I was a bookworm when I was growing up. I didn’t play sports or do any after-school activities except chorus, which left me plenty of time to devour the Chronicles of Narnia, Anne of Green Gables, the Little House series, E. L. Konigsburg’s books, and every Newbery and Newbery Honor book that was published.

When I thought about the future, I imagined that any child I might have would take after me and devour books the way I did. But…this dream hasn’t come to pass quite the way I expected. My daughter, who is almost ten, is an avid sports fanatic. She’s on the gymnastics team, loves biking and ice skating, and while she loves being read to, she does not pick up a book on her own when she has free time—she’d much rather be playing with her friends. AND she finds the books I loved as a child boring! She wants action, adventure, and magic in the books she reads (she devoured the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series). Finally, she adores graphic novels, and devoured the Amulet series and anything by Cece Bell.

My daughter is slowly finding her way to books that she IS excited to read on her own. They’re books published years after I was a child, so I’ve had to put away the treasures I cherished as a girl. And I find that I do like the books she likes too, so she’s expanded my own world of literary treasures. It’s a wonderful experience of a parent enriching a child’s reading and a child enriching a parent’s reading, and while my initial dream didn’t come to pass, I wouldn’t have it any other way!