The library has become noticeably busier this week, now that schools in England have finally closed for the summer. The girls and I have been feeling very sorry for all these English kids who are still at school six weeks after Spanish summer holidays started. (Irish holidays aren’t much shorter than Spanish holidays. How I relished those long holidays as a child).

With so much going on in the library, I’ve had to move to a different table, this time near the front. I sit at one of two round tables; the other is reserved for signing children up for the Summer Reading Challenge.

All morning, mothers arrive with their kids, mostly in the 5 to 7 age range. There are laid back chilled out mums, frazzled harried mums, mums who’ve been bringing their kids to the library since they were born, mums who’ve only stepped into this library for the first time today.

The young member of staff assigned to the task of signing kids up is great. She focuses on the kids, asks their name and how to spell it, asks if they know their birthday. She finds a point of interest in almost every kid – catches something they say or some object they have – and lets them know she’s their ally. For one kid, it’s Pokémon – asks the kid which is their favourite and then says she likes that one too. For another kid, it’s their favourite colour (green), for another, a book they like. Did I already mention how great libraries and librarians are?

All of this takes me back more than a decade, when we still lived in England and the girls signed up for the Summer Reading Challenge, two years running, if I’m not mistaken. They had to set a goal for how many books they’d read (one six year old this morning said he was going to read six hundred billion million). I can’t remember what the goal was now – five maybe? Or maybe that’s too low. I can’t remember.

Anyway, the point is, Lily was the reader. She’d picked up reading early, read her first Harry Potter book at five. (Looking back now, even I can’t believe that’s true, but it is). So the ‘challenge’ part of the Summer Reading Challenge didn’t really exist for her. But for Katie, it really was a challenge – for her and for me. I despaired of her ever reading. She refused. She wailed. She simply would not read. By the time she was nine, I was resigned to the fact that she was never going to read. I don’t mean she was illiterate, but she was so halting and uncomfortable with reading that I had decided that maybe it just wasn’t for her.

She turned 10, then 11, then 12. Two summers ago, just before she turned 13, she discovered the joy of reading. It started with a graphic novel and then reading a novel by the same author. Once she got going, there was as no stopping her. She now puts Lily and me in the ha’penny place. This year so far, she’s read more than 20 novels. The first place she wanted to go to when we arrived in the UK was a bookshop. Here are her books just for the few weeks we’re here:

The summer reading challenge now? Figuring out how we’ll stay under our luggage limit, thanks to all of Katie’s books!