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We're on the last of the Hardy Boys books the boys got for Christmas last year...A Wrinkle in Time is next and I'm SO EXCITED!

I haven't read the book in years and I'm just looking forward to reading it again. I'm thinking of reading it over the holidays and reading it to the whole family. Steve hasn't read it. He didn't read at all when he was young, they told him he was low-average, stuck him in with the ne'er-do-well types and he was just lost. I figured out after hearing him read some billboards that he was dyslexic. He had EVERYTHING turned around.

He ended up teaching Matthew to read using The Junior Phonics Game and in the process taught himself. He could read, he just didn't know HOW to read, if that makes sense.

So he missed out on some really good books because he thought he was too stupid to read.

So he missed out on some really good books because he thought he was too stupid to read.

Crap like that really ticks me off. My mother had a sort of similar thing happen in that when she was little, she really wanted to learn to play an instrument. The music teacher at their school told her (before they even really had any classes) that she was a) totally untalented and b) incapable of learning to read music. Now...to begin with music doesn't "belong" to the talented. It's something anyone can enjoy. Secondly, she was NOT untalented! She had a very nice voice and a better ear and sense of rhythm than many of us in the family. After years of us telling her she could do it, she finally started taking cello lessons about a year before she died. She played out with us twice at church related functions and was just thrilled with it all.

It burns me up that she was deprived of that joy for so many years just because some creep of a teacher didn't like her personally or was too impatient to teach.

We read to our kids every night. We run the gamut from the L'Engle books, which we did a couple of months ago, to "The Sum of All Fears" (heavily edited by the reader) in the last couple of weeks. Clare's at camp this week, so we're reading "Holes" with Joseph. It's a really good book! The movie was great, too, and closely followed the book. We won't be finished with it before Clare returns, so we'll go back to the Clancy, then finish "Holes" later. He's read it before, so he doesn't mind waiting to finish it. We'll likely continue on the Clancy track through "Debt of Honor" and "Executive Orders" after "Sum".

After those, we might pick up the C. S. Lewis space trilogy. I've never read those, and neither have the kids. SSQ just loves them.