Area 7-year-old embarks on noble quest to read all 3,000 picture books in the library.
Every now and then, when the world is too much with us, I am able to find some small comfort in a very local, very sweet news story. So it is that I enjoyed today’s report of 7-year-old Inara Petroulis, of Ellsworth, Maine, who has boldly declared she is going to read every picture book in the local library—all 3,000 of them.
According to Inara’s mother, Sarah, the book-loving only child has been a regular at the public library from the time she was six months old. As Sarah told the Ellsworth American:
As an only child, Inara didn’t have a lot of opportunities to interact with other kids, so I brought her to programs and activities at the library to engage with other children and to help develop her love for reading.
Mother and child have been taking out fifteen books at a time “because that’s what fits in their book bag” and burning through seven or eight titles a night. At this rate, the whole challenge should take a little over a year.
I would just like to wish young Inara the best of luck on her quest, and thank her for briefly distracting me from the world’s news (and for reminding us all that kids rule).
