To encourage me and my brother to read, my parents established a summer reading contest. We got a small prize for every thousand pages we read and a big prize if we read more pages than anyone else.
I won every year.
One summer I made it through 15,000+ pages by spending most every summer morning lounging in my bed with a Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, or Ravenloft book in my hands.
But my former glory and prowess isn't really what we're here to talk about. I only need to mention it in order to showcase and highlight the glory of the rising sun: Superstar. Last summer he pulled ahead of me, but he stopped reading partway through the summer and I overtook him. By the time he realized it, I was far ahead and he had trouble catching up.
This summer he took a rapid lead, pushing ahead to double my page number. I thought I might be unseated, but kept plugging along at a steady, rapid pace. Eventually he paused and I struck by finishing off several longer books I had been working on for a while. I pulled ahead. This time I made sure to yell loudly and point it out to him early on. He rekindled his reading streak and struggled to catch up. Neck and neck we raced to the finish, sprinting through our books for all we were worth. I reorganized all our books so it would be easier for him to identify books in his age range. Superstar discovered Harry Potter and devoured the first four books. In the very last week of the contest, as we both crossed the 9000 page line, he pulled ahead.
When the dust settled the last night before school, Superstar was ahead of me by exactly 50 pages. Superstar is the new Reading King! The king is dead. LONG LIVE THE KING!
For his little prizes, he got some more books to read and for his grand prize, he chose the audiobook of Harry Potter IV to read him to sleep each night.
List of books we read:
The family read Fablehaven 2, 3, and 4 during our drives in Utah, so we both got credit for those. He also read 1 and 5. I only started 5 (with the fam) and we still haven't finished it.
We both read the Book of Mormon, he in English and I in Spanish (which is 100 pages longer). He also read the gospels; the Doctrine and Covenants; the Pearl of Great Price; Bad Guys of the Book of Mormon and Preach My Gospel.
Superstar concentrated his reading on a handful of authors:
Andrew Clements: the Janitor's Boy, Frindle, No Talking
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
Jessica George: the Tuesdays in the Castle series (Tue, Wed, Thur, and Sat)
Brandon Mull: Beyonders 1, 2, 3
plus a couple Frank's magic soccer ball books, a book of stories about Santa Claus,
and capped it off with Harry Potter I-IV. For this school year, he's planning on rereading Harry Potter I-IV several times each so he can do well on the AR tests and just enjoy them before moving on to books V-VII. I rather agree with that logic.
Superstar also read two other books, but we can't decipher which ones only based on the initials he wrote down.
My reading took a decidedly religious turn this year. I finished several Ensigns;
the Teachings of Thomas S Monson and his biography, To the Rescue;
Brad Wilcox's Continuous Atonement and Continuous Conversion;
CS Lewis' collection of George MacDonald's writings;
a biography of St. Theresa of Lisieux;
Revelations in Context;
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Gordon B Hinckley;
400 Questions and Answers about the Life and Times of Jesus Christ and a biography of the presidents of the church In Their Own Words by Susan Easton Black;
the Doctrinal Mastery manual and the Gospel Teaching manual; and
An Approach to the Book of Mormon by Hugh Nibley.
For work I read several hundred pages of research papers and and a history book about South Africa I started last year for our trip there.
I did read a few books just for fun:
In Times Like These (a time travel book) by Nathan Van Coops
Love Letter Collection (read with Joy)
Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son; (otherwise known as Fiddler on the Roof and other stories);
and Sufficiently Advanced Magic and Forging Divinity by Andrew Rowe (fantasy)
I won every year.
One summer I made it through 15,000+ pages by spending most every summer morning lounging in my bed with a Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, or Ravenloft book in my hands.
But my former glory and prowess isn't really what we're here to talk about. I only need to mention it in order to showcase and highlight the glory of the rising sun: Superstar. Last summer he pulled ahead of me, but he stopped reading partway through the summer and I overtook him. By the time he realized it, I was far ahead and he had trouble catching up.
This summer he took a rapid lead, pushing ahead to double my page number. I thought I might be unseated, but kept plugging along at a steady, rapid pace. Eventually he paused and I struck by finishing off several longer books I had been working on for a while. I pulled ahead. This time I made sure to yell loudly and point it out to him early on. He rekindled his reading streak and struggled to catch up. Neck and neck we raced to the finish, sprinting through our books for all we were worth. I reorganized all our books so it would be easier for him to identify books in his age range. Superstar discovered Harry Potter and devoured the first four books. In the very last week of the contest, as we both crossed the 9000 page line, he pulled ahead.
When the dust settled the last night before school, Superstar was ahead of me by exactly 50 pages. Superstar is the new Reading King! The king is dead. LONG LIVE THE KING!
For his little prizes, he got some more books to read and for his grand prize, he chose the audiobook of Harry Potter IV to read him to sleep each night.
List of books we read:
The family read Fablehaven 2, 3, and 4 during our drives in Utah, so we both got credit for those. He also read 1 and 5. I only started 5 (with the fam) and we still haven't finished it.
We both read the Book of Mormon, he in English and I in Spanish (which is 100 pages longer). He also read the gospels; the Doctrine and Covenants; the Pearl of Great Price; Bad Guys of the Book of Mormon and Preach My Gospel.
Superstar concentrated his reading on a handful of authors:
Andrew Clements: the Janitor's Boy, Frindle, No Talking
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
Jessica George: the Tuesdays in the Castle series (Tue, Wed, Thur, and Sat)
Brandon Mull: Beyonders 1, 2, 3
plus a couple Frank's magic soccer ball books, a book of stories about Santa Claus,
and capped it off with Harry Potter I-IV. For this school year, he's planning on rereading Harry Potter I-IV several times each so he can do well on the AR tests and just enjoy them before moving on to books V-VII. I rather agree with that logic.
Superstar also read two other books, but we can't decipher which ones only based on the initials he wrote down.
My reading took a decidedly religious turn this year. I finished several Ensigns;
the Teachings of Thomas S Monson and his biography, To the Rescue;
Brad Wilcox's Continuous Atonement and Continuous Conversion;
CS Lewis' collection of George MacDonald's writings;
a biography of St. Theresa of Lisieux;
Revelations in Context;
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Gordon B Hinckley;
400 Questions and Answers about the Life and Times of Jesus Christ and a biography of the presidents of the church In Their Own Words by Susan Easton Black;
the Doctrinal Mastery manual and the Gospel Teaching manual; and
An Approach to the Book of Mormon by Hugh Nibley.
For work I read several hundred pages of research papers and and a history book about South Africa I started last year for our trip there.
I did read a few books just for fun:
In Times Like These (a time travel book) by Nathan Van Coops
Love Letter Collection (read with Joy)
Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son; (otherwise known as Fiddler on the Roof and other stories);
and Sufficiently Advanced Magic and Forging Divinity by Andrew Rowe (fantasy)
No comments:
Post a Comment