Mitike the Reader

What makes someone a reader? I watch the struggling readers in my 7th/8th grade English classes, and I wonder what earlier interventions would have helped them become lovers of books. More books surrounding them when they were young? More patient parent voices in their ears, sounding out words, connecting picture to letter? Less access to video game and television, iPhone and internet?

Or -- and I think my 93-year-old grandmother, who reads the New Yorker weekly, and the newspaper and a wide variety of books daily, would agree wholeheartedly with this -- is a love of reading innate, flowing in certain people's bloodstreams, regardless?

Whatever the answer, my daughter's a reader. At home, she mimicks her brother's immersion in a book at lunchtime, trying to hold her "ABC" board book open with one little hand while she holds her spoon with the other. At Gram's house in Iowa last week, she settled herself in the tiny rocking chair and "read" books to the rest of us in front of the kitchen fire. This morning, when I sleepily told her 6:30 was too early to wake up, she nodded solemnly and asked, "Read books, Mommy?" and then proceeded to quietly flip through books while I dozed for a half hour more. In my half-sleep, I heard her pretend to read "Goodnight Moon": "Goodnight, goodnight," she said at every page.

It's true that TK's two mamas are lovers of words, that her brother would rather read than eat, that her nana makes sense of the world for others with words, that her great-grandmother (Gram) holds writers in the highest esteem. And maybe, since TK's early life in Ethiopia contained no books at all, she appreciates them as treasure even more. But I also think she LOVES books -- though she's only 2, she claps her hands to discover a new wonderful story, to hear a silly turn of phrase in Dr. Suess, to discover a character she likes (her favorite is Peter in Ezra Jack Keats' "Whistle for Willie" right now).

I'm not sure this kind of love can be taught -- but, like a mother who recognizes her child loves art and so puts paintbrushes in her hands, I'll keep introducing TK's wide-open eyes to new books. Nothing is sweeter than the sound of her little voice "reading", than the way she claps her hands at the last page and decrees, "The End! New book, Mommy!"