Daily Companion

Up till this June, I was still lamenting how M was spending nearly all his time reading non-fiction, comic books with Science content and nothing else. I was concerned that by not reading some chapter books, his writing will deteriorate. I urged him reltentlessly, but to no avail. He picked up some from the school library, but nothing interested him sufficiently. When we did make it to the community library together, he could easily pick out 10 or even 20 books that he would like to borrow, but declined every chapter book I suggested.

After we returned from the competitions in June, I did some research and just headed to Popular. I came home with the Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan.

When I showed him the book and urged him to read the first fifty pages which would take him at most 30 minutes, he barely took his eyes off the TV programme that he was watching and just gave me a quiet nod. The book sat on the sofa for a few days before I nudged him again. He finally made his attempt.

I thought I would need to nag at him again and I was all prepared to get him to talk to me after his 50 pages of reading and persuade him to finish the book. So it turned out, he needed nothing else from me. He (almost) never put the book down till he reached the last page.

When he finally read the whole book, which took him 2 days, he was beaming with joy. He enjoyed it thoroughly and I made him admit that he would not have discovered how much fun this was until he gave it a try, which was something I had repeatedly said.

Before I could get him to borrow the second book in the series from his school library, he had already headed to Popular with the dad and came home with Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters.

After that, he was unstoppable. In a few months, M read all the 6 books in the Percy Jackson series, 5 books in the Heroes of the Olympus series and the 3 books in the Kane Chronicles. In fact, he loves them so much that he has read the books at least 3 to 5 times.

During the period when we were revising for SA2 exams, he would bury his head in one of these books the moment he was done with revision, all the way till bedtime. He brought the book to school to continue during his free time and would happily read during meal times too if I allowed him, which I did not.

Of course I am happy that he has renewed his love for reading chapter books. Now I am anxiously waiting for two box sets of different series to arrive from booksdepository.com, which I hope he will come to love as much.