One night in Maine, I was reading:

stranger-in-the-woods

I’d been telling him about the book in the previous days, and he was very interested in this man who’d abandoned society to live alone. Max was playin,g but saw me reading. He stopped and said, “I hope one day I can read like you.”

“What do you mean”, I asked.

“That I don’t have to … ” He didn’t know how to explain.

“Sound out the words?”

“Yes, that I can read without sounding out the words.”

He wants to be able to read to himself, not aloud all the time. It takes him minutes to read a page, if he can read all the words by himself. It must be agonizing. It must make him not want to read.

To encourage him, I told him that I don’t always understand everything I read, and that I must oftentimes read sentences to myself more than once.

I just feel so bad for him. He really wants to read. He sees the enjoyment it can bring.