Pleasant Surprise

DJ Maddy Reading


Yes. My children are reading. I didn’t have to ask them, threaten them from life to limb, bribe them with mind-numbing video games… they chose to do it all by themselves, underneath my piano and an hour before school started, just for fun!

Maddy is making tremendous progress in reading. I feel like a slacker mother for not pounding it into her like I had to with Devin, my only non-reader reader. It is rather comforting to know that she wants to read, likes to read, and thirsts for the knowledge to read at a higher difficulty.

D.J. started reading the Hatchet series by Gary Paulsen, they came highly recommended by Devin who read them last month while waiting for Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider Series, Snakehead. I picked it up for him last Friday at Wal-mart and he’s halfway through and loving every page of it. Dev kept telling me that Mr. Horowitz is writing another installment and sure enough, in finding the link for this post, learned that it was true. In the meantime, I need to find another book to keep him reading. I tried convincing them to read Harry Potter with me (three used paperback copies sitting on the bookshelf just waiting to be read) and using the ‘movies aren’t nearly as good’ argument to no avail.

I’ve heard the Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull is good. We haven’t been too successful with anything written by Cornelia Funke and Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance cycle hasn’t sparked any interest either. Any suggestions?

4 comments:

  1. Connie said...

    "Living beautifully is challenging at my stage, all those Legos, Barbies, Star Wars alien ships and the like." Not if you buy them in "PINKkkkKKKK", my little cherub!! I think I give Judy a huge chuckle when I refer to her as "sweetpea" or "chickee"!! Hmmmmmmmm??? Wonder what Pres. Hughes would have to say about that?!?! LOL I am what I am, sweets!!
    Smooches...........oh, and you're very blessed to have children who love to read. Both mine are avid readers as am I.
    Connie

  2. young family said...

    We love to read.
    I say definitely read the Fablehaven series, Gregor the overlander series was good also, if he had read spiderwick there is a beyond spiderwick series, have you tried the Artemus Fowl series I really enjoyed that.

    The hard thing for me is to get Tayler to read something new, he likes to read the same series over and over. He is now reading Lord of the deep by Graham Salisbury. It is a struggle to get him into something, but once he likes them we are good to go. He did like the Eragon series but I had to read that one with him, lots of long names and stuff. The list just goes on and on.

    For DJ do you know that there are more books that go along with Hatchet? I think one is called Brian's winter and I can't think of the other names. There are just so so many books :)

    Have fun,and yay that they are reading on their own!!

  3. Broncop3t3 said...

    I love it when the kids actually do something that they are normally asked to do, but own their own. When G & S start homework, read or even pick up their room without outside pressure... Makes me realize that they are growing up.

  4. nevertheless said...

    Check out www.guysread.com it has a list of what guys might be interested by age. It is funny that there is only a miniscule difference between boys and girls and the y factor makes us leagues apart sometimes. My sister highly recommends The Journal of Curious Letters (Book One of The 13th Reality Series) by James Dashner. Good luck and happy hunting.