Thankfully, our kids are proud to be nerds. We're so glad that (at least so far) the stigma of being smart is nothing of which to be ashamed.
Esme has really taken to reading over the last year, and we are sometimes surprised at her choice of reading material. Typically I try to choose shorter chapter books for her, so she has uncomplainingly read several of The Littles books, some of the Bailey School Kids stories, and some of the Magic Tree House series. However, lately she has been wandering off the "approved" reading list, choosing her own material. It started with her diving headfirst into the Charlie Brown 'Cyclopedia set from my childhood; then she moved on to the Children's Dictionary, which she spent countless hours looking through and tracking Jim or me down to explain her most newly discovered word. A few days ago she chose The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe from her brother's bookcase, and has been plowing through it, faithfully dog-earing a page every time she puts it down. My five-year-old daughter is reading C. S. Lewis.
Aidan, while he prefers the Lego catalog and his Star Wars and Indiana Jones novelizations to most other reading material for entertainment's sake, also has his little quirks. At school he has been working very hard to read Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, as it is worth a lot of Reading Counts points. I tried to read the first chapter and it is practically incomprehensible - but he's reading it nonetheless. The local Rotary Club gave the third graders up-to-date dictionaries yesterday, which include all sorts of reference information - maps, the periodic table, etc. - and he has been perusing that as well.
Hooray for reading, the gateway to everything else.