Herban Sprawl

We are a family of readers. Some of us got around to reading for pleasure a little later than others, but we all love books. I have very clear memories of my grandmother reading paperbacks in her rocker and also with that little headboard light when she went to bed. My mother practically inhaled books and had a large set of bookshelves built in our living room. They were duly filled. Dad read in the early morning hours before he ambled off to his shop. Once I learned to read, I would read while he did, and until he sent me upstairs to “shag your sister out of the sack, willya?”

My in-law-in-laws were also voracious readers. One always got interesting books from them for Christmas - and it was fun to see the delight on their matriarch’s face as she piled up the books on the floor next to her on Christmas morning.

When my niece was little, she read under the covers with a flashlight. (I did, too, which was why I was so proud of her!) My brother-in-law was very practical about it. He made sure her flashlight had good batteries because he didn’t want her to go blind. These days, they are all in book groups.

A few years ago, Lori started obsessing about what Suzy would need to know before they could do the application process for the Chicago magnet schools. One of those things was beginning consonants. Oho. She came to the right person. From the famous Virginia Studies in Reading Research, we have lots of tricks in our magic shop! I made her a beginning consonant kit and Suzy was off and running. I even did a Language Experience Approach dictation with her. The spirits of the late Ed Henderson, patron saint of boys and girls who are learning to read, and the late Russell Stauffer, were with us, delighting in her first attempts to read her own work, and so help me Dick & Jane, she was getting the idea very easily!

Yesterday I got an email from Suzy’s proud mama about her progress. The little kindergartener is now reading Junie B. Jones, a chapter book! I am over the moon! All the late grandparents have to be kvelling like anything up there in grandparental heaven!

It’s spring. The pink dogwoods are showing their shades like flamingo feathers, the candytuft is bright, electric white dancing above rich greenery, the creeping phlox cascades in wafts of hot pink and lavender, and the hostas are sprouting up with their neon shades of green before the heat paints them with a little muting medium. But the big news is that Suzy is reading chapter books already!