Horrible Harry and Cecily

For those of you with small children, and maybe even a few of you without, you probably know all about Horrible Harry.

For those of you who don't, "Horrible Harry" is a popular children's book series written by Suzy Kline. It is based on a 3rd grader named Harry, and his misadventures are told through the words of his best friend, Doug. Cecily didn't really know much about Horrible Harry either until this past November.

At the girls school, the library holds a "Reading For Fun" contest every year, in the fall, for grades 3-5th. However, this year the contest was for grades 2-4th. The premise of the contest is to get kids reading. During this time, children are encouraged to keep a log of how many pages they read every time they read. The log has to be signed by an adult. For every 50 pages read, and/or for every time they visit the public library, the child gets to put their name in a drawing to meet an author. Then at the end of the month, about 4 names from each grade level is drawn to meet the author. Some years the authors are very popular. For instance, last year Ariel got to meet Barbara Robinson author of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever".

This year the author was Suzy Kline. Cecily is not our big reader, she will read, but she doesn't really enjoy it. She loves being read to, but just to go and read by herself for hours on end, not so much Cecily. That would be Ariel. Give Cecily a math problem and she's there.

Well, we always encourage reading in our home, like most parents. We buy lots of books, go to the library etc. So when the contest came around, I encouraged Cecily to do it. So she did. However, unlike Ariel who in the past had tons of pages read, Cecily probably had maybe 200. We did not think that she would win. However, luck of the draw, her name was selected.

Cecily was thrilled to win and meet the author . I got to attend as well. The assembly was held on Dec. 5th in our school gym. Suzy Kline was great! She told the kids to never stop trying to reach their dreams even if you get rejections along the way. She told the children that she got over 100 rejection letters (which she still has in a folder labeled as such--she showed it to us and even read a few) before she found someone to publish her first book. It was a lot of fun listening about how she received many of her ideas for the books she has written.

Cecily received a free Horrible Harry book along with an Suzy Kline's autograph. Mrs. Saleeby, the librarian also gave each of the children a really good picture of themselves with the author and a close-up of the author, but I don't have a scanner so my poor pictures will have to do.

Here is Cecily with the group of students who won the contest from our school. Our school actually host this contest every year, so all the other children are the children who won from other schools.

OH, and guess what? Cecily likes Horrible Harry, not as much as Junie B. Jones, but close, and she is reading a little more. So hats of to reading and Hats off to Horrible Harry!