Books and Heartbreak

Today my baby brought me 4 books that she read today.

"Otherwise Known As Sheila the Great" which is 118 pages
"Little House on the Prairie" - 335 pages
"The First Four Years" (also a Laura Ingalls book) - 134 pages
"The Princess School" special edition - 424 pages

That's a lot of pages for a 1st grader to read in one day. I can't read that much in one day even if all I did was read. And she was out with her Daddy half the day.

Can you say, "Hmmmm?"

So I had her come over and tell me what the books were about. Let's just say it sounded suspicious so I flat out told her it's okay if she didn't read them, I just don't want to put it on her GoodReads account if she didn't. And she started crying.

She only read the "Sheila the Great" book. She didn't want to read the two big books because they have too many pages. And she really wanted to just read the books she picked out yesterday but I had asked her to read these books first because they needed to go back to the library. (I had picked out these other ones one day when I was at the library myself.) Basically, she didn't want to disappoint me by not reading the books I picked out for her. (Yeah - great job there, Tami.)

So we had to go into a big long discussion about how I just picked those out because I thought she would like them but it's okay if she doesn't or if she just doesn't want to read them right now. I told her the main thing is I just want her to like to read and didn't want to pressure her into reading books that were too big/old for her. (Honestly, I was kind of concerned that if she was already reading these big books now, what would we find for her to read in a few years?!?!) So I reminded her that she just started reading chapter books this year and if she would rather read smaller books for now, that was just fine. She is only 7, after all.

Then I told her that when she's in school, she might have to read books she doesn't like because it's part of the class but at home, we read what we want to! I told her I got a book not too long ago that I hated so I just took it back to the library without reading all of it. And some of them I take back because I don't have time to read them. I've decided I'm only going to read books I like and once I get thru all of those, then I'll go back and read the crappy ones!

So. We will forgo the Little House books for now. (I'm sure she'll like them when she's a little older. I can't remember how old I was when I read them but I know I was older than SEVEN!) And I'll stop getting the big books. She does want to read anything Tinkerbell (of course), Junie B., and Nancy Drew. (Did you know they have "Nancy Drew Notebook" books? Where Nancy's a young girl in grade school?)