Dear Livia,
You are in third grade now. You like your teacher, and you are doing well in all of your subjects. In the past, it has always been math in which you most noticeably excelled. This year you seem to be putting more effort into reading. You came home with a reading prize last week. You won it for reading more on the computer (and correctly answering more questions about it) than anyone else in your class.
At home, too, reading is a big part of your daily routine. You have blown through a large chunk of my library already, and I’m going to run out of books to give you. All these decades of reading, and I haven’t amassed enough books to keep an 8-year-old busy. Geez. I just brought the Magnus Chase series home from the library for you. I haven’t read it myself, but Riordan hasn’t failed us yet, so I’m optimistic. We’re running out of good modern series, though. So next, we’re probably going to have to dig deeper into the classics (L. Frank Baum, E. Nesbit, E.B. White, etc.).
Just a few days ago you showed me a list of your top 25 favorite books. Mostly it was a mix of books by Roald Dahl (Matilda was #1), J.K. Rowling (all but two of the Harry Potter books made the list), C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), Rick Riordan (books from the Percy Jackson series and The Kane Chronicles), and Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid). You told me that it’s usually the last book of a series that you like the most, because that’s where the action is. Sometimes that’s true, I agreed with you, but the first book is more often the best, I think. I hope we will continue to have discussions about reading so that I’ll be able to find out if your opinion holds or changes over time. If you keep reading at the rate you have been, you’ll soon have read more series than I, and you’ll be the resident expert on them!
Love,
Mom