Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

I knew what he was doing, so I readied the camera and slipped into his room…

Whereupon he immediately grinned (not that he’s a ham or anything, noooo), and as soon as the flash had gone off he was holding up the book to show it off…

So how did I get a just-turned-9-yr-old to read a freaking HUGE hardcover Michael Crichton book until 2am in the morning when the only reason he put it down is that he couldn’t hold his eyes open anymore?
Easy. I cheated.

Unless you’re having this read to you, you can obviously see that my son is absolutely OBSESSED with dinosaurs.  In just this picture alone you can see that his sheet set, his comforter, his bedside lamp, a poster on the wall behind him, and two of his hand-drawn pictures all feature dinosaurs. The only thing in the pic that *doesn’t* is the ant farm.  (Which we STILL haven’t gotten the ants for, by the way… Kelsey says he’s starting to think Uncle Milton’s is a fraud.)

Around this house, we get more than our fair share of hearing about and looking at dinosaurs all the time.  Consider the shirt my 2-year-old was wearing today:

Yeah, we’re inundated with big nasty creatures who would eat us if they could.  Kelsey actually wants to make a REAL Jurassic Park when he grows up.  Of course, the JP series are his favorite movies of all time, and his favorite Xbox game, too.

So imagine my delight when I found both Jurassic Park and Lost World at the thrift store today for 99 cents each! They’re in perfect condition (minus the grease-pencil price marking on the cover that will wipe right off whenever I can pry it from his hands).

Honestly, I didn’t think he’d want to read them right away. I figured they’d be nice to put on his bookshelf and read “one day”. After all, these are big, huge, HEAVY books.  Lots of text and no pictures.  We’re batting a thousand on “the reasons young boys wouldn’t want to even open this book” list.

I had this little speech all made up for when I showed them to him.  I was going to tell him to remember that the book is ALWAYS better than the movie, that it has details and entire scenes that they don’t have time to include in the movie, and even though the book might *seem* overwhelming because it’s so big, it’s like eating an elephant. You don’t think about the whole elephant, you just eat one bite at a time.  Like reading the book… one small part at a time and before you know it, it’s done.

I needn’t have bothered making up the speech.  The instant I pulled them out of the bag he went nuts. I haven’t heard that many “oh thank you thank you thank you’s” in a looooooong time.

I gave him the speech anyway.
Because I’m a mom, and that’s what we do.

Besides, it was a really motivating and well-reasoned speech.  So there. 

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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