As with so many things, this seemed as if it would take forever. It seemed, in fact, sometimes, as if it would never actually happen, even though I told him it would.
You will learn to read, I told Everett. Really. In fact, some day it will be so easy for you to read that you’ll read without even thinking about it. You’ll read by accident; you’ll read so fast you won’t even realize you’re reading. You’ll look at a sign as you’re riding down the road, and you’ll know what it says without even trying.
He laughed at that, and his laughter pleased me: There, I thought, he’s not utterly despairing over this reading lesson. He’s able to see—or imagine, at any rate—the light at the end of the tunnel.
We set a goal: he would read 100 books, and when he did so, we would take him to see Cars, Pixar’s newest film. It wouldn’t be out until June. That gave him plenty of time.
That was back in September.
It was rough going at times. Reading is a difficult thing. Do you remember? For those of us for whom reading is, as I described to Everett, incidental, accidental, automatic, the effort of learning to read is deeper than history: it’s long over, buried like Atlantis, forgotten.
But there I was, for the second time in my life, working with a young boy laboring over these strangely shaped symbols that represent sounds, suppressing the rising impatience that accompanied delays and a furrowed brow and frustration.
Everett loves books, stories, being read to. He has an impressive capacity for listening and comprehension. When he was six, I read Johnny Tremain to him and William. He attended to, and mostly got, the Entire Thing. That’s a book that some people recommend for high school freshman.
So he clearly has the grey matter, but when it comes to it, he’d rather play at Star Wars, or cops and robbers, or, say, cars.
Yes, the boy loves cars, and has loved them since he was old enough to grasp a Matchbox one in his dimpled fingers. And recently, in the last few months, he has begun to express his career objective: he wants to be a racecar driver.
He is not alone. I would imagine that many, many young boys wish to be racecar drivers, and some who manage never to grow up actually achieve that goal. What is it about racing, I wonder, girl that I remain, that so appeals about this going around and around in protracted ovals?
Speed. Power. Speed.
Which is exactly what learning to read—in the beginning, anyway—does Not Have To Offer.
Learning to read is hard. Learning to read, for most people, is Slow. It’s like, in a way, learning another language. And, although I’m no specialist in the field, I would say it’s kind of magical. Because you work at it and you work at it and you work at it. You follow your methodology and you take opportunity for practice and you review and review and review. And it takes a Long Time.
And then, suddenly (heaven knows how), you get it.
I wondered if Everett would get it. June approached, and the book chart wasn’t nearing 100 fast enough. What if the movie came and went, and he still hadn’t read 100 books? We’ll still take him to see the movie, I thought. He loves racecars too much (and I love Pixar too much) for us to miss this.
Then, a few weeks ago, we checked his chart. We counted carefully, something we hadn’t done in a while. He had read 95 books.
In the end he beat the movie by a week. Yep. He reached 100 a week before the movie came out. In fact, by the time we went to the movie on Saturday afternoon, he was reminding us that he had read 101 books. And, of course, he’s read more since then.
I can’t honestly say that he enjoys reading yet. Well, he enjoys reading the Asterix books, and Calvin and Hobbes. But reading is still somewhat of a labor for him, and I anticipate for him that next magical level, the one where William is now, where picking up a book and reading it is just as natural and pleasant as, say, playing Star Wars.
I marveled, this afternoon, sitting next to him on the sofa as he read aloud with ease the first chapter of a children’s version of Gulliver’s Travels. There’s hardly a pause anymore. He moves over the words with, if not speed exactly, then with a new facility.
The speed will come, I know it.
A few weeks ago, Bill took him on a really spectacular Daddy-Everett time: they went to a NASCAR race in Charlotte. Bill was there on business and, happily for Everett, this “business” included time in the pit with the racecars, and meeting racing teams, and listening in as the team communicated with the driver during the race.
It was a red-letter day for our little reader, who, Bill told me, was very polite, and shook people’s hands, and looked people in the eye, and generally behaved himself.
Ah, my boy. Reading is just one of the ways in which we grow up. We are So Proud of you.
(Shameless self-promotion: My review of Cars is here. )
