Literature for a class. I read lots of stories from there, mostly unassigned.

Reading and I have always been friends. I was never the most popular, never the most athletic, never the smartest, never had a large amount of friends, never quite felt like I fit in, and books were such a wonderful fabulous escape for me.

I hope I pass my love of reading onto my children. I hope that they learned to love it tremendously. I also hope they never feel they have to read as an "escape" or a getaway from things around them.

Although this may seem odd, I read quite a bit around them, but do not nearly read enough to them. It seems contradictory I suppose, but yet, it is sadly the truth. I am grateful, my 8 year old does read. (Right now she is reading 2 Nancy Drew books, loving Wizardology, and of course we started a Spiderwick book today as a read aloud). But I need to make reading to them a bigger priority. It seems I do just enough to get by and I want to make it more of a priority. If nothing else, this day has shown me at least that =)