Reading with a Pencil

Red Head is reading The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood at night before bed. It's not abridged, as requested, so she often pops downstairs after she's been put to bed with questions like "what's a wold?" or "how do you harry a village?"

This was really getting in the way of my getting caught up on Hero's ('quick! Pause! oh no, Claire's head is getting sawed open! Switch inputs!') and interfering with her sleep as well, so one night I told her to just circle words she didn't understand and we'd look them up later.

Tonight, I flipped through her book. Many words were circled. Words you'd expect like shoon, nag, and whereof. Many phrases were circled - things like "wayside cross nigh" and "thieving magpie". Then she started writing little comments.

Next to the phrase "that I could pluck thee bare" she wrote "no feathers Robin! Hello? Hello!"

And after what must have been a rough spot for poor Robin, a paragraph starts "Then merry Robin..." and she wrote, "Still happy Robin? Really?"

Or next to a sentence with a new word to her, "Seriously, what IS a stile?"

But my favorite is one she wrote to a villain, "Uh oh! Made a mistake conn-guy!!" (gotta work on that spelling)