Daliyah, 4-year-old wiz kid, has read more than 1,000 books

At 4 years old, Daliyah Arana has read over 1,000 books, including a few at the college reading level.

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Daliyah Marie Arana has loved books since before she was born.

Her mother, Haleema Arana, would read books to Daliyah while she was pregnant, and then, after she was born, she loved listening to her older brother reading chapter books. By 18 months old, she could recognize the words in books her mother read to her.

“She wanted to take over and do the reading on her own,” Arana told The Washington Post. “It kind of took off from there. The more words she learned, the more she wanted to read.”

Daliyah was 2 years and 11 months old when she read her first book on her own.

Now, at 4 years old, Daliyah has read over 1,000 books, including a few at the college reading level. Daliyah’s impressive passion caught the attention of Carla Hayden, who leads the 14th Librarian of Congress, and Hayden invited the pre-schooler on Wednesday to come tour the library as a “librarian for the day.”

“She just kept saying how the Library of Congress is her most favorite, favorite, favorite library in the whole wide world,” Haleema Arana said.

Arana got the idea to start counting the number of books Daliyah read from the 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program, and since Daliyah has already passed that number, they hope to pass 1500 before Daliyah gets to Kindergarten, where she hopes to “help the teacher teach the other kids how to read.”

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