When I look at this picture, something inside me clicks, as if to indicate some checkbox on a mental list has been marked: “Encourage Ava to love books.”
I knew things were getting serious a couple weeks ago, when Ava caught a word I’d missed as I was reading her a bedtime story. I think it was “The BFG,” a title I loved immediately for its invocation of hour upon lovely, bloodshot and blood-spattered, late-night hour spent playing Doom.
I realized at that moment that Ava was following along in the book as I read (at a pretty good clip), and that she recognized the words on the page she was hearing me read. It was exciting, and I paused for a second as I considered mentioning it to her, but she nudged me gently under the covers and said, softly and urgently, “keep reading!”
Who knows if books will always be a part of Ava’s life. Her parents hope they will be. And we think she’s off to about as good a start as she can get (so say we). It’s probably too early to tell her that a book will never steal her prom date or buy the same top she wanted or grab the last spot on the soccer team, but that’s part of the fun of discovery, anyway.