How Can I Get My Young Reader to 10,000 Hours of Reading?

By now the advantages of practicing something for 10,000 hours are widely publicized. My summer vacation to visit my family has turned into an experiment to get my little sister to become a voracious reader. After she re-read a few favorite books she was ready for a real challenge: the Harry Potter series.

We picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone from the local library. After a quick practice read-aloud and the five-finger test we dove into reading HP together. The motivation was there, but it was definitely a challenge. The beginning of the book is filled with strange vocabulary and some British-English that is quite confounding for a young fledgling reader (YFR). But I realized that the great thing about her having picked this book was that if she came to love it, she could just go and go and go ... . At a total of a whopping 4,167 pages, the series puts YFR well along the path to the magic 10,000 rule.

I used to disparage the HP series since I didn't see how the books were any better than the highly entertaining movies. I have learned and changed my mind. Reading the HP books is big. 4,167 pages of anything is a huge investment of time and attention in our impatient society. It deserves special recognition. It's way more of an accomplishment than the participation awards we give out for playing on a team and it ranks up there with earning a rank in the Boy Scouts. So I've created my own HP Reading Certificate and passed them out to the first 3 HP readers I saw. See it here:

If you have read the complete series and would like your own certificate to prove it, leave your email in the comments and I will try to pass one on soon.