Ex Patria: Reading

All our kids love books. That's not to say that they are early and voracious readers. Both Doug and I remember reading lots more than our kids do at their ages of 7 and 6. Well, Doug's a bit of an exception since he started reading at age 4 or so.

Alan is definitely past his grade level in English, and about on grade level in German. (Which is kind of odd since German is much easier to read -- however, the words are longer and he has much more sight words in English, so maybe it's not so odd.) David is usually balking at everything that Alan does well, and so it is with reading (not with math, though). We started using flash cards with him and that seems to do the trick. It's different enough to be special to him, so now he's picking up nicely. Somewhat to our surprise, Jacob is learning to read. Slowly, but he enjoys it.

But all that notwithstanding, the kids love books. We have lots and lots of books in our house, and there are some really fabulous kids' books out there. All of them will pick up books (mostly those with lots of pictures in them) and "read" them. Yesterday, Alan walked upstairs while (word) reading a book. That seemed very familiar. They all love their bedtime stories and Leah will shlep books around, insisting on sitting on someone's lap and flipping through the books. She'll pick up pretty much anything that lies around (and lots does), even photo books:

We have four designated book areas -- the study, which has five room-height shelves with books, the master bedroom with one big bookcase for Doug and I respectively, and some shelves on the wall, the big bookcase in Alan and David's room which consists of twenty cubes, and the two bookcases in Jacob and Leah's room. Then there is the pile in the living room, the piles on our nighttables, the books under the beds, the books in the beds, the books under the couch, the books in the bathrooms, the books... you get the idea. When we fantasize about a bigger house, we always include a big library. For the adult books, as the kids pointed out they want to keep their books close by. I'm game.

One problem we have is that we tend to read a few books and forget about the awesomeness that is in the back of the shelves. I have been sorting the books according to subject but that doesn't really work in a house of slobs. The kids' books are all smooshed into the shelves more or less at random - backwards, upside down, with missing slipcovers or missing pages (I'm looking at you, Amazing Spiderman) and definitely not according to subject. That makes it really difficult to find a particular book. I bought "We're going on a bear hunt" recently. The book has effectively disappeared. I know where I saw it last, it's not there, I can't find it in any of the book shelves unless I take all the books out and re-sort them. That seems a waste of time considering the state of entropy that our older boys' room is in.

Here's what I want:

Isn't this just the coolest? Display shelves like this are completely unkown in Germany - at least, I have no clue what to look for. I could ask the library lady if she knows of those. But then, surely one can build that oneself?

Doug and I built a bench over the long low radiator in our living room, out of lumber from the lumber yard and some IKEA table legs:

My parents gave us this amazing tool box for Christmas, with an electric drill/screw driver that is just fabulous. The bench cost us less than 20 Euros for the materials -- not including the legs which I bought two years ago. So surely we would be able to build a display bookcase similar to that for not so much money? It takes up no space at all once it's done...

And speaking of cool furniture and design, how freaking awesome is this? I know our kids would totally love it. Just don't think about all the accidents they could have. Think more along the lines of how much fun it would be if it could accommodate your behind as well...