Reputation Management of a Second Grader

After a few lost library book fees and a back-pack weighing in at 20lbs...we recently advised Mason that instead of 8 library books, we'd like to set the limit at 3 library books checked out at one time. The reaction? Complete melt-down of tears and distress.
What? Did he have his heart set on reading that many books every week? Why the tears?
Well, after more discussion, we discovered that the number of books you take home is, in a sense, a badge of honor among his buddies. Mason feared that if he returned his eight books and only checked out three that his friends would assume that he was a bum who didn't return his books and now has been limited by the librarian to only three books...how embarrassing! Why was he so concerned about this? At the library, they announce out-loud when a kid is limited to a certain # of books due to fees or whatever...he thought that his limit of books would be announced. As well, he was concerned that by only checking out 3 books his buddies would label him as a less than avid reader...again, what a blow to his reputation of being a great reader! So we had to come up with a strategy:
1) Anyone can "check out" books...but do they actually read them? We reasoned with him that he was, in effect, checking books out and simply carrying them around for a week...seems silly to create a burden of a 20lb bookbag for nothing.
2) We did the math:
- How many hours do you have available to read each day? Mason replies "1 hour"
- How many days are in a week? Mason says "7 days"
- How long, on average, does it take you to read a book? Mason says "2 days...so 2 hours"
- So let's see how many can you read in a week? How many 2-day books can you fit into a week? Mason thinks... "3 books! with a little extra time left over."
He smiled...and has his equation ready in case his friends taunt him with "why do you only have 3 books? can't you read better than that?" ...now he can point out how ridiculous it is to be a walking library shelf every week.
3) If you are choosing 3 challenging books per week that you enjoy...who cares what anyone else thinks?
He didn't go for that last one...I mean it has taken most of us 30 years to realize it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Poor guy...both his parents are analysts who use math and economics to solve every problem. :)