Magic!

In an attempt to help Sam keep his reading up to speed this summer, Keith proposed a challenge. He told Sam that if he read the first Harry Potter book over the summer, we would buy him a new game for the Wii. I worried that we had asked Sam to bite off more than he could chew. The Sorcerer's Stone is a 4th grade reading level book after all. About 20 pages in, Sam seemed to agree with me.

We adjusted the challenge and got him several new books to read that were more his speed. After zooming through several of them, Sam decided that rather than finish with the easier ones, he wanted to give Harry Potter another try. Boom! He was hooked. He would often read for more than an hour at a time and several times was found asleep in his bed, with the book still in his hands. I was making my way through the Harry Potter series as well and Sam loved when we would just sit quietly and read together. I loved it too.

Much to our surprise, what had been offered as a challenge for the entire summer took only about a week ad a half. We came through on our end of the bargain and Sam has a new Wii game to show for it. We also rented the Sorcerer's Stone and had a really fun movie night. It was so much fun watching Sam get to see the characters that he had read about coming to life on our TV.

I have since finished the series and LOVED it. Sam is now starting into the second book and already was up until 10pm last night reading until we convinced him to put it away so he could get some sleep. For a kid who just a year ago fought us tooth and nail when it was time to do a little reading, these Harry Potter books truly have been magic.