So, back when ceitfianna came to visit, she brought some free books from the librarian conference she had just been at. She went ahead and read through most of the middle grade and young adults books, anything she thought myself or The Nephew might enjoy reading and then left them here for us. I have a stack of about 12 of these books in my closet now. I am saving them to give to The Nephew for his birthday, in May, since I know during the school year he doesn’t read quite as much as he does in the summer. His parents make him do an hour of reading on the weekend or days off, but on school days he just does reading time at school. During the summer, he has to read every day. So I’ll be giving him the stack of books then, to help get him through the summer. (ceitfianna, if you want to send me a letter or card to put in the gift bag, feel free!)


His dad says they are having quite the problem with him at school because he has nothing to do. It is March and he is completely through with all of the workbooks and textbooks for English, Math, History, for the whole year. Everything but Science. Which means he has nothing to do during those classes. He is almost reading at a 7th grade reading level and he is in the third grade. I expect by this time next year he’ll be at a high school reading level. His teacher does let him go to the library on days that aren’t library-day just so he can get more books, because he is reading his way through 3 YA books - (think the Huger Games) - a week. But the teacher won’t let him write or do other projects, except reading, during class so of course he gets fidgety and gets in trouble. There was a specialized school for advanced kids that my brother looked at, but from where they live now it would be four hours in the car everyday just to get him there and back, so for now they are stuck at the local public school.

The big issue with The Nephew reading at such an advanced level is that, while he can mentally read at that level, he isn’t always emotionally able to handle the topics. I was reading Stephen King and SE Hinton in the 4th grade and looking back, some of that stuff was not okay. With comics, my brother reads through the comic himself before allowing The Nephew to read it - that way he can check for appropriate story and art, since so much comic art is not appropriate. But with YA books, my brother doesn’t want to read through them all ahead of time, so he usually does a quick skim or something. Middle Grade books, for like 4th and 5th graders, are fine without pre-approval, but not all YA books, for older kids, would pass my brother’s okay-level. The librarian at TN’s school actually said that normally a kid his age wouldn’t be allowed to check out books from the older section, but she recognized that he is a special case and had a sit down with my brother and was like, “I can see you are an involved parent, so let’s just set up a system where I let him check out whatever he wants and then you can look at it when he gets home and if you don’t want him reading it, just send it back and I’ll let him check out another book instead.” Which has worked really well.

Anyways, I have decided to read through the stack that ceitfianna left here, because a) TN likes reading books that he knows me or my sister have read, so he can call and discuss them with us and b) at least for the YA ones, I can tell my brother ‘thumbs up’ on letting The Nephew read them. And c) because I like books! I started the stack last week, so expect me to be doing little quick reviews of them as I go along.