Book Worm

I was raised under the mantra "If you can read, you can do anything." According to family lore, when I ran out of books to read, my mom handed me our four-inch thick dictionary, and I plopped down on the floor and started reading it.

I was six years old at the time.

Looks like my daughter is a chip off the old block. Although she seems to have set her sights a little higher than reading my New Oxford American Dictionary cover to cover.

"What's that say?" she asked me, pointing to the cover of Where is the Green Sheep that she was about to read to me.

"It says 'By Mem Fox.' That's the author's name," I explained. "She's the one that wrote that book."

I could see the wheels spinning in Abby's head.

"If I write a book, can I put my name on the front?" she asked. I told her she certainly could.

Casting her book aside, she hopped up from the couch and headed to the craft cabinet.

"I'm going to do that," she said.

And for the remainder of the morning, she sat at the table dictating her story to me and illustrating the pages. We're up to nine pages so far, and she has no intention of stopping anytime soon. Truth be told, her tale of the adventures shared by a little frog and a curly-headed blonde girl has the potential to go on forever. So far it's all exposition and rising action. This might be the time for a little language arts lesson on dramatic structure in storytelling.