Berit brings home these little reader books that are just way too simple for how she's been doing, and the other night I asked her about it.

"You should get Ms. Cohen to give you the next level of books... these are too easy."

"I can't... these are green... I'm in green, which is the easiest."

I pretty much stressed out about my daughter being mistakenly pigeon-holed into the low-reader group - a type-A parent's nightmare - until I was able to go to school today and learn from Ms. Cohen that Berit simply picks the books out of the green basket. She is perfectly capable of picking the pink basket books, and now she will.

As an added bonus, I was leaving the classroom when Berit was coming in with her class from lunch. She was pretty psyched to see me, and asked that I stay and read a book to her class (which I've done in the past). I was pretty bowled over by her excitement to have me do that and weighing it against the benefits of returning promptly to work, I decided to read the story. It turned out to be a little story called "Charlie Parker Played Be Bop," which I thought was just spectacular! The kids had a lot of fun with it, too.