A book about a squirrel

We have a graphic novel called "Bird and Squirrel On The Run".  In the last few weeks, the boys have decided they love the book and have been flipping through it all the time.  Peter found out that it's worth three points for his school reading program (he needs 4 points a month to get the reading prizes), so he's anxious to read it on his own.

While Peter's been at school, Grady and I have read this book two or three times all the way though.  It's at least 100 pages and takes a half hour to 45 minutes to read.  There's a lot of expressions in the book - lots of places where there are no words and you just have to infer what is happening.  I think the boys understand the bulk of it.

Then of course, if there's a book they really like, they draw pictures about the characters.  Here is each of the boys' interpretation of the squirrel.  He wears an acorn hat on his head because he's afraid of everything and what if a meteor falls on him from the sky.

Peter's picture is the bottom one.  Little squirrel ears sticking up from the top of the acorn hat.  Some eyebrows.  A waving hand and a tail.  He says "Hi.  I'm Squirrel."

Grady's picture is the top one.  A little square head and body.  An acorn hat.  Little arms and legs.  And he says "HELLO".  If you can see it, all of the letters for hello are in the word box.  I think Peter told him which letters to write, but Grady's still in the phase of "put the letters wherever they fit".

Which reminds me, Grady put up stickers on his calendar of all the days he's slept in his room.  He spelled his name in sticker letters, backwards, at the bottom of the calendar page.  I think he must still be at that place where just the letters being there makes the word.

And thinking of reading, Peter finished his first official "juvenile fiction" book from the library this weekend.  It took him probably 2-1/2 hours to read it (about two weeks worth of reading), but he did it.  He struggled over very few of the words.  I looked up how many words the book had in it and then explained about all these other books that have less words and now he's really excited to read some of the other interesting books that aren't quite as long as this one but still full chapter fiction books.

This book that he just finished is also worth three points at school once he takes a computer quiz on the content of the book.  He was so excited last month because he read nine points worth of books.  More than double the requirement for his monthly reading prize, so he got an extra special prize too.

His teacher says he's been doing great with the quizzes.  Most of the other kids in class that take these quizzes struggle to read the words for the questions and answers, but Peter just zooms through and gets 8-10 of the ten questions right without help from the teacher.