Life with Banana

"We" have started reading. It happened a few weeks ago. At least, I got my first taste a few weeks ago when Banana went through two easy reader books. When I told her teacher the next morning, she winked at me and said, "She's been reading for me for weeks. She just turned the corner for you." The kindergarten teacher has a delicious bit of New York snark in her.

Today, we picked up her first chapter books for her to read on her own—a Magic Pony Carousel book and the first Magic Tree House book. I skipped over the Junie B. Jones books for now because they seem a little too idiomatic. I also didn't like the fact that the first one in the series had "stupid" in the title.

In any case, she did remarkably well diving into them. There are some words—"what," for example—that defy easy phonetic reading, and she gets a little frustrated with those. She's also having trouble with the combined vowel sounds, and I'm half-tempted to plop her in front of The Electric Company for a few hours. For my part, I'm looking forward to the moment when the balance of reading by memorization and phoneticization* balances out.