For The Love Of Books

Okay, peeps.

This girl of mine? The amazing, intelligent, smiley, empathetic, kind-hearted, beautiful girl??

Welp. She’s got a decent chunk of her Mama in her (ha; I just realized that sounds like I’m paying myself a ton of compliments, and that’s not how I meant this!). 

Unfortunately…my DNA comes with a lot of pros and cons.

The good??

Chica’s deeply in love with amazing stories, and that TOTALLY comes from me. For the past few weeks, she’s been racing through all six of the books in this series she adores. She’s had her nose in a book every free second she can find, like…



And I lurv, lurv, LURV that.

The bad???

Welp. Tonight, she finished that beloved, six-book series (I mean, seriously; she read six, 500-page books in just handful of weeks!). And while that’s an incredible accomplishment, and the joy of a literary adventure was a real reward…there’s a major downside that sort of runs in the family. And that is…

The inevitable low that comes from completing an incredible book. :(

It’s a well-known fact that I get quite blue when I finish a book that I adore—and those feelings are magnified ten-fold when I finish a book series I love.

I care so deeply about the stories I connect with that I have a really (really, really, really) hard time letting go of the characters or setting or storyline—or all of the above.

Sometimes, I finish an epic book and have to go right back to page one and start all over because I just can’t move on. And it’s become standard operating procedure—especially in recent years—for me to re-read (sometimes, multiple times!) books I love.

Welp. Circling back to Chica…tonight, she really felt those inherited, low emotions of ending this book series of hers when it was time for bed. She usually enjoys an extra 20-30 minutes reading upstairs before going to sleep, and I could tell she was at loose ends. She looked sad, she wasn’t ready to start a new book, and she was just in that awful mourning period that I know so well. :(

I bid her goodnight, left her to work through it, came downstairs…and felt my Mama Spidey senses tingling. My subconscious was telling me to give up a bit of my own, precious, off-the-clock evening time, to cheer up my girl. 

I decided to buck up, head back upstairs, and surprise her with a bit of Harry reading…and boy was I glad I did.

The moment I snuck back into her room, I saw that she was crying silently on the bed. And when we chatted about it, she sobbed that she “just didn’t want the books to end.” Oh, my sweet girl. I feel you; I really do!

Never have I been so happy to have gone with my gut and given her a little extra TLC to help her through this rough patch. 

By the time we’d finished thirty minutes with Harry, Hermione and Ron, she was smiling and snuggly. And she so sweetly thanked me over and over for giving her some special nighttime reading to help her go to bed a bit happier.

The love of reading is truly the BEST EVER. And sometimes, that means a bit of blue-ness when stories come to an end.

But there’s always—always!—a new, epic book to discover. (Like this next series for Chica, pictured below), and I’ll do my VERY best to continue to help my babies find the stories that keep them coming back for more and more and more!

LONG. LIVE. READING!

Over and out. 

P.S. It’s not escaped my notice that Chica is now at an age where she could finish the final book and a half of Harry in about a week, if I’d just set her free! It’s incredible to think of how far she’s come, from a literacy standpoint, since we began the books when she was seven years old. In fact, it’s kind of a shame to hold her back now, since reading together makes it so much slower. 

I actually spoke with her about it this week, and…my girl wants to continue reading jointly and finish as we began. :) She’s nothing, if not consistent. So…onward and upward! Hopefully, we’ll finish Book 6 and start Book 7 this summer!