The Book Crusher, a tale of parental pride

Our boy’s been on fire with his reading! On a daily basis he has mandatory reading that he does, plus he reads to his younger sister to earn his allowance [see blog entry January 17, 2009 for details]. Once his homework and reading is done each afternoon he’s clear to do what he wants. Lately, he’s been engaging fun reading on his free time!

For the past two weeks his fun reading has been ample starting with Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi. He liked it so much that he read it twice. Then he knocked back Stinkopedia by Megan McDonald, it’s based on the character in the book series entitled Stink. Yesterday evening our silly guy finished Bone by Jeff Smith and with a big smile he ran over and grabbed BC Mambo by Erik Craddock. With a one minute intermission between books he was back at it again. He’d been wanting to read Mambo but was advised to finish his current book before starting another. He complied, the good guy. He went to bed last night saying how next he’d read Jurassic Grampa by Kirk Scroggs.

Admittedly these are not novels. Some of these books are written in a comic book style. They have numerous box illustrations per page with conversation and thought balloons. These are all, however, boasting of more literary credibility than a comic book. These all have AR tests. [AR tests are taken by the kids after they read a book. The tests are to gauge their level of reading comprehension.] And besides, this is his fun reading. Heck, if the guy keeps crushing books like this with the same enthusiasm Wife Klem and I are happy to encourage his insatiable appetite.

Much credit goes to Wife Klem for the fella being a bibliophile. She’s devised a strong incentive plan to motivate his continued rapid consumption of these delightful tomes. There’s a chart on the refrigerator keeping track of his completed daily reading regiment. For every ten days of mandatory reading he gets to choose a book from the book store.


I applaud your work, Wife Klem. Oh, yes, and you too boy.
-klem