My Font-loving Five Year Old

I'd like to share something my darling daughter did for me the other day; I'm so proud of her.

We were cataloging our curriculum closet at school during a staff meeting. My daughter always attends the staff meetings with me and usually plays in the background (they are held, after all, in a preschool classroom). Well, with books all around her, she had tons of fun "reading" (she's almost 5) but even that lost her interest eventually. As my daughter watched all of us adults look through the titles and then write something on a piece of paper, she decided she would like to write too.

I had established a mental list of the books we would need to add to our home collection - how can you look through piles of books and NOT want to have them all for yourself? Anyway, I put my daughter to work writing the list for me. I said, "Could you copy the title of this book for me on this piece of paper?" I expected her to write the title in her own handwriting, which is pretty good for her age. I knew I'd need to decipher the extra and/or missing spaces that she's still working on.

To my surprise, my daughter actually copied the font of the book title. It took me a minute to realize why her "f" looked weird, then her "Y" looked weird. I almost said, "Why are you writing so wonky?" but then I looked at the book cover. Her "f" and her "Y," as well as all the other letters in the title, mimicked the serif font of the title. Seriously? I mean, really, just look at the "r" in Butler. How amazing is my girl?

I have always been drawn to the differences of fonts, the effect a font can have on a project... Whether it's in web design or paper crafting, fonts matter in my work. I am amazed (and basically stoked!) that my daughter has an eye for them already. How cool is that?