Forget your latest book reading goals. Daliyah Marie Arana is the definition of #ReadingGoals. The Georgia 4-year-old has read more than 1000 books and she isn’t even in kindergarten yet.
Daliyah, a pre-schooler at The Gainesville Academy, read her first book at age 2. Haleema Arama, Daliyah’s mother, says she began reading to her daughter in the womb and it continued after birth when she’d overhear her siblings being read to.
“And I have two other small children too,” Haleema Arana told the Gainseville Times. “So she’d heard us reading stories to them, as well. We would literally read every day, about 15-20 minutes a day. By the time she was 18, 19 months, we realized she could recognize a lot of the words. And we kind of took it from there.”
Mrs. Arana posted a video to Youtube of a 2 years and 11 month old Daliyah reading her first book on her own.
When Daliyah was about 2 1/2, her parents signed her up for the Georgia 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten Program, which challenges children to read 1,000 books before the first day of kindergarten.
Daliyah told the Gaineseville Times,“I like to check out books every day. And I want to teach other kids to read at an early age, too.”
The superstar bookworm dreams of being a librarian and opening her own library. Daliyah is well on her way after being “Librarian For The Day” and hanging out at the Library of Congress – the world’s largest library recently with Carla Hayden, the 14th Librarian of Congress. Hayden is also the first woman and African American appointed to the position.
Hayden wrote that “it was fun” to have Daliyah as a librarian for the day on Twitter.
It was fun to have 4-year-old Daliyah Marie Arana of Gainesville, GA as "Librarian For The Day." She's already read more than a 1,000 books. pic.twitter.com/MQfwlUrakO
— Carla Hayden (@LibnOfCongress) January 11, 2017
Since hitting her 1000 book goal, Daliyah is now reading college-level texts! A recent video shows her reading the speech, “The Pleasure of Books,” by William Lyon Phelps.
To learn more about 1000 Books Before Kindergarten, click here.
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