Yay for reading

My family is a bunch of readers.  Nothing extra-special about that, but it does allay a niggling little fear in the back of my mind.  I wanted my kids to read.  It's more about opening their horizons beyond our little pocket of Oregonian suburbia than it is about being brainiacs.  Which is cool, too, but...this is far cooler.

Last year for Christmas, someone bought Aria a set of Ramona Quimby books.  It wasn't all of them, though, something the publishers made very clear on each book cover.  So we walked into Powell's City of Books last night (just Aria and me), and looked up at the category board in the main entrance.  I squatted down next to her.  "Look up," I said.  "Where do you think we should go?"  "The Rose room!"  "Why?"  "It says 'Children'!"  "So which way do we go?"  "Hmmm...that way!"

So we walked around, found Dr Seuss and some other stuff.  Eventually we found the Beverly Cleary stuff, and Aria found the rest of the Ramona books.  She nodded at her Dr Seuss book and a princess picture book she had picked up for her little sister, and said, "I don't really want to buy these.  What do I do with them?"  "We put them back."  So that's what we did.  

After we had found my books on Islam, she insisted we head back to the Rose room.  "Why?" I asked.  "I saw Twilight there, and I know mom would love it."  So we went down and found it.  And then we walked 4 blocks through the 4 inches of remaining snow (does that make it like 16 inches for 1 block?  Better story...) and drove home.  

Before she went to bed, she'd read 14 pages.  This morning she read another dozen or so.  She's a reader.  By her own will, and without pushes from us.  A little prompting?  Sure.  But we haven't had to push her.  Her world is opening up.  I'm so glad.  Even if it's opening up to 1950s suburbia.  It's the first crack in the door to the wide-open world of literature.