"Excuse me, is this the E Room?"

"Eh?"

Ainslie nearly has the entire Letter Factory dvd memorized. Maybe because she watches it at least once a day; this morning she watched it twice in a row. I get so excited watching her perfect her knowledge of letters and sounds, and pick out words she has memorized, mostly from the BOB books. She has also taken to talking to herself a lot, and these little 'lessons' about letters or snippets from Sesame Street are what she babbles about.

I have come to realize that what makes me so excited about her pre-reading isn't the fact that she is ahead of the curve for her age (well, ok, so that is part of my excitement), it is really the fact that I can begin to share a passion with someone I love. I love to read, and it makes me so happy to think that Ainslie may very well be a reader too.

To me, there is a chasm between People Who Read and People Who Don't Read. People who read, in my opinion, have higher expectations from life, because we know all these fabulous stories about wonderful characters and exciting places that I can't imagine life without. I hate to think of my life so far without my travels and tribulations with the Ingalls family. I feel like I really know more about the holocaust than what history books teach because I experienced it with Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom and Elie Weisel. I've had wonderful adventures in Oz with the Baum books and also with Wicked. Of course, my friend Harry P. has given me hours and hours of adventure, and so has my pal Bridget Jones.

I love the language and double entendre of Shakespeare, the tragic story of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the unfair treatment of Hester Prynne.

I could go on and on about how much richer a love of reading has made my life. I have pretended to be a princess with Sara Carew as I suffered through my own girlhood "crises". I've traveled across the Atlantic inside a peach. I've seen redemption from a guillotine, and cried tears of bitterness, tragedy, loss, and laughter. I once got myself caught in grade school giggling at something funny in an outside reading book that I was reading instead of paying attention in class. My teacher was actually happy; she said that that was one of the happiest sounds she knew.

So, yes, I hope Ainslie is an early reader. There simply is not enough time to go on all the adventures life and the library have to offer.