The reader

I'd always hoped that Anya would be one of those kids who could say as an adult: "I grew up in a house filled with books." Technology being what it is, the line is more likely to be: "I grew up in a house whose e-readers had unusually large cloud-based virtual libraries." But...you get the idea.

Anya, for her part, adores books, and has done ever since we showed her "Monkey see, monkey zoo," a soft fabric number full of textured, manipulable lions and penguins.

Nowadays, she'll often want to take a book to bed with her and flick through it as she drops off to sleep, much like her parents. Going to bed, she gets so excited by the prospect of some pre-sleep storytime that she'll often clear out an entire bookshelf in toddling back and forth with things she wants us to read to her. She can spend quite hefty periods of time just leaving through her books, pointing out zebras and butterflies and bees and other favourite animals.



It's the start of the habit of a lifetime.