Chapter books impress all the girls.

Warning:  This post contains unashamed, unabashed bragging on how smart my kid is.  If this doesn't interest you, move along.  Move right along...

Zachary is a good reader.

This is not by accident, it is completely by design.

I'm a reader, R is a reader, and I've been reading to this kid since he was in the womb.

Although we went through a rough patch in his reading interest level (from, oh say age 2 to age 5), he has pretty much always loved books, and I was amazed how he went from barely recognizing all his letters to reading short sentences within a matter of weeks once he started kindergarten last year.

His reading skills have continued to increase rapidly this year, and his last reading assessment simply came home with one comment - "WOW!" written on in.

I cried actual tears of joy a few months ago when he asked me, "Mama, can I have a light by my bed?  So I can read at night?"

Ah, be still my heart.

Anyway, one of his daily homework assignments this year is to read for 15 minutes every night.  This can be him reading to himself, him reading aloud, me reading to him or some combination of the above.  He has a wonderful and extensive classroom library (that I'm sure his much under-appreciated teacher paid for out of her own pocket, by the way) that he has access to, and he can bring home different, exciting, new-to-us books every night to read.  He can also check two books out of the school library per week, so this amounts to thousands and thousands of book choices that he could bring home to read.

Except he doesn't.  He picks the same two or three flippin' shark books every time.  Every. Time. And since they have about 60 words total, we have to read them over and over and over to fill the 15 minutes up.  This makes my head explode in a not very nice way.

I've been nagging encouraging him for MONTHS to bring home more interesting to me challenging books to read.

"Hey Zack, how about checking out something different from the library this week?  Are there any Scooby Doo books there?  Or maybe Magic School Bus?  Or how about a chapter book?  I think you could handle one of those,"  I beg and plead every fifth time I have to hear him read the sentence "Sharks can smell one drop of blood in a million drops of water." 

"Nah, I like this one," he would answer, so on and on we read about the same damn sharks over and over and over.

Then a few weeks ago, he came home all excited to tell me about his new friend Jenny.

"We sit together on the bus," he said importantly.  "And she's OLDER, like in second grade," he continued.  "Oh, and she reads CHAPTER BOOKS."

This seemed like another good opportunity to get my way encourage his reading skills, so I said "Oh, maybe you should get some chapter books at the library this week so you and Jenny can talk about them when you sit together on the bus."

And sure enough, on library day he brought home a Pokemon chapter book.  "I can't wait to read it so I can tell Jenny I read chapter books too!" he said.

Wow.  He ignored my requests for months, but then some little girl comes along and he's bending over backwards and reading chapter books to impress her?  What's up with that?

Oh well.  If this is the worst thing he ever does to impress a girl, we will all be fine.  Just fine.