She's READING!

Julia has been reading those early reader books for some time and she is always reading things she sees when we are in the car or things that are laying around the house. She reads books to Karley and books to me, but last night takes the cake. I checked out a book from the school library called The Boxcar Children. The book was published in the 1940s and written by a teacher who decided that there were not many choices of exciting books to read for new readers. There are dozens of books in the series about these four siblings who are orphans and have all these adventures. It sounded like just Julia's thing. So last night at storytime I get the book out and we open it up. I ask Julia if we could alternate paragraphs. She asked what a paragraph was and I showed her in the book. That made her think and she asked me why there were no words at the end of this one paragraph that ended with just one or two words on a line (maybe she is ready for grammar after all). So anyway, we get to reading. At first she wants only the short paragraphs. Then one paragraph leads to another and another and before I know it she has read a whole page (this is a childrens' novel with 6-8 page chapters). But she doesn't stop there, she reads the facing page as well. At the bottom of that page she tells me it is my turn again. So I turn the page and continue, but before I get too far she says it is her turn and she is off and running again, this time she turns the page and keeps going. She's off and running....