The pigeon wants to drive, he really really does. And he tries his best, but Anna and Silvia always shout, at the top of their lungs, "NO! You cannot drive the bus!!"
"Is there still a bird on my head?" asks Elephant. "No", says Piggie. "Now there are two birds. They're in LOVE."
Anna counts the birds, counts the eggs, sympathizes with Elephant and loves the surprise ending (I won't ruin it for you). Silvia, of course, just dances around, putting birds on her head.
The point of this post (aside from shameless hinting that the girls would love the entire Mo Willems collection...), is that Anna is reading. All kids start memorizing familiar books around age two, it's part of the normal language development. These days, though, there is a difference.
She's reading. It's slow, she stumbles, but she's sounding out the words, putting together the sentences, jumping up and down when she figures it out and then moving on to the next page. The Mo Willems books are great because the stories are simple enough for her to read through almost totally on her own, but funny enough for her to want to know what happens next.
Of course, the memorization thing backfires on us, because after she's read through it a few times, she stops reading and starts reciting. That's cute, too, though. She'll settle Silvia down for a pretend nap (they love to play at naps, go figure), and then sit and "read" her a story she's learned.
I know she's at the reading age, now, according to all the Big Important Government Charts. A lot of kids start picking up the trick of it around 4 or 5 years old. I stopped paying attention to the age-appropriate developmental milestones when Anna didn't walk until she was 2. Most kids, whether they start doing something early or late, all end up in approximately the same place by about 5 years old. The cool thing to me isn't whether it's "time" for her to start reading but simply that she is. It's so crazy to see! She sits down, looks at jumbles of letters on a page and then-- magic! It makes sense! It makes her giggle!
Reading has always been a huge part of my life and to see Anna enter that world is leaving me in a whirl. Suddenly I'm filled up with all my favorite books from childhood, reviewing what will make good chapter books to start reading at night, getting all excited to talk about how cool Gone Away Lake is. Of course, she's years off from reading those kind of books, but still... it's starting and I'm so happy for her. Reading is some of the best fun I've had (does that make me boring?) and now she can start knowing that kind of fun, too!
