Meet Daliyah Arana, the 4-year-old Hall County girl that has already read more than 1,000 books!
Recently, Daliyah has received national attention after she was invited to the Library of Congress by Carla Hayden, the 14th Librarian of Congress, to be a “Librarian for the Day” in Washington, D.C.
Just this week, Daliyah even received a letter from House Speaker Paul Ryan congratulating her on reading more than 1,000 books before even entering kindergarten. There was even a stretch of three days recently that news trucks were at Daliyah’s Gainesville home interviewing her and spreading her message of literacy.
“When she was about a year old she already knew her alphabet forward and backward. Then when she was about 18 months old, she would literally be reading along with me,” said Daliyah’s mother Haleema Arana. “She would take a little book and start reading, I would help her occasionally with words and from that point we started working on sight words and she just picked it up. Now she is working on the big sight words.”
Daliyah is the daughter of Haleema and xxx Arana and has two siblings; Delilah and Deigo. She will attend Fair Street Elementary for kindergarten.
We are so honored that Daliyah and her mother Haleema spent time recently talking to us about Daliyah’s accomplishments, we are certain there are big things to come in the future for Daliyah!
Question: Do you want to write books one day?
Answer: “I want to write books about…I love dinosaurs, I love paleontologists, I love reading about; there’s so much to choose from! I love elephants and piggies.”
Q: What are some of your favorite books?
A: “My favorite book is ‘A Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog.'”
Q: What is your favorite food?
A: “I really like crackers.”
Q: What was it like when you visited Washington, D.C. and the Library of Congress?
A: “It was fun, fun but really cold. We went into the back of the White House. We went on a tour to the Jefferson Building. I’m going on ‘Little Big Shots,’ (a show filmed in Hollywood) with someone named Steve Harvey, he’s really funny.”
Q: What do you like to do for fun besides read?
A: “I mostly like cleaning up. We mostly do crafts and we have to clean up the paper.”
 
The Faces of Hall County is a project to showcase the amazing people that live or work in our community. If you would like to nominate an interesting person to be featured please email: babernathy@gonorton.com.