There’s a telltale sign we’ve got a launching reader in the house: by the beds and in the bathrooms and on the bookshelves by the couch in the dining room (you read that right, best spot for a couch, just off the kitchen) are slim volumes of Nate the Great books strewn about, like breadcrumbs on the find-the-reader trail. Seven year-old Remy just finished first grade and is adhering to his mama’s summer vacation “have to,” which is he must read for 20 minutes each day (more or less).
It’s hard to argue with a boy detective who has a penchant for pancakes (that sometimes he stuffs into his pockets).
It’s impossible to argue with the sight of a cherubic little guy tucked up on the couch contentedly reading.
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Soon before school ended, Remy got frustrated about his reading, as in, my teachers don’t think I can read the A to Z Mysteries in the harder group’s bin. The teachers patiently—oh so patiently—reiterated that your brain learns reading better by reading things you can sail through (not their words, the gist of the message) and they understood he could read those words. For those learning to read, the goal isn’t merely to decipher words on a page, it’s to comprehend the meaning of the words and more so even to enjoy that story unfolding. Remy’s pride protested: A to Z Mysteries or bust.
Preceding the frustration, he was pretty uninterested in reading. I’m not sure that becoming a little hot and bothered was the worst development, although I do note—as an adult whose observations will carry into next year and next teacher—that this pride thing with Remy is, well, sometimes at least, pretty intense.
Now, a perfect book for him, one he sailed through around that time and deemed “too easy” was Cynthia Rylant’s High Rise Private Eyes series, another humorous, somewhat repetitive, easier-to-read mystery-esque set of tales. My parental strategy: keep putting books like that out, on the young reader’s breadcrumb trail. Our cache of Cynthia Rylant books for young readers—the entire collection of Henry and Mudge tales (young boy, giant drooling dog), Poppleton (genteel pig with penchant for cake eating) and my favorite of favorites Mr. Putter and Tabby (doddering old man with doddering cat and would-be hipster not yet doddering neighbor Mrs. Teaberry and her good dog Zeke)—could occupy him happily for a while. That is, if he let himself read them. I’m guessing he still might (and no worries, I have read them all to him many, many times; these are amongst the best-used books in our household).
A few weeks after the A to Z moment of personal pride crisis, Nate the Great seems a pretty fair place to land at the moment. Remy read one aloud to his older brother and clearly is handling it well. We’re aided by the fact that lots of easy to read picture books are also prominently cluttering our household, since the toddler sister loves books. Just the other morning, Remy was reading to Saskia, David McPhail’s charming little story, Emma’s Pet (absolutely best line: of the cat that Emma—a bear—deems an insufficient pet, “Fluffy’s not cuddly.”).
Truth is that for Remy, without real intervention or finally even that much prodding needed, reading will come. He’s fortunate in this (and so are his parents). Much like a toddler’s language skills emerging and then exploding, there’s something so magical about the whole thing unfolding, like one of those crazy garden crystal kits where overnight the colors burst and the garden appears. The phenomenon reminds me of how babies seem so whole and fascinating (and are so whole and fascinating) and yet once you meet your toddler and preschooler, your elementary school kid and ‘tween, your teen and I’m sure your adult, you can’t believe that tiny baby evolved all these ways. Are the magic crystals there all along? But I digress: the emerging reader process (and the rest) really does not get old, even if the Nate the Great books are becoming a bit dog-eared. Or maybe I don’t digress and the reading is another reminder that when I let myself truly observe my kids, every inch of the way holds fascination and wonder (and oh so much more, some of it quite mundane). For now, I’m just doing the thing I often do; I’m taking note. I think I also should make some pancakes soon.
