They're really into the world around them.

It's more of a chore to keep them interested in reading when they enter middle school and high school.

Diabetes is passed that way -- over and down, like a knight in chess.

It takes experience to know what is a catastrophe (Richard Hughes, 'A High Wind in Jamaica'),

They had started one of those wish-fulfillment kids’ adventure books, where the boy hero has exactly the qualities he needs to triumph, at every moment… She’d been bored and annoyed, and at one point she tried to explain to Sebastian why it wasn’t her favor-ite of his books. But Sebastian had loved the book unreservedly. Why hadn’t she just read the fucking thing with gusto and relished every moment with her son? Why had she brought her adult judgment and professional story opinions to a book her kid loved? Of course the child hero should always triumph! Who wanted a kids’ book to feel like real life? Real life was fucking intolerable.

She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was.