the wiberry and the worm

It's nice to know that my son, a Kindergartener, is learning something from the public school library about books. I have always had a love of books, and I have tried and hoped to pass that onto him, but as a parent, there are some things that you just don't think about...

A few nights ago we were ready Ricky Ricotta's Giant Robot vs. The Voodoo Vultures from Venus (don't judge me, we also read Captain Underpants - and anything that puts a smile on his face has value in my eyes)...

So, Anyway.. we were reading the book and around Chapter 8 we both started to get really sleepy. It was late in the evening, and raining outside so we couldn't do much to fight it and I asked him if we could finish it later. He said sure. I paused for a second to see if there was anything around us to use for a bookmark, but didn't see anything and was really tired so I went on to fold the corner of the page to bookmark our spot...

Well, you would have thought I was brutally harming an innocent animal the way he shot up off of the sofa and yelled "NO MOM!! Don't do that! That's NOT the nice thing to do to a book!!"

I said "What? Where did you hear that?"

He says "At the wiberry at school. The worm in the book said everytime somebody folds a page it makes him sad and he cries. Look, all you have to do is get a piece of paper to mark your spot. Let me find one..."

So, I watched as my brilliant, book-loving 5 year old went to my desk and came back with a sticky note and showed me the "nice way" to treat your books. I was so darn proud of him, I could have cried!

I have always been adamant about respecting books - you keep them picked up, you don't tear the pages or color/write in them, period. No excuses. And I guess I just slacked off on the part about folding the pages, but I got put in my place for it.

Thank you, Wiberry, for helping me teach my son to appreciate and love books.