Kid Books

Not a lot of knitting going on here recently. Ever since the Olympics I've pretty much just been fussing with things. I'm getting there on my Rockin' Sock Club socks, which is good and I've even started Magic Looping them, which I love, but other than that I'm really just picking at shawls. I don't want to start something too big, because I don't want to get really invested in something and then have to leave it to work on the sweater when my extra yarn comes in.

Instead I've spent the last four days reading kid books. We went to the bookstore on Friday night and I bought a knitting book, two knitting magazines, and The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. I spent much of the rest of Friday night, and any time I wasn't at work on Saturday reading like a voracious hound. Verdict: I loved it.

I was in such a groove that afterwards I picked up a book I bought a few weeks ago but hadn't gotten around to yet. I just finished Thirteenth Child, by Patricia C. Wrede, one of my favorite authors from childhood and someone I got to meet a few years ago. It was also great (by also great I mean awesome.)

I love kid books at this level - I also love picture books, of course. One of the reasons I didn't start Thirteenth Child right when I bought it was because I was in the middle of reading A Series of Unfortunate Events again.

One of my favorite things about my mom is her love of reading. When we were kids, one of the most important parenting promises she made to herself was that anytime one of her kids wanted to be read to she would drop everything and do it. I have memories of sitting next to her on the kitchen floor when I was four years old while she read to me.

I know I've written before about the peace of mind reading gives me. I had a rough adolescence - who didn't? - and reading is one of the things that got me through it. Sometime along the way I really began to be able to stop the whole world while I read and see and think about nothing else. It's almost exactly the opposite of what knitting does for me - while I knit my mind is cooking the whole time - when I read I am almost always completely gone.

I loved these two books - I'll definitely be getting the sequel to The Lightning Thief next time we swing by the book store, and I'll keep an eagle eye to see when the next Frontier Magic book comes out.