Holy Hogwarts, Hagrid!

Mr T is reading Harry Potter! And I don't mean sitting listening to me read to him (although that's how it started), I mean him sitting by his happy self, turning page after page, reading the whole damn thing to himself. Leapin' Luna Lovegood! (warning: be prepared for lots of corny Harry Potter allusions)

Ok, so you may be sitting there thinking to yourself, 'Yeah, so what? Tons of kids have read it. What makes him so special?' Well, I tell you what the flip makes my boy genius so special.....he's barely seven years old and has never been taught to read in English, thank you very much! Because he goes to a local Dutch school, all his lessons in reading and writing have been in Dutch. The closest he's ever come to learning English has been his Tag pen by LeapFrog (one of the most amazing inventions of all time, in our opinion). Even then, we never sat down and did anything structured about it, just let him loose with it as often as he wanted, figuring reading would come whenever it was ready.

Galloping Gryffindor, it's soooo ready! We've allowed him to watch the first three movies, but stopped at number 4 when the age ratings go up and things start to turn altogether darker. Then we relented and said that he would be able to watch movie #4 after we'd read it, but that we have to read all the books in order. We had cramps in our arms from patting ourselves on the backs over our unbelievable cleverness, knowing that it would take probably a good year to get through the first four books.

Um, yeah, that's when he took it upon himself to read two whole chapters today.....well, wait a minute. As I type this, he's in bed, having an up close and personal moment with his nightlight, desperately cramming in more pages. Maybe he will have read three chapters by the end of the day. Anyway, he obviously figured out the sooner he reads all the books the sooner he can see the movies, and he didn't want to wait on Mama's lazy busy self to read to him all the time, so might as well light a fire under his backside and get reading himself.

And he can do it! He only very occasionally comes to ask for clarification on a word (totally acceptable on things like 'Herbology' if you ask me) and regales us with tale after tale of what's said in the book that isn't said in the movie, so we know he's actually taking it all in. I would say that I'm sorry for bragging and boasting about my kid, but guess what? It's my blog and I'll brag if I want to, so I'm not even a little bit sorry. We are beyond ecstatic that our seven year old child is whisking himself off to quiet corners of the house to immerse himself in big bad grown-up books, and I just had to share with others who are at least polite enough to pretend to give a flying hippogriff about it.