my little bookworm!

YAAAAAY i can finally say it! maeven is a little bookworm!! i just realized she was no longer in the room with us and found her in the bedroom:

i have been waiting for this for a LONG time. she really didn't take to reading for awhile. even when she was quite capable of it she didn't enjoy it. not til we found those books at borders.

and now this sort of thing is a regular occurance:

i really had gotten to the point that i was giving up my dream of her being the bookworm that i was as a child...and that she might just be different than me and not everyone is a bookworm. but then....just giving her space and time worked! i am so proud!!!

my little girl is growing up!! *sniff*

maeven is now officially reading chapter books!! WOOOHOOO!!!

i've been waiting and waiting and waiting for her to develop an interest in reading to herself. but while she is quite good at reading, she's just not shown interest in reading to herself for fun. i have been dreaming of the day that she would bury her nose in a book just like her bookworm mom did around the same age (or maybe i was older, i don't remember)...but worked really hard at not pressuring her.

i want her to develop the love of reading naturally...its not going to happen if i'm pushing her into it. especially MY daughter. she doesn't work that way. LOL!

so, on to the news...yesterday we were at borders and i stumbled upon an early chapter book series about
a magic kitten:SCORE!!
then one about a magic pony carousel...DOUBLE SCORE!

she immediately took to the pony book. i texted my friend tiffiny who was at work at the library at the time (conveniently) and asked her to check if the library carries these books...since i don't like buying books if i could get them for free from the library!

well, turned out they had 3 of the pony series but NOT the only copy that borders had...and none of the kitten series. so i bought all 3 of the books (there were 2 of the kitten books). because by this point maeven had had her nose stuck in that pony book and was following me following her brother around the store...while reading...walking and reading...my dream come true!!! and shooshing me when i tried to talk to her! LOL!! *sniff sniff* so proud mama here!!! i was just tickled pink and knew i HAD to buy that book! any book that grabs her attention enough to get her to read like that...gotta get it!!

so she took that book home and finished it later that day!! she says she had to skip a lot of words but got the gist of the book. then today she started the kitten series...and tells me that this book is WAY better and that it is easier for her to read and better story. so DOUBLE SCORE!! she's still reading it! she made bookmarks for all her new books and took the book with her to daddy/daughter day to read in the car! LOL!!

i couldn't be prouder!!! my little bookworm has finally discovered the joy of reading to herself!! HALLELUJAH!!!!

book meme

stolen from beckie, but changed a tiny bit:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize the books you LOVE.
3) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading
4) Underline the books you read and didn't care for.
5) Make blue the books you haven't yet read, but want to!

1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6 The Bible (parts, not all)
7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the d’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare William Shakespeare
15 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier (never even heard of this one!)
16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger (high school, bleh)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch George Elio
t21 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald (again high school)
23 Bleak House Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy (FAR too long! and sounds boring!)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh (never heard of it!)
27 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll (i think i read this as a kid...it was ok as i recall)
30 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis
34 Emma Jane Austen
35 Persuasion Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis (uh, hello! this is PART of the chronicles, doh!)
37 The Kite Runner Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis de Bernières
39 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne (parts)
41 Animal Farm George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney, John Irving
45 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies William Golding
50 Atonement Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi Yann Martel
52 Dune Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
62 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
72 Dracula Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
94 Watership Down Richard Adams (the movie was TOO CREEPY!)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl
100 Les Misérables Victor Hugo (one of my ALLTIME FAVORITES!)

man, i really thought, being the bookworm that i am, that i'd read a lot more classics...apparently i have not. i may have to start looking up more of these. awhile back i did start seeking out classics...books i'd always wanted to read....like call of the wild and gulliver's travels (didn't make it through gulliver...BORING!) and a bunch more i cannot remember right now...oh and hunchback of notre dame (GOOD GOOD GOOD!!) when tim and i traveled through europe years ago, the classics were the easiest english reading material to find in any country...which was perfect for me, since that's what i wanted...i should have a list of what i read somewhere, hm. have to look in my old journals.

GOOD books!

oh man i am SO enjoying chapter books with maeven! we JUST finished heidi (which i thought i had read as a child, but i don't think i did!) what a WONDERFUL read!! i cried at times!! what a wonderful wonderful story! and what a sweet child! i am so in love with heidi now! :)

and i've just adored reading so many other great classics with maeven...before heidi we read (in no particular order):
the secret garden
stuart little
charlotte's web
my side of the mountain
the finch's fabulous furnace
mr popper's penguin
and a bunch of bobbsey twins and a variety of other littler, non-classic chapter books...

and that's not anywhere near a complete list. we go through chapter books like crazy and i'm not doing so good at keeping track of them.

next we are going to read "a little princess", which is currently waiting at the library for me to pick up...and then i think we will do "anne of green gables". all of these wonderful stories also have wonderful movies as well...so maeven enjoys seeing the movies after we finish the book. (i INSIST we read first, watch later...not the other way around.)

many of these books i read as a child (but so long ago i'd long forgotten the plots) but some that i haven't! its SOOOO enjoyable to me to finally get to read them! i'm really eager to read anne of green gables! that's one i know i never read as a child, but i've many times seen bits and pieces of the series on pbs. what a lovable character, i cannot wait to introduce anne shirley to maeven. :)

but first i promised her to read "a little princess", because she SOOOO love "the secret garden" and they are the same author. she's excited to read it and see the movie. (BOOK FIRST, though!)

i am pretty sure the language in these books go over her head many times...but i'm ok with that. she asks questions here and there...and i figure we'll revisit the stories again when she is older and more able to understand all the language. but for now, i believe it is still very good for her to be exposed to such a richness of language and plots and characters. she definitely gets into it...she gets all excited and hops around like a maniac when happy things happen in the stories, and buries her head when sad or mean things happen. she's definitely getting into them. :)

if i do nothing else for my child, i am so very proud that she is getting these opportunities to learn to love reading good quality books like these. there is so much crap out there nowadays. and yes we do still read some of that on occasion too...well not so much crap but not as good of quality...she does so love the fairy stories that she sees in the stores, so we do read those too...they are a quick read, being mostly light and fluffy with no real depth to plot or character...but that's ok. we still get plenty of meaty books to read daily as well.

surprisingly, the disney fairy stories are actually quite good (there's another series maeven loves that i am referring to when i mean the lower quality fairy stories and other like it...can't remember the name but they are rainbow fairies or something like that.) disney usually does absolute crap stories for books. picture books and chapter books. i usually avoid them like the plague. but the neverland fairy stories are amazingly good! a little dark at times...but that's to be expected with disney. but really, i thoroughly enjoyed the first book that we read in the series "fairy dust and teh quest for the egg"...the littler, shorter books in the series are not quite so good, but man that egg book was REALLY good! so i have to find more like that. but for now, we have enough to read.

i'm feeling very much better after finishing that book. i was having a really grumpy day, with a sick child and a bored child. 3rd day stuck at home. but after finishing heidi...it really have helped my mood significantly. :)

now i'm off to get some lunch made! late, as usual! ah well, so we are late eaters...for ever meal. oh well.