One of the things that Sweetie and I have done right is reading to our son SuperPizzaBoy. He had a story read to him the day he was born and every night at bedtime his entire life. He has not missed 10 bedtime stories his entire life. We have done the gamut from “Goodnight Moon” to “Treasure Island” to Bible Stories to “Hank the Cowdog.” . The only thing that I have refused to read to him is Bionicle and Pokemon stories.

When he was younger I read to him maybe 80% of the time. Now its about 40% of the time. He seems to prefer his Mom reading to him. I’ll admit she is much sweeter and better smelling than I am. Still he lets me read me read to him some. It is one of the highlights of my day.

Our most recent book is “Children of the Lamp, the Akenaten Adventure.” I read about 60% of it to him, Sweetie some, and SPB read a lot of it on his own.

I think that has made him a reader which will always serve him well.

It is about two kids, John and Philippa, who find out when they have their wisdom teeth pulled that they are genies (djinn in the book). They learn how to grant wishes, and spend time in bottles, and all sorts of other mystical powers.

They soon find themselves in Egypt dealing with the balance of power between good and evil in the world and the evil ghost of Akhenaten. I don’t want to spoil it but their is plenty of adventure in here for kids and it is written well enough to keep Dad interested.

This book is excellent for reading aloud. The voice cues are appropriate. One of my pet peeves is dialogue that reads “Lets get out of the cave, go down the road, and cross the bridge”, he whispered. So that you find out you are supposed to whisper the line when you get through reading it. Drives me crazy. This book lets you know up front how to read such lines. I just believe that when you are reading to a kid you have to sell it. The more over the top the reader is, the more SPB likes it.

I recomend this book highly for kids who love adventure. I give it four stars out of four.