Thursday, December 2, 2010

Of books and rituals

"So... what's up for you on today?", I ask, thinking it will be something about playground day or a hockey game to watch.

Owen's eyes shine. " I go to the library TWICE today! At school and then we go too!" My happy, booky kid.

He is not typical in his love of books. It is definitely a non-fiction bias for him. His latest obsession is sports related books. We went through an "Eyewitness" series phase after the everything trains phase. Sports is easy to handle. It gives him something to talk to the others at school about.

Reading fiction is like pulling teeth. His realist mindset can't stand fake situations and characters. He is very sensitive to conflict and stresses about it so we look for humour or a detective story, just not too ridiculous. I'll convert him yet!

Laura is torn between fairies and books about crafts or cooking. Reading aloud is hard for her but we try to have fun with it, when I have the patience. I'm gently pulling her to more chapter books, reading together bit by bit. Something is working because she loves to create her own books all the time now.

We've been going to the library weekly since they were babies. Through "tales for twos" and many story time programmes, the kids are quite at home in any library. I love the ritual. We all feel peaceful there. No matter how busy our week, we always make time for our journey to the land of books.

3 comments:

  1. I totally admire you! The library is my favourite place...or at least it used to be until I had too many kids to keep track of the books floating around our house. Now when I go, my late fees could buy me my own library.

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  2. I am crazy geeky about books, and I LOVE the library. I put books on "hold" online, and then I just have to pop in to pick them up. My kids have benefitted from this as I always make sure to pick up books for them,too. Hopefully, they will be readers when they are older... But I have to confess, I am SICK of fairies! :) (I have three daughters)

    Like your son, I read non-fiction. I am VERY impressed he does too! And when he grows up, he'll be very good at Jeopardy (a skill that is highly under-rated!).

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  3. Oh god the fairies -- make the fairies go away! Oh well, at least Eve reads them herself now. And I just requested the Curse of Were-Wiener for Angus. Love the library.

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