Small Library

Any free moment that our boy has you can find him reading. He has out-read his dad and me in the 6 years he has been riffing quickly through the pages of the Youth Fiction section at the library. Some moms take extra time to make sure their son reads enough, I sometimes offer a computer game or cartoon up to our boy.

This month I realized that most of the books that are appropriate for him (and some not), he has read. The only series I could find that he has not read was Anne of Green Gables, which I don't know if I can get him to read (though he will love it once he starts, the feisty heroin might remind him of his momma!).

He is 10, and on the precipice of being able to read more edgy things, and by edgy I mean Jack London. I was a bad mom and let him read "Call of the Wild" when he was eight, or so, and it ended in tears and sadness for his young, sweet, heart.

On that note, last week he decided to do a biography on his current hero, Brian Jacques, for school. He wrote the Redwall series, which pits good against evil in the form of rodents. It is perfect for my kid. He learned that Jacques had visited our local book store, and was daydreaming about getting to meet him (he is a kid and didn't realize that Jacques is from England, thousands of miles away). He went on and on about it, just last week.

Monday I had to tell him the sad news, that over the weekend, Brian Jacques died suddenly. I told him, and he cried, and hugged his dad. We talked about how lucky we were to have been able to know a part of Jacques, through his writing.

My boy is on the cusp of the world opening up to him. He will learn about the vastness of our world, and the suffering in it, because he is a reader. I am loving my boy for his innocence while he still has it, and am excited for all the conversations I can have with him, about great ideas, far away places, history, science, and religion as he grows. Now that nearly all the books in the Junior section have been read, soon he can climb the stairs and start in on the Science Fiction, Mysteries, Biographies and Novels.