Day 110: Summer Reading Assignments

Not sure if I appreciate the summer reading assignments given to the boys or resent the project. Haven't quite decided yet. Every summer I go through the same thoughts. Part of me rejoices that the boys have to read and are given this assignment. I feel grateful that they have to read a book or two accompanied by a very detailed writing assignment. The other part of me resents any assignment that interferes with summer. I tend to lean more in favor of the former, because if it were up to me I'd have them reading everyday, but I lost that battle a long time ago.

So today the boys selected their summer reading books. Harrison's going to read, Funny How Things Change, by Melissa Wyatt and Spencer will read All The Broken Pieces by Amy Burg. Neither one are easy reads. Both have difficult subject matter. The first deals with a teen struggling to make the right decisions post High School and the latter is about an adoptive Vietnamese boy who has to examine his past.

Call me funny or odd but I read the summer books they chose to read. I started this when Brandon hit High School. There's something very informative about reading novels directed to adolescence and the teenage years. When you read about characters in this age group and the issues they deal with, I believe it makes you appreciate and or understand what your own children might be going trhough in their lives. It's just another way for me to learn more about the developmental stages of this becoming of age period in their life.

I love to read and wish I found more time to do it. I go through periods where I always have a book on the nightstand and can't seem to put it down, to dry patches where I'm not reading anything. I can always count on the mid summer read with the teenage books though. Give it a try... read your son's or daughter's books this summer ... I think you just might enjoy the challenge and learn a little something a long the way.