A Bookworm is Born....
Mini-Me Bookworm's love for books started early.
Ever since I was a child, my sisters called me a bookworm. I'd wander around our small local library and gather up stacks and stacks of books to check out, while they would check out one or two.
My daughters are following in my footsteps. My eldest daughter mostly taught herself to read--she started reading aloud a few words here and there two weeks before kindergarten started. By October, she was reading The Wizard of Oz on her own.
When my youngest was in preK and Kindergarten, I realized how much harder it is to actually learn to read. Her teachers were wonderful--going through the letters, the phonics, the phonems and all kinds of tongue and jaw muscle mechanics that I had never heard of before.
As I began to see all the work that goes into learning to read, I noticed a significant difference overall in the reading abilities of my daughter and her peers and those of my patients. There was a definite divide--one based on a multitude of factors which included class size, lack of reading specialists in my patients' schools, English as a second language for some of my patients and most of their parents, and a big number of them not qualifying for government-funded preschool programs.
With this new knowledge, I began to engage parents of preschoolers, kindergartners and first graders regarding their children's reading exposure. I had always encouraged them to read to their kids, but there were so many barriers. My new strategy was to recommend older siblings read aloud to younger siblings, joining a library, going to free storytimes, making sight word flash cards etc. But then I thought, why not do some read-alongs on youtube?
Hence the impetus for this website was born. We plan on posting book reviews from a pediatrician's point of view but also host read-alongs of some family favorites.
A page from Pride and Prejudice: a counting primer by Jennifer Adams, illustrated by Alison Oliver
As a side note, I am pictured in both photos with the board book version of Pride and Prejudice: a counting primer by Jennifer Adams with art by Alison Oliver. My husband thought it a proper picture for a bookworm who first read P&P at age 8. This version was gifted to Little Lion Bookworm by my friend, Marigold. Mini-Me Bookworm read P&P (the original) for the first time this summer at age 10 and we have had many conversations about English society in the early 1800s. And, as a side note to my side note, she still enjoys watching the BBC version with Colin Firth just for the ballroom scenes, just as she did when she was a 4 year old obsessed with balls and waltzes. She wanted to be like Aurora in Sleeping Beauty dancing with her animal friends. And, yes, despite pretending to dance like Aurora, her favorite character was actually Maleficent. Because the villains are more interesting.
Mini-Me Bookworm is responsible for the artwork on the first photo.
