My goodness the girl can read!

Library Day is like Christmas around here (that's why I feel it deserves capital letters).

We went to the library often back home in Chicago, but my kids never devoured library books at home like they devour them here. On Library Day, there is no bickering--just reading! LOVE IT!

At home, I think books are just SO accessible to my kids, that they take them for granted. We have (LOTS OF) books in every room at home; we can buy them inexpensively at Target; we get gift cards to Barnes and Noble; we visit the library; we get books from school....

Here, we have virtually no books (we each brought only 5 books in our carry on bags) and no easy way to purchase them. (Although we just tried out Amazon.co.uk for the first time--we'll see if we have to pay a hefty charge when we receive them.)

Luckily, our local library has a small section of childrens' books in English! We go OFTEN. The boys LOVE the Tintin books. The movie came out around Christmas time at home. Did you know the books have been around for years?

On our first visit to the library, I took Lily while the boys were at school. Most of the books are from the UK so there are many new characters, new authors and new spellings/new words (i.e. practise, candy floss, mum).

Imagine my surprise when I heard Lily reading a book I KNOW she has never seen or heard before. I felt both guilty and proud at the same time. How did I not KNOW she was reading? (The following video was taken at a later time.)

Granted, when I found out she could read, I downloaded a bunch of Dr. Suess books onto our iPad for her to practice with and she has read this multiple times at this point, but still...she was reading like this (bigger words, words with double vowels, etc.) that day at the library.