My little niece turned 10 last thursday. I had asked her mother what sort of presents she wanted. Mom said, “Books! She’s not reading enough!”
Well, I’m a voracious reader, but I know that books have a lot of competition these days. Also, I was this little girl’s nanny for five years, and I know her pretty well.
So I went down to my local Comic store, and got her a nice thick “Emily The Strange” book. On the back it said, “Science! Magic! And rock ‘n’ roll!”
She was very excited. She read me the first 10 pages on the spot. (“Aliah,” I said, “have you ever seen the word ‘compressor’ before?” “No,” she said, “I sounded it out.”)
I saw her mother again the next day. She told me, “When I got up this morning, she was already awake – reading!”
Heh, heh. My favorite Emily cartoon is the one with her doing the classic Uncle Sam pose, saying: “I WANT YOU — to leave me alone!”
I have an idea for maybe a couple of years down the line.
Buy her a kindle, and load it up with thousands of classic public domain ebooks. I found Amazon’s free stuff downloaded pretty much everything Mark Twin ever wrote, for instance. And I even decided I would try some Charlotte and Emily Bronte, and some other chick-bait. And all of Lincoln’s speeches, and a bunch of very funny stuff from H L Mencken, and …
Just tell he that if something doesn’t gab her, try another.