Scary Stories

As part of her third grade requirements, Bela has to read 10 non fiction books, 10 fiction chapter books, and 5 books of her choice.

She's read about 15 books so far on her own this year, all of them fiction.

I understand why they want to push non-fiction on the students, to prepare them to read and comprehend all types of texts, and to score better on their tests etc. But I can't help but share her preference for fiction, and am thrilled that she loves to read so much in the first place that I'm not about to put my foot down. In fact aside from buying her a book about identifying birds and a book about the planets and the constellations, I am almost no help in motivating her to fulfill her nonfiction requirements.

Chris and I even recently bought her the collection of scary stories by Alvin Schwartz - Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. This was something that Chris read as a kid and loved.

Bela loves it too, fiction lover that she is. But she can't read it at night. In fact, although she loves to read them, loves to scare herself silly (and just finished the last of the three today) she couldn't even keep the books in her room. She had to put them in a special box that she kept downstairs. Far from her sleeping innocence.

Her routine? Spend a portion of each afternoon reading from the scary books, lock them in this cute pink box, ceremoniously carry them downstairs, and deposit them into our safekeeping.

I think that within the set of three, the stories get scarier by the book. She finished the third one today and was also reading it late yesterday afternoon.

It's not really surprising that between me and Chris this morning I woke to find two little blond girls cuddled up and fast asleep.