Read-a-Thon 2011

Yesterday when Lucy's teacher brought Lucy out to the car after school, they both hand-delivered me a packet. "It's the Read-a-Thon stuff, Mom!" said Lucy, and her teacher said, "Yes, and we're counting on Lucy, our class reader, to lead us to the victory pizza party!"

I flipped through the packet and saw that a pizza party was the least of our concerns. There were prize baskets, a weekend package to the Wisconsin Dells, a Nook (!!!), and other various gift certificates to be won. There were prizes for the best reader in a particular grade, readers who read over 500 pages, the best reader in the school, etc.

I turned the car toward the public library and began my sweet, motherly pep talk about just having fun and doing our best except it sounded a lot more like Coach Boone in Remember the Titans.

"Lucy, you are a great reader. If you focus, you have it in you to go all the way. You get your game face on, girl, and you beat the pants off everyone in the second grade!" She looked a little startled, and I stopped just short of saying if she fumbled the ball I'd break my foot off in her John Brown hindparts.

"You can WIN, Lucy!" chirped Elaine.

We discussed our strategy of reading at about her mid-level: absolutely no unfair advantage reading books that are too easy, but don't read at the very top of her level either because that would slow her down. So we headed into the library, and she loaded up on 10 books, with her ultimate goal being to read 1,000 pages in this 8-day Read-a-Thon.

I toned down the rhetoric slightly at the check-out. "You're gonna do a great job, Luce, and if you do your absolute best then everything else will fall into place. You just focus on getting Mama that e-reader, OK?"

She dived into her books last night, and today there is no school because of parent/teacher conferences. Here she is this morning:

Next Friday everyone goes to school dressed as a favorite character in a book, and the prizes are distributed. I will keep you posted.