Two pages per minute

This weekend, my daughter and I sat side by side reading books. She reading her library book and I with the current book of the week (A Peace To End All Peace - David Fromkin). Almost every weekend, the two of us are at Borders on Orchard Road where she sits in the Kids section reading a wild assortment of books while I go around hunting for books on my list.

Today, I noticed that she was flipping pages quite quickly.

So I asked her if she intended to finish the book. When she said yes, I told her that I would time her to know how long she takes to read the rest of the book.

She had some 40 pages to go and she finished them in 19 minutes!

Even if I take into account that she is reading a kid's book with large fonts and larger line spacing, it's a stupendous effort! She read more than two pages in a minute. That's phenomenal for a girl who is just six years old!

So a little later, after we had played for a while and after I had read her a story (an Indian epic called The Mahabharat), she herself said that she wanted to read, this time The Faraway Tree collection of stories by Enid Blyton.

I told her I would time here again. Lo and behold, she did it again. This time the book had smaller print and a lot more content on each page (you know how Enid Blyton can write). She read more than 60 pages in just over half an hour.

You have no idea how thrilled I am and how proud I feel about my baby. She's developing the habit of reaching for a book when she's free and she is finding a book almost as interesting as playing by herself. Of course, a book cannot compete with playing with her friends (something that absolutely shouldn't happen), but at least whenever she's not, she is hopefully getting into a habit of grabbing at one when she's alone.

I personally like to read a lot. Even if it is for just a few minutes in the morning (before I leave for work) or after dinner (just before I sleep). She sees me read all the time, whenever I am free. She even asks me why I read so much.

So over the weekend, we talked about how someone, a long time ago, invented the wheel. And how everyone since then has used that first idea to make a wheel for themselves. How people after the first man did not have to go through the pains of experimentation to invent it, how they did not have to reinvent the wheel. How Thomas Edison made more than a thousand attempts to create the light bulb, but after he invented it, people could use his design and his learning. All of these discussions were to impress upon her that a lot of people are working on a lot of different things. It does not make sense for us to "reinvent the wheel" (She got the meaning of that immediately!). And therefore the need to read books. Where we learn more about people, their thoughts and their experiences.

Then she said, "I want to have a bookshelf as big as yours!"

"As long as you read every single one of them, sure you can" I said. Cause I've read almost every single one of the books that I've bought (exceptions being the ones that I have recently bought, which are now in the queue).

Judging by the expression on her face, she will make me buy her all the books and will have bookshelf way bigger than mine. And you know what?

Nothing will give me greater pleasure than to go book shopping for her!