Book Junkies

Santino is a book junkie.

I never thought it would happen. When he was in third grade, he hated to read. Oh, he read a lot--mostly monster manuals for his Dungeons and Dragons games, and anything in general that would make him a better gamer.

What he didn't want to read was fiction. I would recommend to him some of my favorites--Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, Artemis Fowl. These were smart books for smart kids (and good reading for adults too), and I was sure he would get hooked on these stories just like I was. He didn't bite.

This was devastating for me, because I have a book addiction. I love to read books, buy books, write in books, carry them in my back pocket, sleep on them, drool on them, you name it. And like any junkie, you know that you can only rationalize your obsession by roping everyone else into your downward spiral. I was bummed because my mini-me did not share my addiction with me.

In fourth and fifth grade, Santino started to read a little more. In fact, he became a big fan of the "Redwall" series--high fantasy with talking animals. I bought him every Redwall book available--but for some reason he didn't read them. They just collected dust on his bookshelf and I wondered if I was duped into believing he got my book addiction gene.

Don't get me wrong about him--he's a fairly advanced reader for his age. He has a huge vocabulary, is a competent storyteller, and he can read most books at adult levels. He just didn't enjoy cuddling up with a good book. Wahhh.

Then something happened. He came home from his first day of sixth grade and said, I love my teacher! She's awesome, and she has the most amazing library!

I checked his temperature. I couldn't believe he was actually excited about a library. He went on about the "wall of books" in his classroom and said he was going to apply for the job of classroom librarian. He got the job, and now he knows the entire inventory of his teacher's library.

So, for the past seven months, Santino has been hooked on books. It started with Percy Jackson. "Mom, you've GOT to read this. It's like Harry Potter only with Greek mythology." Okay, so I read Percy Jackson, and he was right. It hooked me into an imaginative world full of magic and Greek gods. I bought the whole 5-book series and read it in a couple of weeks. Then I brought it to my classroom and got my 4th graders hooked on it. The movie came out months later, and boy was I glad they had read the book first.

His recommendations kept coming. House of the Scorpion. Schooled. The Schwa Was Here. Uglies. Pretties. The Hunger Games. I can't name them all, the list is so huge.

Santino's year-long reading assignment is to read 40 books from various genres. Now it was my turn. You need a mystery? How about Da Vinci Code? He loved it. How about Brother Cadfael? He was on the fence with that one, but he read the whole thing. Finally finally finally, I can talk to him about books.

His teacher is responsible for the disease he now has. She's a book pusher, and boy is she good. Her approach to reading is organic, and her bible is the Book Whisperer. Get excited about reading, and your students will get excited too. She devotes 30-60 minutes every day to silent reading in the classroom. She reads, too. It's brilliant. So many studies have shown that the more kids read, the better they do in school. And, I might add, in life.

So I have spawned, after all, a book junkie. Sometimes after school, we plop down on the couch and read for an hour or so, quietly with our cats and puppies cuddled up. He's in his world, and I'm in mine. But somehow, we are connected by our addiction. And I love it.