875 Books Read in School Year by Kindergartner: 'Reading Makes Me Happy' (VIDEO)
Sophia Moss, 5, set a new record for herself by reading a total of 875 books throughout the school year. Moss' passion for reading meant that her school had a hard time keeping up with her requests for new reading material.
"I told Sophia, I said 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," school librarian Mary Lanier told WAFB in Baton Rouge.
"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' father, Carl, told Good Morning America. "She learned her phonics, so we did sight words, and then we went to the Leap Frog books that we got at Wal-Mart … short vowels, long vowels, and probably by 3-and-a-half she was sight reading and doing small, small sentences."
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But that desire to learn and read only grew as Sophia did, and soon that's all she wanted to do.
"Every day when I brought her to school in the morning, I'd go get her like two or three books, and the librarian suggested, 'Why don't you get five?' and then she said, 'Why don't you get 10?' The library at T.S. Cooley is excellent. I carried a little blue bag with me, and I'd go and refresh her books to bring home with her," Carl explained.
"She'd be reading instead of sleeping," Carl told KPLC News. "She loves to read and she does it all the time."
Sophia's reading habit may have to slow down this summer, as the family is planning to travel quite a bit. However, Carl hopes that an upcoming trip to the Ukraine will allow Sophia to read as much as she wants on the plane.
"I just like reading," Sophia said. "Reading makes me happy. I read like six a night," she told "Good Morning America."
Watch Sophia talk about her love of books here:
