The question
It was my sister Kristen who asked. We were at my parents' house for Sunday dinner, and my son Eli, who is 9, was explaining to my dad why the ocean is salty. Rain wears down rocks, rivers carry the salt out to sea, and the sun takes the water back up and leaves the salt behind. He was using a dinner roll as the rock.
Kristen leaned over while I was stacking plates and said, very quietly, "Okay. Who are you paying? Is it that tutoring place by the grocery store?"
I laughed, and she kept a straight face. "Jess. Last Easter he hid in the bathroom so he wouldn't have to do his reading log. I was there."
I said, "Nobody. I promise." She gave me the look she's been giving me since we were kids, the one that means she knows I'm holding out on her.
I drove home that night smiling. Back in the spring, I'd have laughed at anyone who said that about my son.
Last spring
Last spring Eli was in third grade, and we were at war over reading. Twenty minutes a night, signed by a parent. Most nights it took an hour to get those twenty minutes out of him, and a few nights, I'm not proud of this, I signed it after five.
He'd come home, drop his backpack by the door and go straight to videos. One night in March I went in at ten to check on him and found the screen glowing under his blanket. He was watching a man explain how volcanoes erupt.
I stood in the doorway thinking, it's ten o'clock and he's choosing to learn about volcanoes. He wants to know how things work, and right now a screen is the only thing answering him.
I didn't complain about it to anyone. Every parent I know is fighting the same fight, and mine didn't feel special enough to mention.
The shelf in his closet
When I finally cleaned out his closet, I found a whole shelf of things I'd bought to make him smarter. A microscope still sealed in the box. Two workbooks with the first four pages done. A crystal-growing kit. A pack of flash cards from his grandma that he'd turned into a card game with rules nobody else understood.
Most of it I'd bought the same way. Somebody online said it was what kids his age needed, I believed them, and it ended up on that shelf.
I didn't want to do that again. So I started reading, the way I do at work when a patient asks me about something new.
What I was looking for
Most of what I found for his age looked like homework with a cartoon on the cover.
Eli asks about a hundred questions a day. Why is the sky blue, why do leaves change color. I wanted something that answered the kind of questions he already had, in words a 9-year-old would read on his own, with lots of pictures.
A mom from his class told me about a book called 10,000 Whys, from a company called Prime Naturals. It's an encyclopedia for kids 6 to 12, built around real questions kids ask, with short answers and big cartoon drawings. Space, dinosaurs, the human body, oceans, weather, volcanoes. In the preview pictures I saw a page called "Why can water put out fires?" and thought, he has asked me that exact question in the car.
It looked like something a kid would pick up without being told to. That was all I needed it to do.
The rule I made for myself
Before it came, I made myself one rule. I would not hand it to him or put it on his reading log, and I would never say "you should read this." I'd said that about every single thing on that closet shelf.
When it arrived I put it on the coffee table next to the TV remote, cover up, and kept my mouth shut.
That was the whole plan. It felt a little silly, honestly. Leaving a book on a table and hoping isn't much of a plan.
The first four days
The first day, he walked right past it. The second day, he set his juice box on it.
On the third night I almost cracked. I had the sentence ready: "Did you see the new book?" But I'd made the rule, and I'm stubborn about rules.
On the fourth night I went to turn off his light, and the tablet was on the charger in the kitchen, which never happens. He was in bed with the book open on his knees, reading about dreams. He didn't look up. He just said, "Mom, did you know everybody dreams every night, even if they don't remember it?"
I said "huh," like it was no big deal, closed his door, and stood in the hallway grinning like an idiot.
The first person who noticed
The first person to say something out loud was his teacher, Mrs. Alvarez, at the fall parent-teacher conference. She has taught fourth grade for over twenty years and she does not hand out compliments. She said, "Eli asks the best questions in my class. Last week he wanted to know how airplanes stay up. Where is he getting all this?"
I told her he'd been reading. She said, "Well, keep doing whatever you're doing."
That night I scrolled back to a photo I'd texted Kristen in March as a joke: his nightstand at midnight, the tablet glowing on the charger. The next morning I took a new one from the same spot. Same lamp, same cup, and now the book, with a flashlight next to it and sticky notes poking out of the pages he wants to show me.
I haven't shown the two photos to many people. I think I'm afraid of jinxing it.
Back at Sunday dinner
By the time Kristen asked, he'd been reading the same book, on and off, since April. He's on his second time through, and he still finds pages he swears he skipped.
I didn't explain it properly at dinner. Partly because Eli was sitting right there, and partly because I wasn't sure she'd believe me.
The next morning she texted me. It just said: "Seriously. Who?"
So I told her everything and sent her the name of the book. She wrote back, "That's it?" and I wrote, "That's it."
Then she asked if I'd handle the twins' Christmas presents this year, since I "clearly know something."
Our Black Friday list
This Black Friday I'm doing most of our gift list with the same book. Nora, who is 6 and tired of borrowing her brother's copy (he keeps his sticky notes in it and she isn't allowed to touch them). Kristen's twins, Maddie and Leo. My brother Tom's son Jonah, who is 11 and will roll his eyes for about a day. And my goddaughter, Aria.
That's five kids, so I'm using their Buy 3, Get 2 Free set: five books with free shipping, and two of the five cost me nothing. Kristen is getting the Buy 2, Get 1 Free set for her husband's side of the family: three books, also shipped free.
Eli still watches his videos, and I'm fine with that. Most nights now there's a flashlight on under his door.
And when anyone asks me who's tutoring him, I tell them nobody. He has a lot of questions, and now he has somewhere to look them up.
