He Reads Too

This year, instead of giving the kids a list of required reading for the summer, my kids’ school sent home  reading logs and suggested that each kid read at least 20 mins. a day.  I knew this wouldn’t be an issue for Livy Girl, but I’m not sure how this is going to go over with my 8 yr. old, Yannick.

Yannick is a different kind of cat.  He definitely marches to his own beat, at his own pace.  He’s smart, funny and very rhythmic. He loves percussions and The Beatles and displays infinite patience as he follows the detailed directions of the most intricate Bakugan.

Yannick’s teacher distributed the class’ reading logs early last week and Yannick surprised me the first night, when without any prompting, he grabbed one of the paperbacks his Aunt Allyson gave him for Christmas and read until he feel asleep on the couch. The next morning, he dutifully filled out the log and asked for my signature to verify his entry. He’s followed this same routine every day this week and even asked me to take him to the library so he  could check out a few books. 

Today, Yannick and his sister hung out at Borders while I ran a few errands in the shopping center and when I returned, Yannick seemed a bit frustrated because he hadn’t found a book yet.  He asked if I’d help him look and I soon realized that other than comic and graphic books and the Magic Tree House series, books for boys his age are a bit limited.  I tried to convince him to look at Encyclopedia Brown series, but as with most kids, my enthusiasm made him completely tune me out, and trying to find something age-appropriate with a male of color as one of the lead characters was impossible.

Right now, it seems as if Yannick enjoys reading graphic novels and comic books.   When he was in the first grade, he was really into Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants, but now he enjoys Jeff Smith’s Bone series. At the library, he was excited to discover the Black Lagoon Adventures by Mile Thayer.  I must admit, his recent reads don’t appeal to me in the least, but he’s been whipping through them, while filling the first sheet of his reading log.