5-year-old reads 5,000 books before kindergarten
SLIPPERY ROCK — Glen Brunken, 5, is a record breaker. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but then you can’t judge a book by its cover, which is a particularly appropriate saying in Glen’s case.
On Thursday, Aug. 4, Glen, the son of Alex McNeill and Bill Brunken of Slippery Rock, read his 5,000th book, a goal he aimed achieve before starting kindergarten later this month.
His mother said she started Glen on the “1,000 Books Before Kindergarten” challenge in January 2020 when he was 3-years-old.
The challenge, backed by the 1,000 Books Foundation — a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity — has a simple concept: parents read a book to a newborn, infant, or toddler. The goal is to have read 1,000 books, which can be repeated, before the child starts kindergarten.
Perhaps it was the pandemic isolation or Glen’s eagerness to learn, but McNeill said, “He hit 1,000 in July 2020.” She’s kept track of his progress. As of Aug. 2, Glen had spent 24,319 minutes reading and looked over 134,786 pages. He was at 4,990 books at that time.
McNeill said her son read book number 5,000 at the New Castle Library Thursday. It was titled, “Even Superheroes Make Mistakes.”
“I like silly books, superhero books and dinosaur books,” said Glen. “A book about all of them would be my favorite.”
His interest in dinosaurs allowed his mother to read him a 300-page encyclopedia about dinosaurs, although she noted the pictures helped.
“We do a lot of picture books,” said McNeill.
Glen has amassed his book tally through his parents’ reading for at least an hour every night, library story times and a program at the Slippery Rock University/Student Government Association Preschool and Child Care Center on the SRU campus. His mother said she also checks out books from the Slippery Rock and New Castle libraries as well as from Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. The Carnegie Library lets McNeill check out 100 books at a time.
“We have school-age friends, those in kindergarten through fifth grade, come in and work on the reading skills of the preschoolers, so the preschoolers start to develop early literary skills,” said McKenna Rawson, an SRU junior early childhood and special education major and a teacher at the center. “And it creates a community, so they get to know each other.”
Another center teacher, Kayla Moio, an early childhood/special education graduate working on her reading specialist master’s degree, said Glen is beginning to recognize “sight words,” the words that appear more frequently than other words as Glen looks at text.
“It’s words like can and we. They know what they look like when they are reading a book,” said Moio. “Any exposure to reading is good exposure.”
In addition to learning to recognize words and letters, Glen’s exposure to 5,000 books is also teaching him physical book-handling skills, said Moio.
“And he can look at the pictures and make up his own stories,” said Rawson.
“He really has a love of learning,” said Moio.
“Both his parents encourage him and got engaged with him at an early age. I’m thankful to have him in my classroom,” said Rawson.
Moio and Rawson said Glen and his classmates will begin to learn to read in kindergarten using methods to associate sounds with letters and to combine letters to create different sounds.
But Glen’s exposure to books has already made him a discerning reader. In one of his Avengers superhero books, he noticed a mistake between the words and the illustration. The text said the Black Widow was storming off to look for Hawkeye, but the picture showed Hawkeye standing with the group.
“He’s paying attention,” said his mother, adding they will notify the publisher of the error.
