Summer Reading Challenge

Reading is a big part of our household. We all love to read. With a dyslexic child and a beginner reader, you can imagine that we read a lot of children's books. The kids will read silently while I read one of my books and we read together as a family on the bigger books like THE UNDERLAND CHRONICLES . It's a fun game in our home for the kids to see how many pages they can read compared to how many mommy reads in our quiet reading time moments.

It is this love of reading with our children that gave The Hubs and I the idea for a Reading Challenge. OK, that's a BIG part of it, but also, when I explained to The Hubs how the RIF program was in jeopardy, he wanted to find a small way to help.

Since I'm not all that familiar with Reading Challenges, this one will be very loose. All you have to do to be included in the challenge is read with your children. Every time you finish a book, come back here to the site and leave a comment (you will be able to click the link at the top of the sidebar to get to this post) letting us know what book you read, the author and a grade for the book (A-F). Please include two grades, yours and that of your child. We would love it if you would give a short reason behind the grade you chose, but you don't have to.

The books you read do not have to be Chapter Books. You can read Dr. Suess, because he is a HUGE family favorite here. We recommend picking this book up if you don't yet have it. But we highly recommend trying to find a couple of books that are longer to share with your child.

If you do not have a child of your own, but would still like to participate, that isn't a problem either! You can visit your local library and ask the librarian to pair you with a child. You wouldn't even need to meet the child, simply leave a list and have the child do the same, of books you would be interested in reading, and you can both pass notes through the librarian (have the librarian clear this with the parent of the child first though!).

All of this can also be done with nieces and nephews that live out of town, the invention of the internet is a wonderful thing! And of course, if you just want to try and earn some cash for your local school's library, you can take it upon yourself to read Children's and YA books all by yourself. We hope that you can help spark the love of reading in a child, but if it just isn't feasible, we understand!

If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments here or e-mail them to me at novelreads at gmail dot com. Ya know, without spaces and with the symbols. At the end of July, the readers with the most books logged will receive a $35 donation to the school library (or local children's library) of their choice and adult and child will each receive a $15 e-certificate to the bookseller of their choice. We wish it could be more, but at present this is all we can afford. Maybe we'll get enough participants, and I can entice some donations of books too. Ya just never know!

If you have a blog and will be participating in the Challenge, just let me know so I can make sure to run the link in the sidebar!

Happy Reading and Take Care