At nearly 21 months, Taylor's room is full of books. I would estimate she "reads" for six hours a day. She wakes up asking for "Books?" and regularly calls out "I need to read!" to which I reply, "I know you do!" She will ask for individual books by name, or run searching for them. She will pick up a book, state the title, author and illustrator, then proceed to paraphrase what's on each spread, turning through each page and noting when she's missed a page or if a page is torn or missing altogether (as is the case with our first copy of Clara and the Bookwagon, a current favorite.) She often gets the text right. (Right now, she's really good at Sendak's Chicken Soup with Rice. Time to buy more rhyming books!) And she reads quickly, as if she's trying to speed through a volume to get to the next one. When she finishes one book, she will either reread it, often stating more or different parts of the text that she didn't state the first time around, or she'll put it aside and quickly pick up another book, then another, and another. These spurts of reading for and to herself usually happen first thing in the morning and then again in the late afternoon. In between, she wants to be read to. And she wants to lie down and comb my hair with her fingers and toes while she's doing it.
The house is quiet most of the day so that we can hear ourselves think and read. We still don't watch any television with her, and Taylor often seems to resent it when we do turn it on in her presence. I'm doing what I can to foster other kinds of activities, but my efforts are focused on supporting her current sensitivity to language. We found out last week that a spot opened up at Khabele, and T will start there next month. I hope this will give her what I imagine to be some much needed balance in the form of socialization and stimulation in other arenas. But I can already tell—we're going to need some tall bookshelves.
