Just before I left work yesterday I was catching up on the news. And I recalled that I was never a “reader” growing up. I like to read now, mostly the news, but I will also read the occasional novel or self-help book. I never did like reading when I was younger. In fact, I can honestly say that I had never read an entire book until my third year in college. It was English Composition class, and I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. I remember in elementary school I would pick sentences out of each chapter and write them down for my book reports. I hated reading then. And I think that does me a disservice now because I am a slow reader and I have trouble concentrating and/or comprehending what I read now. It is a real task for me to think critically when I read. And that really bugs me.
The reason I bring this up is because my daughter who is only 11 months old is growing so fast. She is slightly mobile, in that, she can crawl (more or less scoot than crawl, but it is still very effective) and cruise along the walls and sofa. There are few things that can capture her attention for longer than 10 minutes. It has been very evident for the past couple of months though that there is one thing that keeps her crawling back. She loves her books. And by love, I mean, she L-O-V-E loves her books. She does the cutest things too. She’ll crawl into her room, and pull nearly every book off her shelf so that she is surrounded by a sea of books. She sit there with her chunky legs spread apart and she’ll have one hardback propped up-side-down and open. And she’ll turn the pages and look at the pictures. And about every fifteen minutes or so she will turn around just to make sure we are still watching her. It is so funny.
Now I know that she is only 11 months old and she doesn’t know what the words say, but it is really refreshing to see her like books so much. I nearly detested them when I was young, and to see her like them makes me feel really good. I hope that this isn’t just a phase that she will grow out of, after all, she has outgrown all of her toys but she always goes back to the books. I try to read to her at least a half hour every day, sometimes we will read for an hour. Usually when we read a lot, it’s because I spend a half hour reading her books and then I read the news out loud to her so that I can get my reading in for the day. This will be something that I try to instill in her since it wasn’t something that I was necessarily “forced” to do when I was younger. I think reading is so important, and I hope she does too.
I have added a few more links to my blogroll. These are the newspapers that I read generally read everyday, the New York Times, USA Today, the Indianapolis Star.
