In a world where 140-character tweet and abbreviated text messages dominate conversations with young people, a Louisiana kindergartener is defying the odds, reading 875 books in one school year.
Sophia Moss, a 5-year-old at T.S. Cooley Elementary School in Lake Charles, has astonished her parents and school librarian with her voracious reading. Sophia, with the help of her father, Carl, checks out several books at a time each week and before long is ready for another trip to the library.
"A lot of days I read books," Sophia said. "It's just a couple days I don't read. I just like reading."
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Cooley school librarian Mary Lanier said Sophia has made it through nearly all of the books in the kindergarten and first grade section of the school.
"I told Sophia . . . we're going to have to order more books for T.S. Cooley library because she's read so many of them and enjoys so many of them," Lanier told KPLC-TV. "This is very unusual for a kindergartner, especially to read this many books in a year's time. Very unusual."
Sophia’s father, Carl Moss, 53, told GoodMorningAmerica.com that her love for reading began with a "Sesame Street" character, and quickly grew into a full-fledged obsession for page-turning.
“It started with Elmo, and then we had a DVD of 'Hooked on Phonics' and she just loved it and started watching it at 2-and-a-half years old,” Moss said. "She learned her phonics, so we did sight words, and then we went to the LeapFrog books that we got at Walmart. Short vowels, long vowels, and probably by 3-and-a-half she was sight reading and doing small sentences.”
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According to National Center for Education Statistics, Sophia is well ahead of the curve of students much older. According to the NCES, only 53 percent of fourth graders report reading every day for fun. Those fourth graders score three percent higher on NAEP reading test against those students who never or hardly ever read.
Naturally, Sophia is aspiring to write a book of her own. The project, called "Sophia's Pet," is about a turtle with super powers.
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