Reading, so much reading

I became a bookworm sometime in the middle of elementary school. I think I became so avid a reader partly out of escapism, for my home life had some issues. For instance, our father thought we shouldn't have friends over (he seemed to have some strange idea that we should be spending all our free time cleaning and weeding), so if he came home early and we had friends over (with mom's permission), we'd have to sneak them out the back door or risk his wrath.

Dd9 and dd7 read very well, but neither of them have taken to burying themselves in books the way I used to. I was so engrossed in books that I would aggravate my parents by sometimes not hearing them and not doing what they said. I remember one week, probably in fourth grade, my father punished me by banning me from reading for a week. Being a conscientious girl, I felt like I was even being naughty when I read signs along the side of the road that week; it was truly one of the worst weeks of my life.

Back to my kids. The summer reading contest at the local library started yesterday. They are constantly reading. The two oldest have already earned the first prize. Since they have to read in 20-minute increments to fill in the spaces on their contest gamecards, it keeps happening that I interrupt them with inconvenient requests right when they're in the middle of a timed reading period. So I leave them alone and forget to come back to them at just the right break in their reading intervals. I'm very pleased about all the reading going on, but I wish they would be more available to do the little chores that I periodically need of them.