What we have been reading

My absolute favorite thing about Niceville is our local library.  It is less than a 5 minute drive from our house and I am optimistic that in the next month or so, the kids and I can ride our bikes there for the Wednesday morning story time.

After story time, the boys get on the computers for a bit while Molly and I stroll through the aisles picking out various books to read.  Ok, stroll is really not what we do.  Molly prefers to run, and I prefer to chase.  Though, I will admit that lately Molly has gotten in the habit of picking out a couple of books and making a good show of sitting quietly and "reading" them.  This lasts until about a second after I turn my back and then I generally hear a "Is someone missing a little girl?".  But, we learn a little more every week.

Anyway, lately the boys favorite books to read are by the author Mo Willems.  I'm sure most of you have heard of this author.  He's written several books and a few series starring the same characters.  The boys loved the pigeon series of books in Ohio.  Here we have discovered the Piggy and Gerald books.  They are hilarious.  But one must look at the pictures as well as read the words.  I was reading one to the boys and we were all laughing hysterically, but poor Uncle Brian only heard the words and probably thought we were going crazy.  Anyway, the boys love these books.  And now that Dom has a grasp on reading, he will hijack them and read them to himself.  My favorite part about this, (aside from the fact that my son is READING!!!) is that he will get so tickled that he can hardly get the words out.  This is actually just one of my favorite things about Dom.  He will start laughing so hard he literally rolls on the floor.

The books are simple enough as well that William can memorize them after a couple of tellings.  He will "read" the book as well.  He does it so perfectly that I thought perhaps he was, in fact, reading them.  However, if I asked him to point at a specific word, he just moved his finger below the words and when he said the word I'd asked for, he would stop.  So with the line "I am not a happy pig", if I asked him to point to "pig" he often stopped under "happy".  However, clearly he is ready to start some phonics, which is always a positive.

Another story that goes along with these books is that they are very easy to act out.  I caught the boys acting out one over and over.  What I found particularly cute was that Dom directed the play.  He had the book open to the page they were acting and explained to Will what needed to be said and done.

The other series of books we have started are "The Magic Tree House" books.  There are at least 40 books in this series.  Each book has 10 short chapters.  I originally intended to read a couple of chapters a day and go through about a book a week.  Dom balked at having to sit through a chapter book at first, but when I got to the end of the second chapter, he begged me to keep reading.  We ended up sitting and reading two whole books in one afternoon.  They are nice little books that have sort of cliffhangers at the end of each chapter which makes a child want to keep reading.  There is an ongoing mystery also that is common to all the books we've read so far.  And there is also a little bit of history or science involved.  Sort of a win/win/win scenario.  A friend recommended this series to me and said that it had made a reader out of her son, and I can see that as a possibility down the road for both Dominic and William.

In Molly news, she is discovering letters.  Though every letter is "Y".  She gets excited when she sees writing and points at each letter yelling "Y".  Cute at home, a little cute at the library, really not so much in the middle of Mass.