Lily's Library

I am currently reading The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and really appreciated the story about a little girl named Erin and how her mother had made a journal of her experience with books beginning at birth. Its too late for me to start so early, but I thought I would still give it a try and see if I notice patterns of success or frustration in the whole process of learning to read, beginning that first day a book is put into those chubby hands and that wet little mouth.
Lily, now two and half, has always loved books better than any toy. When she first was able to reach out an touch, she loved the Touch and Feel books. By the time she was eighteen months old she would sit on the couch by herself for forty-five minutes with a stack of books on her left hand side and carefully read through each one and put them in a pile on her right side. She would tell the story in her own language and every once in a while we would recognize a phrase that was on the page of the book she was looking at, like "Down down down!" from Cat and Mouse in the Rain by Tomek Bogacki. She then went through a phase that lasted about nine months where she would not let anyone read a book to her, but wanted to read familiar stories all by herself, and if you messed up her piles, she would let you know! This show of independence in reading is very encouraging to me. I am curious to see if it evolves into independent reading at a young age. My prediction is that it will, but I am willing to be wrong. I do not plan on pushing her into it sooner than she is ready.
Now she is starting to want to discover new, longer books and will tolerate me as a part of it since she does not know the stories to these new books by heart yet. Although the majority of the "new" books have plots that are too lengthy for her to understand (I think), she is still finding so much enjoyment in the language. One of her new favorites is The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese. She gets so excited for the phrase, "La la la la lei!" that when I start the read the last sentence on the page that is before the page that has this on it, she gets off of my lap and starts jumping up and down saying, "Wa wa wa wei!" with the exact sing-song intonation I use.
Her vocabulary is hilariously filled with common phrases and idioms such as, "I can't see and thing," "I can never go to bed," "That's a great song," and "He's a big old baby!" but she still cannot create her own grammatically correct sentence. We do not watch very much TV, so I think these most likely come from her literary exposure. It will be exciting to see where her love for books takes us in the coming months and years!