Required reading.....finally!

My kids go to a catholic school and one thing that would always annoy me is that we would not have a summer reading list.

We don't want to put too much pressure on the little darlings while they are home for 3 months. I won't get into that.

And again, we didn't have required reading this summer for my 2 grade school kids. My oldest had 3 books to read. He read Tuesdays with Morrie and Napoleon's Buttons, which was for Chemistry.

My daughter came home today and said I have to go answer the questions for my reading. I just figured she was reading from a text book and since we don't have our workbooks yet (remember that budget issue?) I thought they must be doing some other type of writing homework.

My daughter says, "Don't you want to know what I'm reading?"

"Well of course I do, I didn't know you were reading a book. Who is having you read a book?"

"Mr. N., he's the English teacher and he wants us to read this year,"

Be still my heart!

"Our book is The Island of the Blue Dolphins"

Whoa! We have that book upstairs! So I tell her to go get it from the book shelf upstairs. Turns out we have the hardback copy with pictures! She's happy because she can read ahead at home if she wants to and leave her paperback copy in her desk.

I'm just happy!

Then my 7th grade son comes to me and says, "We're reading a book this year too. We're reading The Outsiders."

SHUT UP!

Fabulous! I kid you not when I tell you that my kids never had to read a book for class before this. I think that's a disgrace but no one ever seemed to care when I mentioned it before. Now they both have required reading and that just makes me so happy!

I talked to the teacher tonight at BTS nite and the teacher was saying he only has 30 copies of the book and they are falling apart. I'm going to start looking for copies of The Outsiders to give to the class. The kids can't bring their book home with them because they have to share them. I told him I would gladly buy my child a copy of it and he said he didn't feel he could ask parents to do that since we pay so much tuition. So, I'm going to start checking around at flea markets, yard sales and where ever else I can find them cheap. My daughter is in this class next year, they need these books!