Annie and Snowball and the Prettiest House: For the part of you that wants "pretty"

Title: Annie and Snowball and the Prettiest House
Author: Cynthia Rylant
Illustrator: Sucie Stevenson
Age Range: Ages 4-8
Genre: Ready to read

Each child learns to read at a different rate.  I know this.  But being the teacher/competitor/gunner mom that I am, sometimes accepting the different rates of reading is very very hard for me.  In a conversation I had with a former grad school colleague of mine, who has a son slightly older than my daughter, he surprised me by saying that he wasn't worried that his son wasn't reading fluently yet, as his vocabulary excellent and he had great sentence structure when he spoke.  This friend is a high school English teacher, as I was, and I exclaimed, "HOW CAN YOU NOT WANT HIM TO READ YET?"  His answer, "Because he will eventually do it, and there isn't any point freaking out about it."

I do freak out about it.  I worry about it, ponder it, and think about it.  I spent many hours determined that my oldest would read before she started kindergarten, and she did.  This was one of the series she loved the most and it really helped her gain confidence in her reading.  She has since moved way beyond this series, but every once a while, she lovingly picks it up and reads it in under five minutes.  It was a great jumping point for her to get into reading and I am happy to say she is an excellent reader, not because of this book, but because of the wide variety of books she read at that young age.

I love Annie and Snowball because the illustrations are super cute, the story very fun, and the characters lovable.  In this book, Annie lives in home next door to her favorite cousin and best friend Henry.  Although she loves her home, loves her father (no mother in this book), and loves where she lives, she wishes that the home were "prettier."  Flowers in a coffee can, although nice are not pretty enough for her.  In this book she discovers how to express her opinion and get what she wants in terms of decorating rights over the home.

As a note, Annie is EXTREMELY girly.  She wears tights and dresses almost everywhere she goes.  That is her style.  She likes fancy, pretty, lacy, frilly.  This may be one of the reasons my daughter liked the book so much as that is my daughter's style as well, but aside from her peculiarities in terms of dress, Annie is extremely sweet.  She does have a rather unusual pet, Snowball, who is a bunny, but even their relationship is very cute.  I admit it.  This book is CUTE.

On another note of kids learning to read at different rates, I have another daughter who started reading on her own at three.  Now four years old, Annie and Snowball is already in her past.  However, my son, who is 2 1/2,  is nowhere near reading and barely knows the letters of the alphabet.   I've encouraged reading very similarly with all of them with very different results.  They all love books however, and love sitting down for a read, so I'll take that as having put in some good foundation.