My kids do not share my love of reading. (I blame their engineer dad.)

It’s a chore to get them to read for even a little while, and I usually have to resort to witholding TV, video games, food, water… until they log 30 minutes. Of course, they spend at least five minutes of the 30 asking me if it’s been 30 minutes yet. (Parents all over are nodding their heads in sympathetic agreement.)

So when I saw this bookmark with a timer on it that adds up the minutes or counts them down, I had one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-that?-I-could’ve-made-a-million-dollars moments.

It’s called Mark-My-Time bookmark and you can get them at bookstores, Target, amazon.com, etc., for under 10 bucks. It might not make them read more, but at least I won’t have to check my watch every five minutes…