Since September, Ian's teacher has assigned one chapter of a Ready Freddy book and one page of comprehension questions every evening. Ian had some troubles with the books at first. Idiomatic expressions stumped him. When Freddy was daydreaming in class, the teacher called on him and "brought him back to earth." Ian wanted to know why Freddy was on the moon.

But we worked through the idiomatic expressions and the other language-based problems, and Ian's reading ability improved dramatically. We snuggled on the sofa every evening and took turns reading out loud. Ian loved these books. In fact, he spent hours every evening drawing his own Ready Freddy books.

They typically started with a scene from the real book.

And then the characters morph into robots and have a big fight. 

So, we've gone through Ready Freddy, Books 1-5. But this week, the teacher asked the kids to move onto Book 15, because it's about Thanksgiving. Well, Ian was devastated. Both Steve and I spent hours last night trying to get Ian to read Book 15, but he couldn't do it. In fact, he cried and cried, because the books were out of order. It was time to read Book 6 and not Book 15. How could the teacher do something so horrible as to switch the order? Changing the order of books was AGAINST THE RULES!

He went to bed on Monday night sniffling. The book was unread, and Ian moaned that he was going to get into BIG trouble at school.

Last night, I tried again. And there were more tears. He wanted to me to call up the author, Abby Klein, and explain to her that this TRAVESTY was happening. What is her number? Where is she? How can we convince this stupid teacher that she is breaking the rules?

He drew a picture of himself explaining to Abby Klein that his teacher wanted him to read Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 15. Abby Klein is saying, "What the?"

The he drew a picture of Abby Klein sitting at her desk and writing the books in the correct order.

It took three hours to finally get Ian on the sofa for reading time. Once the book was open, and I had him sitting next to me, he finally relaxed and listened to the words. He did it. We read two chapters and did the worksheet.

These are the types of victories that define my life at the moment.