Floating in a Book

I never got to Tolstoy this summer. I blame it on my son, who high-jacked my reading list with his need to be read to for long hours of the day. However, I did make it through some of the titles in my pile, and I absolutely loved Rosa Sarkin-Gee's The Last Kings of Sark and Claire Fueller's Our Endless Numbered Days, both of which I highly recommend. Most of my reading time was taken over by Harry Potter. Yes, the Lieberman family was consumed by stories of Hogwarts, Quidditch and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

I had been suggesting I read HP to my two boys (ages 8 and 10) this spring, but they were adamant they were not interested. Then, my older son, who had until then only read graphic novels or diaries, decided to pick up an actual chapter book. He read the first Harry Potter in less than a week, and the next three during the rest of August. He only stopped reading to eat, sleep, go for the occasional swim and to indulge his other slightly obsessive habit: endlessly bouncing a tennis ball.

Enter my extremely jealous 8 yr-old who only reads in French. (Both boys attend a franco-phone school.) My older son learned to read in English out of necessity: when he had read every Nate and Wimpy Kid book in French, he reluctantly read them all in English. My 8yr.old, rather than trying to learn to read English, insisted on having the HP books read to him, which my husband and I were happy to do. Perhaps not all day, and not at the expense of reading other material, but read we did. The 8 yr.old and I are currently at the end of book 3, which means we read over a thousand pages of HP in August.   

Dinner conversations now revolve around the Nimbus 2000 versus The Firebolt, the correct pronunciation of  "Hermione," and whether palmistry actually works. The kids dream of Honeydukes and Diagon Alley. The hurl insults at each other like, "You are such a muggle!" My 8 yr. old spent a few afternoons with a broom handle at his side, demanding "Up! Up!" in the hopes it would magically rise into his hand. Every once in awhile he'd try and trick his brother into believing that it actually worked. When he got tired of that, he ran around with the broom between his legs, pretending to fly.

I had been waiting a while, patiently, for my older son to fall into reading the way I did as a kid. When I see him now hunched over a book on his bed, or sprawled on the hammock, totally engrossed, I feel a deep satisfaction that he has reached the level where reading is completely engaging. He has reached that magical other place where there is only story, where having to put your bookmark in your book because it's dinner or bedtime, rips you away from a place where you are totally immersed, and totally safe. In French the word for doing an activity that is both engaging and challenging is La Flotte, or flow state. And that's what my son is doing, he's floating in a book.

For amazing pictures of Hogwart's Castle made out of Lego check out the artistry of Alice Finch.