A few months ago, we found out that a college acquaintance of ours had written book. Excited for him, I dug in to find out what it was about and was pleasantly surprised to find out his book is a memoir about teaching his two year old to read. Intrigued, I requested a copy of the book to review and he enthusiastically complied.
I loved it. His story is a journey of teaching his daughter to read, learning how important reading is to young children, and that although we may sometimes worry about “too early”, learning to read is a skill that can never be learned too soon. Opening a world of learning and excitement to kids can benefit them for their entire lives.
He cites documentation and research he completed through this process and has an appendix with a list of their favorite 250 children’s books! Along with the reading journey, he also shares a bit of his personal journey playing football, his dedication to getting a scholarship, attending law school and earning a Ph.D.
While his experience was interesting to read about, Cara is already over two years old so I had a little trouble relating directly to his experience. The biggest take away I received from this book was the desire to sit down and read TO her. I’ll admit, that traveling has put a crimp on read a loud time. Rachel and Andrew go through books so fast that I can’t keep up with them, and Cara just gets left to fend for herself. Picture books are harder to come by through our library’s OverDrive system, so mostly we just don’t try.
After I finished Nate’s book, I put a lot more effort into reading aloud to Cara. We listen to quite a few audio books while we drive, and we read aloud to all of the kids before bedtime, but Cara and I lacked some serious one-on-one time. Its been great! Habits are hard to come by and we still struggle, but we have been doing much better over the last few months.
If you have young kids, or are interested in learning what they did to teach Kayla to read, I definitely recommend checking out this book! Its been a great resource for us and I’m glad that we have it.
Get it on Amazon here: Little Miss: a father, his daughter, and rocket science.
