How to Be a Literate Child

When I was in second grade, I read The Lost World because there was a dinosaur skull on the phone. My parents were like, Hey, our kid reads this stuff on his own. What a self starter, what a literate child. Small children are info vacuums hoovering up observations about the world at a terrifying pace. And before they can read, they have to come to understand things and break down meaning of words by studying illustrations.