She kept checking in on me periodically to make sure I was OK, but when she realized I was perfectly happy and just lost in a book, she left me to it. I also read Scarlet Letter and a few other things that summer, with the joy of coming at them as novels, not Things to Study.

The summer I finished high school, my dad sent me to Egypt to stay with relatives and get in touch with my heritage. I did not have enough books. Late in the summer, my aunt let me at her stash of books from lit classes, and I inhaled Madame Bovary like oxygen because I'd been starved for reading.

That's so sweet 🥺

The middle grade novel it's based on is amazing (read it from the library and immediately bought my own copy). It hit hard when I read before becoming a parent, so I imagine the movie is going to destroy me.

He really is the sweetest kitty. Only one I'd even try that with 😂.

Ha, I mean, the internet IS for cat pictures after all 😂.

Joke's on us both: I went on to get degrees in literature 😂.

Yeah, and I will say this of my mom: she generally DID give me leeway. I could check out what I wanted, but this particular series just stuck in her craw (probably because there were so many of them?) It was less stopping and more "you need to read more substantive things between."

Absolutely this. I remember reading the Baby Sitters Club books and my mom trying to curb that because they were "below my level." Thing was, they were comforting reads... and I was already on the cusp of outgrowing them on my own as I got closer to character ages!

I think that is useful for teachers. And I think a parent's job is to let kiddo read what makes them happy to read, personally. When my kiddo is a little older, I see my job as being to protect the love of reading we've carefully fostered against school trying to suck the joy from it.