'Reading is our snuggle-up time'

Rosie: ​“What’s your best time to sit and read with Nana? 

Lola: ​“All the time.’ 

Rosie: ​“All the time! And what do you do?” 

Lola: ​“I squish up.” 

Rosie: ​“You squish up! You don’t give me any space, you’re squished up into the tiniest of little spaces. What do you do when I’m having my coffee in the morning? 

Lola: ​“I always ask for a book.” 

Rosie: ​“What do you say?” 

Lola: ​“Nana can I have a book please?” 

Rosie: ​“And then what do you say?” 

Lola: ​“That your coffee’s still too hot.” 

Rosie: ​“It’s too hot! And you snuggle up…” 

Lola: [giggles] 

Rosie: ​“She’ll squeeze into the tiniest of spaces beside me and she’ll arrive with always her small stack of books. 

“And then it will come…

‘Nana your coffee’s still too hot. Will you read me another book?’ 

If we don’t finish the book, we can always put a bookmark in it and we’ll read it after school. 

“Lola has lived with us since she was a year old, but we read to her from the day she was born. 

“If I could just really bottle up that closeness and just the quiet moments of laughter and the feeling of just being completely together, I truly believe that more families would really be encouraged to read with their children. 

“When I came home with a handful of books from BookTrust, it just felt like Christmas and a birthday rolled into one. Lola was beside herself with excitement. 

“There was one book in particular that she wanted me to read, and we read it every night for a very long time. It was about an octopus. 

“That book sparkled so many conversations about all the things that an octopus can do. Just all the colours in the page, choosing our favourite octopus on the final page. It was beautifully illustrated, and Lola would spend the whole time studying each page, just pointing out some of the things she enjoyed or she wanted to try. And every night she just noticed something new. 

“Another book she brought home from school was so funny. You could easily predict what was coming next. And I ended up laughing while trying to read it and Lola would scold me: 

‘Nana, stop laughing!’ That’s what she would say to me. 

“I can’t sit down any time of the day without Lola asking me to read a book, and I really love that. I just hope she keeps that love of reading forever. 

“She loves going to the library, both at school and in our hometown. She even has her own library card, which we take with us every single Saturday, because after trampolining, she likes to just go and spend half an hour in the library as well. 

“Lola is now reading on her own. She can recognise words in more grown-up books and with the help of illustrations, understanding the story being told. 

“Recently, she read a joke from a yoghurt packet all by herself, and she was so proud, and it actually really made me really proud of her.” 

[Rosie and Lola read and talk about Delly Duck: Why a little chick couldn’t stay with his birth mother, by Holly Marlow]