Growing up, nary a day went by where you wouldn’t find me with my head buried in a book. I could easily while away hours on end, lying on my bed, getting lost in chapter after chapter of something, anything. These days, my love for the written word hasn’t changed, although my time spent lying on the bed reading quietly is certainly limited with two kids and an endless list of things to do. Now I just choose my titles a little more carefully.
It tickles me to no end that Nicholas is following in my footsteps. We make regular trips to the library … both the “real” library and the bookstore, which Nicholas also calls the library. I haven’t decided yet if that’s a good thing or not. I think it is.
During the school year, when the Scholastic book order forms come home every month, we sit together and pore over them, carefully compiling a list of which books to get. Now as he can read more and more by himself, he gets even more excited when we read together, reading a lot of it right along with me.
Tonight, as I read both kids The Tale of Peter Rabbit, I told Nicholas that I thought we should have a little challenge.
“What does ‘challenge’ mean, Mom?” he asked.
“It means that we kind of have a little contest to see if we can do something or not.”
“Oh,” he said, mulling it over in his mind. “What do we have to do?”
“Let’s see if we can read 100 different books by Christmas. What do you think?”
He nodded. He was in. Since we read stories together all the time, the 100 by Christmas isn’t as much of a challenge as reading 100 different titles is. We decided we would use tonight’s book choice as our first one on the list, since, believe it or not, it was the first time we had read The Tale of Peter Rabbit together. I know, simply unacceptable.
I created a 100 Book Challenge page on the nav bar up on the top of this site, so if you’re interested, you can follow along with us. We’d love to hear some of your favorite books and recommendations. Happy reading!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a great idea, Cate! We’ve been doing “family reading” for years, and the kids are still really into it (we all read our own books together; but they still like to be read to occasionally, and to read aloud). It’s a great way to keep them engaged in books even into the “reading’s not cool” years. :)
Are you going to read 100 new books? or is it 100 diff books, even if you’ve read them before? Just curious.
That is such a great idea. Good lucK!
Sandy – that’s great that they’ve continued as they’ve gotten older. I think once you get bitten by the reading bug, that’s it. :)
Sarah – The goal is 100 books that we have not read before, although I’m sure we’ll be visting some favorites along the way, just no repeats. Luckily he already has quite the colletcion to get us going.
This is a great idea, I highly recommend anything by Lauren Child, especially Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? and Beware the Storybook Wolves. They are both fun twists on fairy tales, and the protagonist is a little boy just starting to read on his own. Very funny and clever for adults as well as kids. When Madeline is into books, your family may also get a kick out of the Charlie and Lola series, wherein a little sister frequently drives her older brother bonkers. This series is also an animated BBC TV series.
Such a fun idea!