My ten year old is an avid reader and believe it or not, one of the things she requested for her birthday was more books.

Books, books, books! My grandmother and her brother obliged and chipped in together on some spending money for the bookstore. (For both girls, since Drama Queen’s birthday was just a month ago.) Yesterday we went to a local bookstore that sells both used and new books and turned the kids loose.

Well..we didn’t turn them LOOSE. We made them stay in the kids’ section and we steered them away from coloring books. ;0)

The Princess was torn. She found more books she wanted to buy than she had money for. She found the American Girl section and wanted to scarf up a whole pile of those, but her budget could only afford two. I think she had half a dozen things in and out of her basket before she finally decided to get an American Girl book (Julie Tells Her Story) and an Usborne book (Starting Cooking) that came with an apron, a whisk, some measuring spoons and some other items.

The Drama Queen was excited to go to the bookstore until we got there and she saw that they had coloring books and movies and even some toys. She tried to say, “But I can’t read and I don’t even LIKE to read!” Um – can we say blatant lie? (More like, ‘I don’t want books because I saw that toy over there.’ But Momma is too smart for that.)

After I finished helping Princess, I helped D.Q. find the easy reader section and showed her the “Step Into Reading” type books and in the end… she ended up getting more books than anyone else! She found FIVE 4$ books- one “I Can Read, Level 2” book, “How to Train Your Dragon” based on the movie we saw this past weekend, two Barbie “Step Into Reading, Level 2” books and two Barbie storybooks. NO SURPRISE THERE. But truly, I encouraged her in that direction because right now she is interested in Barbie and WHATEVER WORKS.

I confess, I went in with the intentions of buying one book for the Little Price (in fact he didn’t get any – he picked out a used movie instead) but I quickly found myself pouring over a ton of larger chapter books and classics that I would love to read aloud to the children. I was surprised to find that How to Train Your Dragon was actually based on the first book in a 7-book series by Cressida Cowell. I grabbed up the first two books, after flipping through and becoming infatuated with the style of writing, the scribbly illustrations and the fun font changes. It looks like a lot of fun to read and I really think the kids would enjoy it.

All in all it was a successful book run to the kids’ first “real” book store (a.k.a. not the book section at Walmart or the dollar store, and not the library.) Also, I order most of our books through the internet. I have fond memories of going to the book store regularly as a kid, and since we don’t have one in our hometown, we may have to make this a regular tradition when we visit my mom every few months, even if we just go in to get one book to read together. This one also buys back used books which would be a great way to keep our book habit going, by trading in the books we don’t like or plan on reading again.

This looks like the beginning of a beautiful tradition.

Image Credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/guldfisken/ / CC BY 2.0
P.S. I used Amazon affiliate links of course!
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Amber

Hey, y’all! I’m Amber and I wear many hats. I drink a ton of coffee and I’m constantly sweeping crumbs off the floor. After 20+ years of homeschooling, we are starting over at preschool with our fourth, Lil Miss Mouse. She keeps us young and she’s the main reason for my excessive coffee consumption. Drink up!