Stuff We Like :: 11.17.17
The life of a homework assignment, when you love the work of a writer who is impossible to love otherwise, why canceling plans feels so good, and more stuff we like.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, though we try to celebrate it as a pause of thankfulness and not as a piece of U.S. mythology. I can’t wait to spend a few days cooking together, eating lots of good food, and reading together every night.
Around the web
The life of a homework assignment
It can be complicated to love T.S. Eliot, so I really appreciated this essay about reconciling the impact of his poetry (which was truly life-altering for me) with its implicit racism and classism.
A really good read about understanding how information disorder — a.k.a. “alternative facts news” — actually works
True story! Why canceling plans is so satisfying
In case you’re planning to up your style game for Thanksgiving, I give you Get the Look: Baba Yaga
At home/school/life
On the blog: 12 great book series to read together
one year ago: Gift ideas for people who love The Hobbit (ooh, I might get that Gashlycrumb Hobbit shirt for someone this year!)
two years ago: How to make a simple Thanksgiving wreath
three years ago: How unschooling shaped my social life
Reading list:
Our book club pick for December is The Golden Compass, so I’m kind of thrilled to have an excuse to read it again. Philosophically, I am torn sometimes about rereads — there are so many books and so little time — but practically, I do a lot of rereading, and it usually makes me very happy.
I can never resist a good historical scandal, so I guess no one will be surprised that I picked up Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England. I always enjoy Alison Weir’s books in spite of — well, actually, maybe because of — her tendency to come up with the occasional wacky theory. (The best one here is that Edward II didn’t actually get murdered by Isabella but went off to become a hermit.) I would read books about British monarchs all day long, but this one really was fun.
I’m moving on to Sophocles with my humanities class after the break, so I’m reading Antigone again, too.
At home
I am at the point where I make the same things for Thanksgiving every year because everybody has a “favorite thing” that it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving dinner without. I am mixing things up with the turkey this year and making this gorgeous lacquered turkey from Bon Appetit. (My have-to-have for Thanksgiving is au gratin potatoes made with Boursin cheese — they are basically pure fat in a Le Creuset since you make them by melting a cake of cheese into heavy cream — but I love them as a once-a-year indulgence.)
The kids and I have been playing Super Mario Odyssey together lately — they love video games so much, and I try to make an effort to play a couple of games a year with them to stay connected to what they care about and they try to make an effort not to be annoyed because I’m always forgetting which button makes your Mario jump.
Tips to Help Homeschool Your Perfectionist Child
Beverly has some practical ideas to make homeschooling a little less stressful for you and your perfectionist child.
In my early homeschooling days, I was sidelined by a perfectionist child. I had high hopes of correcting everything that went wrong in public school, and worked diligently to close every learning gap. I read up on every method of homeschooling there was, and chose only the best curriculum I could find. Then I started to homeschool my oldest, and my plan quickly derailed. This child had learned a level of perfectionism that no one could compete with. In her eyes, every math problem must be correct, every bit of prose perfectly written—and rewritten, and written yet again. Art was a disaster—especially anything that required free-form expression. The lack of structure was anxiety producing to her, and the constant revamping and start-overs led to a mishmash of art that looked more like mud pies.
The early days in homeschooling my perfectionist child were difficult. At first, I saw this as a reflection of my teaching skills, but I quickly learned how to help my child and myself, during this trying time.
Do You Have a Perfectionist Child?
Children may be perfectionists by nature or by learned behaviors and requirements. Regardless of the cause, helping a perfectionist child is not easy and takes time. Both teacher and student need patience and understanding to make homeschooling work with the perfectionist child.
Perfectionists set incredibly high standards for themselves and experience great pain and distress if they fail to meet those standards. Even when they have done well, they are often aware of what feel like inadequacies in their work.
Recognizing a perfectionist may not be easy. Often, they can appear lazy or unwilling to work. This is not the case at all, and in fact, some perfectionists are highly driven individuals.
Perfectionists may have some of the following traits:
- Unwillingness to answer questions or participate for fear of being wrong
- Anxiety or anger if they get work wrong, receive low marks, or make mistakes
- Excessive time taken to complete projects and tasks. Or reworking projects and tasks until “perfect”
- Inability to start tasks due to overwhelm
- Inability to complete tasks
- Not being satisfied with a standard of work which others see as acceptable
- Highly critical of others’ work or difficulty working on group projects
Perfectionism in homeschooled students is a problem in several ways. First, perfectionism not only slows children down, but it also slows their rate of learning and leads to missed learning time. These children tend to focus so deeply on the task at hand, that they miss vital instruction surrounding the topic.
Second, perfectionistic children may refuse to guess answers or try new activities. Children who don’t guess or explore possibilities in their learning have less opportunity to problem-solve.
Both the slow rate of learning and the missed learning can be detrimental to a child’s ability to learn. Homeschoolers can use several methods to help their perfectionist child.
10 Ways to Help a Perfectionist Child
Children, by nature, rarely achieve perfection in anything they do, but there are ways to help a perfectionist child start to feel okay about that. Children need our help to understand that it is normal, expected, and okay to make mistakes.
1. We need to point out to them that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. People aren't born knowing everything or being able to do everything.
2. Explain to them that goals may take longer to reach. Help them see that it takes a lot of practice to succeed in some activities and that it's normal to try and fail many times.
3. Children need to understand that some things come easily to people and some do not.
4. When correcting work, be sure to point out the areas where the child did well. A missed stepped does not equal failure. Especially in math, if the child understands the concept but calculated the final answer wrong, think about how you help them see where the error occurred: “You understood steps 1 through 6, but let’s look at step 7 again.”
5. If your perfectionist writer won’t stop revising their work, try reading back to them. Sometimes, hearing the text can help them quickly correct grammatical or contextual errors.
6. Work on helping them set deadlines for completion: “Be sure you have done all the revising you need to by 2 p.m.”
7. Encourage draft work. Perfectionist children still need to be allowed time to correct work that is subpar. Give them positive feedback and explicit direction on the areas that need attention. Highlighting draft areas that need correcting is a great way to help a child focus on that specific area. Be sure to tell them that anything not highlighted should be left as is.
8. Help children recognize the time and skill needed to reach a goal. Perfectionist kids may be overly confident in their abilities to complete a task or goal. Help them plan time, equipment, outlines, and skills needed BEFORE they start any task. Assure that they come to you frequently to assess the path they are on.
9. Encourage children to tackle small amounts of work rather than large projects at first. Shorter assignments allow for faster completion.
10. Value the effort more than the outcome. Praise efforts of guessing and trying regardless if wrong or right. Acknowledge work that is completed on time and left alone. Help your child see that it is possible to learn for the pure joy, without needing to create an end product that will be evaluated or graded.
Homeschooling can provide some relief for children who are driven to do all assignments perfectly. It can be a chance for parents and children to reduce external pressures and stress, that are often put-upon children in other educational settings.
Perfectionist children can be a challenge to teach in the homeschool setting. It can wear thin on both parent and child, but it’s important to remember that any challenge can be overcome with patience and perseverance. Spend time with your child, listen to their concerns, and help them manage their time and energy in completing the homeschool day. Remember too, when dealing with perfectionist children, that the journey is long, but it can be achieved!
8 Ways to Explore Salvador Dali’s World
This winter is the perfect time to explore the world of Salvador Dali, and these resources will help you do just that.
Imaginative and eccentric, Spanish artist Salvador Dali turned the experience of art on its head, creating some of the most iconic artwork of the 20th century. He once said, “The fact that I myself, at the moment of painting, do not understand my own pictures, does not mean that these pictures have no meaning; on the contrary, their meaning is so profound, complex, coherent, and involuntary that it escapes the most simple analysis of logical intuition,” suggesting that his work is supposed to feel as weird and open to interpretation as it in fact does. This winter is the perfect time to explore the world of Salvador Dali, and these resources will help you do just that.
Borrow a lesson plan. The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla. has a whole collection of Dali-themed unit studies, including fun art projects and in-depth inquiries. Good bets include the lesson on George Orwell, Salvador Dali, and Censorship for older students and the thematic Spain and Catalonia: A Thematic Introduction to Dali for younger kids.
Take his word for it. Who knows how much of Dali’s autobiography is actually true? Truth is beside the point when you’re reading The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, which is full of anecdotes, philosophy, and Dali-isms like “Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?”
Be your own madman. Kids can dive into the weird joys of surrealism with a variety of hands-on art projects in Salvador Dali and the Surrealists: Their Lives and Ideas, 21 Activities. Produce your own Dali-esque dream video, create an art piece from found objects, make solar prints, and more.
Explore his place in history. The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation presents a detailed chronology of Dali’s life, from his first exhibition (at age fourteen) to his film collaborations with Luis Bunuel to his appointment as Marquis of Pubol of Spain a few years before his death in 1989, and everything in between.
Dive into his work. Dali’s work speaks for itself — though you can certainly spend hours debating what it’s actually saying. Art Story’s online Dali gallery includes some of the artist’s best-known works, plus information that helps put them into the greater context of the art world. (Be aware: Dali was interested in some adult topics, which frequently show up in his work. You may want to do an advance screening to eliminate any works that don’t feel right sharing with your child right now.)
Take a scientific approach. Carme Ruiz highlights some of the scientists and theories that influenced Dali’s work in the essay “Salvador Dali and Science.” Dali had hundreds of science books in his library, on topics ranging from quantum theory and physics to evolution and mathematics. Like so many artists of his time, Dali found scientific achievements, like the atomic bomb, and discoveries, like the structure of DNA, fascinating, and you can find scientific influence in much of his work.
Fall with him through the rabbit hole. Lewis Carroll and Salvador Dali might just be a match made in heaven. True, getting hold of an actual copy of the edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that Dali illustrated for New York’s Maecenas Press-Random House in 1969 can run you upwards of $12,000, but the William Bennett Gallery has generously made the — truly delightful — illustrations available.
Let him tell you about it. The 1986 documentary Dali gives the artist a chance to tell his story his own way — and boy, is his way interesting. You can watch the first part of the documentary on YouTube, too.
Great Books for Studying Native American History: High School
On the 150th anniversary of the Medicine Lodge Treaty (a trio of problematic agreements that forced the Plains Indians onto reservations) ensure that your high school U.S. history studies include the country’s marginalized original inhabitants.
On the 150th anniversary of the Medicine Lodge Treaty (a trio of problematic agreements that forced the Plains Indians onto reservations) ensure that your high school U.S. history studies include the country’s marginalized original inhabitants. History books may give their stories short shrift, but you don’t have to. These books are a great addition to your U.S. History reading list.
Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is at the top of our essential reading list for good reason: Brown’s incisive, authoritative account of the systematic 19th century destruction of Native American populations by the United States illuminates the perspective of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes who lived through it. This is not an easy book to read, but it’s an important one.
To truly understand the contrast between Native American life (in North and South America) before and after European contact, you need to understand what Native American life was like before Columbus et al arrived on the scene. Charles C. Mann’s two-book collection 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created focus on just that, highlighting the rich and varied culture that Columbus and his fellow explorers encountered and the catastrophic, civilization-shaking changes that occurred in the aftermath of that contact.
In Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution, Oren Lyons collects eight essays by Native American writers that explore the ways in which the U.S. Constitution and the idea of "American democracy" were shaped in part by the ideas of Native American traditions—even though Native Americans were denied the benefits of the freedoms they helped to establish. Similarly, Jack Weatherford entertainingly examines ignored and forgotten contributions to medicine, ecology, architecture, agriculture, and democracy in Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World.
This Day in North American Indian History is a delightful and useful reference book for your shelf—in addition to biographical and historical information, it contains a 365-day calendar of major events in Native American history (for both American continents), from the achievements of ancient empires to modern-day Native American activism.
David Grann uncovers a particularly dark chapter of U.S. history in Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In the 1920s, the Osage Indian reservation be- came an unexpected boom town when oil was discovered on reservation land— the Osage became the richest people per capita in the world. Then, someone started killing them off, one by one. One of the FBI’s first major investigations, the Osage murders exposed a sinister conspiracy that still feels shocking almost a century later.
Killing the White Man’s Indian: The Reinvention of Native Americans at the End of the 20th Century by Fergus M. Bordewich takes a proactive approach to the topic, acknowledging Native American history in the wake of European/United States aggression but focusing the bulk of his attention on the future of Native Americans being developed right now on reservations across the country. If we’re just looking at the past, we’re viewing Indians through the same distancing lenses that allowed our treatment of them to happen in the first place, says Bordewich, and his book aims to open the door to more meaningful considerations.
Also set in the modern Indian world, Sherman Alexie’s short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven captures the grim reality of life in and around the Spoke Indian Reservation. You can feel the tension between the traditions of the Native American past and modern Native American existence on every page. (Honestly, you could just go read the complete works of Sherman Alexie and be glad you did.)
Vine Deloria Jr. takes the offensive in Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, a darkly funny, challenging treatise on the problems with the way the modern United States wants to romanticize and patronize the country’s original inhabitants. Deloria’s disdain for U.S. values, especially capitalism, is blatant through the work, but his anger feels like a legitimate response to centuries of systemic racism and genocide.
This list is from the fall 2017 issue of HSL. Look for upcoming lists of great books on Native American history for middle grades and elementary school—we couldn’t fit everything we wanted into the magazine, so we’re publishing the extras on the blog this November.
Readaloud of the Week: 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving
Here's a Thanksgiving readaloud that considers the Native American perspective in a thoughtful, family friendly way.
1621: A NEW LOOK AT THANKSGIVING by Catherine O'Neill Grace
I’m breaking tradition a little bit with this book, which really isn’t so much a straight-up readaloud as it is a book to read together. But if, like me, you struggle a little bit this time of year to balance your joy in Thanksgiving (which is my favorite holiday) with complicated feelings about its origins and mythology, not to mention how this holiday feels to Native American people, this is a great book to start those important conversations with your children.
This book focuses on the first Thanksgiving from the perspective of the Wampanoag tribe, who had been living in the Pilgrims’ “new world” and celebrating an autumnal harvest festival of their own for something like 12,000 years before the Mayflower passengers arrived. It doesn’t sugarcoat the complicated relationship between the new settlers and the native inhabitants—for instance, we don’t just learn about Squanto and his generous farming tips, we also learn that he was able to deliver those tips because he’d learned English when he was kidnapped by previous English explorers. And the “miracles” of discovered corn and supplies by the colonists were actually thefts from Wampanoag storage places. Lots of little details bring the Wampanoag tribe to life, changing them from generic “Indians” to a diverse, complex group of people who had their own reasons, traditions, and ideas about this shared feast with the Pilgrim colonists. For me, this kind of conversation is essential to understanding that history really is made of people’s stories, and some people have gotten louder voices in the telling of these stories than others.
The photographs in this book are gorgeous. (It’s a National Geographic book, so I guess that’s not surprising.) And I especially loved the recipe pages, where a traditional Wampanoag recipe is printed opposite what we think of as a traditional Colonial recipe. It’s also a very flexible book—I’d be comfortable sharing it with kindergarteners, but I think high schoolers would enjoy it, too. I think it offers a valuable perspective shift and a way to better appreciate the historical context of the Thanksgiving holiday.
Not-So-New Books: Every Heart a Doorway
What happens to the people who come back from fantasy worlds? This dark mystery considers the question through a school for Wayward Children.
“For us, places we went were home. We didn’t care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn’t have to pretend to be something we weren’t. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world.”
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests
That’s the sign outside Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, the under-the-radar boarding school where Nancy’s parents have sent her to recover. But Nancy doesn’t want to recover: When she disappeared through the mysterious door in her basement six months earlier, she found her true home in the Halls of the Dead, where her stillness and silence were welcomed by the Lord and Lady of Death, and all she wants is to find her way back home. But her parents refuse to accept her stories and insist that she needs help, that she needs to get better, so they send her to a school that promises to accomplish just that. Fortunately for Nancy, the school is run by someone who really understands what she’s going through—Eleanor West was a lost girl before she opened her school and filled it with other world-wanderers who’ve stumbled back home and wish they hadn’t. As she gets to know her new schoolmates, Nancy thinks she might have found a place where—even if it isn’t home—she might be able to belong. Then the murders start.
This book—it’s really a gorgeous little novella, so it’s a quick read—hit all the classic fantasy sweet spots: imaginary worlds, lonely girls longing for home, boarding school camaraderie, and a note of wistfulness running through the whole thing. I always wonder what happens to people like Alice after Wonderland, and this book suggests some answers: They’re always looking for the next rabbit hole or magic mirror and wishing to go back. Some of them, like Kade, know they can never turn return. (Turns out, Fairylands want little girls, not little boys.) Some, like Lorelei, are just waiting for their promised doors to reappear. Lundy, the school therapist, warns them that most people never get back to their fantasy worlds, but that doesn’t stop everyone from hoping she’ll be the exception.
The murder is really just a plot device—it’s not hard to figure out the culprit—the real story is the connections between the lonely students and their attempts to accept—or reject—the world where they’ve been expelled. The characters are the real story: Nancy, who slowly finds a family-of-choice among the students at the school; Sumi, Nancy’s nonsense world roommate whose clever hands are constantly moving; mad scientist Jack and her twin sister Jill; Christopher, who still dreams of his beautiful skeleton girl; beautiful Kade whose parents and Fairyland rejected him when he announced he was a boy. The cast of characters is pretty effortlessly diverse—no tokenism!—and their stories all feel compelling. And the lyrical, jagged fairy tale language feels just right for the story it’s telling. I think this is a lovely little dark fairy tale for young adults.
Stuff We Like :: 11.10.17
Life lessons from Russian literature, person-centered language, 21 great books for fall, and more stuff we like.
It’s rainy and chilly, but I’m not complaining because it finally feels like fall!
Around the web
Relevant to our interests: Life lessons from Russian literature
Funny because it’s not funny: The unfortunately truthful resume of a young female professional
I love this: Person-centered language.
At home/school/life
on the blog: 21 new books we’re excited about this fall
one year ago: Mindful Homeschool: It’s not balance, it’s a cycle
two years ago: Easy, thoughtful holiday gifts to make with the kids
three years ago: Raising children who love to write
Reading List
Suzanne lured me into reading The Just City because I’m reading Plato’s Republic with my humanities students right now—so obviously I would want to read about how Athena goes about putting Plato’s ideal society into practice. There are robots! And Socrates!
Speaking of Suzanne, we are in the process of putting together our best books of 2017 list for the podcast, so I’m trying to squeeze in all the books I’ve heard good things about but haven’t gotten around to yet. So of course instead of reading Turtles All the Way Down or 4 3 2 1, I’m rereading The Wishing-Ring Man. I need some comfort reading!
I am still figuring out the best way to balance homeschooling with working not-at-home, and I’m so thankful that we spent a lot of time over the last couple of years transitioning my daughter to more independent work. Right now, we’re both reading Things Fall Apart separately, but thanks to annotated reading and our habit of writing discussion questions for each other, we’re able to talk about it the same way we would if we’d been reading it together. Success!
At home
I have had a rough month, so I’m trying to focus on little things that make me happy. One of them is that I get to wear nerdy t-shirts (like this one!) every Friday.
I voted! :)
Q&A: Tips for Transitioning From Homeschooling to Public High School
After almost a decade of homeschooling, her son is going back to school for high school. How can she help him prepare?
After almost a decade of homeschooling, her son is going back to school for high school. How can she help him prepare?
After nine years of homeschooling, our son will be heading off to public high school next fall. It’s the right decision for him, and we’re all excited to see what new adventures school has in store for him. But we’ve got this last year of homeschooling together, and we’re going to make the most of every minute. I keep wondering, though: Is there anything I should be doing this year to help him get ready for school next year?
Making the switch from homeschooling to a more traditional school environment can take some adjustment, but high school is a big adjustment for many kids, so your son definitely won’t be the only one at his high school who’s figuring out how to navigate a new environment. And there are definitely a few things you can do help prepare your son to succeed in high school.
Start getting comfortable with homework. The average high school student leaves school each day with three and a half hours of homework, which isn’t something most homeschoolers will have much experience in dealing with. You don’t have to jump in with hours of work every day, but giving your son a few independent assignments each week will help him start to get comfortable with the idea of homework. Homework also gives you an opportunity to practice note-taking and studying for tests and quizzes, both of which may be new features of your son’s educational life.
Get familiar with the logistics. High school means navigating a building to change classes, finding (and working the combination on) your locker between classes, managing your schedule—that’s a lot of new logistics to navigate. Most high schools allow visitors and hold orientations and new student activities leading up to the first day of school, so make sure you call ahead to get your son on the student mailing list. Just visiting the school, practicing using a combination lock, or studying a map of the hallways may help him feel more comfortable.
Ease into your routine. Right now, you have the luxury of slowly adapting to a new routine, so take advantage that fact. Your son can gradually get into the habit of waking up at an earlier time and build up the stamina to sit through seven hours of class time every day. He can also get into the habit of eating two meals—breakfast and lunch—to carry him through the day, which can be a surprisingly challenging routine change for homeschoolers who are used to on-demand snacking.
Boost his organization skills. Most high school expect students to be able to keep up with their own schedules and assignments, so encourage your son to take charge of his own schedule this year while you’re available to help him through any rough patches. Pick up a planner he can use to keep track of activities and assignments, and give him deadlines and due dates so that he can learn how to pace himself for school assignments.
Take a standardized test. One of the most effective ways to set your child up for success in high school is to make sure he can get into the classes he wants to take. A mom-made transcript won’t always carry the same weight as a traditional test score, so it makes sense to have your son take a nationally recognized standardized test to support his academic record.
All big transitions come with challenges, so however well you prepare your son, he may hit a few bumps those first weeks as he acclimates to his new environment. Be available and be supportive, and trust that your years of homeschooling have prepared your son for his chosen future.
This reader question was originally published in the fall 2016 issue of HSL.
21 New Books for Your Fall Reading List
A teenager starts a feminist revolution, Humpty Dumpty adjusts to life post-Great Fall, the Bronte kids create a dangerous imaginary world, a RenFaire girl finds middle school challenging, and more great books to read this fall.
Fall means new books, and we’re pretty excited about these.
After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again) by Dan Santat
Santat’s first book since Caldecott winner Are We There Yet? focuses on the psychological repercussions of Humpty Dumpty’s great fall. (Elementary)
La La La: A Story of Hope by Kate DiCamillo
Jaime King’s illustrations illuminate this lovely, almost wordless book about a brave little girl who ventures out into the world with a song. (Elementary)
The Antlered Ship by Dashka Slater
Curious fox Marco sets sail with a crew of deer, finding plenty of adventure on his search for a skulk of equally curious foxes. (Elementary)
Where’s Halmoni? by Julie Kim
Korean folk and fairy tales come to life in this charming graphic novel, in which two siblings go in search of their halmoni, or grandmother, through a magical door. (Elementary)
The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse by Mac Barnett
Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen team up again in this tongue-in-cheek tale of a mouse who gets swallowed by a wolf and finds that a duck has already set up a cozy abode inside the wolf ’s belly. (Elementary)
Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome
This gorgeous free verse biography recounts Tubman’s life from her childhood in slavery to her adult willingness to risk her own life for other people’s freedom, chronicling her strength, compassion, and resilience. (Elementary)
All’s Faire in Middle School by Victoria Jamieson
Homeschooled Imogen Vega leaves her comfortable Renaissance Faire world to enter public high school in this graphic novel from the author of Roller Girl. (Middle grades)
The Glass Town Game by Catherynne M. Valente
The Bronte siblings’ imaginary world comes to life—wonderfully and dangerously—in Valente’s first (stand-alone) book since the Fairyland series. (Middle grades)
The Gauntlet by Karuna Riazi
Farah and her friends get sucked into a very dangerous game and must fight their way out to save themselves and the rest of the world in this diverse, steampunk take on the Jumanji idea of a game gone very, very bad. (Middle grades)
Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
In Applegate’s newest work, an ancient oak tree narrates the story of a Muslim boy who finds prejudice and fear in his new neighborhood. (Middle grades)
The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag
In Aster’s world, boys always grow up to be shapeshifters, and girls get to be witches. But Aster’s always dreamed of being a witch, so he sneaks off to the woods to study witchcraft on his own. (Middle grades)
A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney
I’m not convinced that these friendships are as secret as the authors (also literary friends) suggest, but this set of four dual biographies centered on some of literature’s best-known women and their friends is fascinating nonetheless. (High school)
Beren and Luthien by J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien’s son put together this lavishly illustrated version of a story told in the appendices of the Silmarillion, tracing the star-crossed lovers’ story’s evolution and significance across Tolkien’s work. (High school)
The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
Pullman’s long-awaited return to the alternate Oxford of the His Dark Materials trilogy introduces an 11-year-old boy named Malcolm who meets a baby named Lyra Belacqua—yes, that Lyra. (High school)
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
With a claustrophobic setting (it reminded me of Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine) and a critical perspective on gun violence, this tense story takes place on a seven-story elevator ride a 15-year-old boy with a gun is taking to avenge his brother’s murder. (High school)
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Teen lit hero Green returns with his first novel since The Fault in Our Stars. This time, he’s exploring the world of a 16-year-old with a mental illness who becomes obsessed with the disappearance of a billionaire. (High school)
The Dire King by William Ritter
The supernatural Sherlock Holmes series Jackaby wraps up with its fourth book, in which Jackaby, his intrepid assistant Miss Rook, dog-shifting policeman Charlie Cane, and ghostly Jenny Cavanaugh work to prevent the apocalypse. (High school)
Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
Vivian Carter isn’t trying to start a revolution at her Texas high school when she starts publishing an underground feminist zine—she’s just fed up with her community’s sexist attitudes. As it turns out, she’s not the only one, and before she knows it, Vivian is leading the resistance. (High school)
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao
Dao’s first novel in a new fantasy series is steeped in Asian mythology and folklore. The first installment follows an 18-year-old beauty who must choose between good and evil en route to her destiny. (High school)
Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor
In book two of this series, newly minted witch Sunny works to develop her skills so that she can fulfill her destiny and prevent the apocalypse. This series is a little like a feminist, Nigerian take on Harry Potter. (High school)
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
Teenage Justyce starts a journal writing to Martin Luther King, Jr., after a false arrest has him questioning racism and resistance in his world. When his worst fears are realized in a police shooting, Justyce has to confront the darkest parts of himself and the world he lives in. (High school)
This list is reprinted from the fall 2017 issue of home/school/life.
Library Chicken Update :: 11.7.17
Scooby Doo meets Lovecraft, Plato fan fiction, classic and new British mysteries, and some feminist biographies feature in this week's Library Chicken.
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
How is it November already? I mean, I’m more than happy for 2017 to be nearly over with (it hasn’t been great, let’s be honest), but I’m just not sure how we’ve made it this far. Clearly I need to pay more attention to what’s going on in the outside world--OR I could bury my head in my books and continue to ignore the passage of time. Yep, that second option works for me.
The Just City by Jo Walton
This book, about Pallas Athene setting up an experimental community based on Plato’s Republic and populated by people chosen from throughout human history, begins with Athene and Artemis trying to explain the concept of consent to Apollo. I’d recommend it based on that alone, but it just gets better from there. (Wait til you get to the part where Socrates tries to talk to the robots.) It’s first in a trilogy, so I’ll be tackling the sequel next — and I suppose I should finally get around to reading the Republic.
(LC Score: +1)
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
The Scooby Gang accidentally reads from the Necronomicon. There. That’s all I’m going to say. If you don’t run out and IMMEDIATELY get this book, it’s no fault of mine.
(LC Score: +1)
Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball
Elderly people are going missing in a small Japanese town. A young man confesses responsibility, but refuses to speak further, either in explanation or defense. This is a strange and compelling book. I found it both intriguing and irritating and honestly I’m not sure which reaction the author intended.
(LC Score: +1)
One Foot in the Grave by Peter Dickinson
James Pibble mystery #6. This final Inspector Pibble mystery begins with Jimmy (now a widower and stuck in a fancy nursing home for the aged and infirm) contemplating suicide. Fortunately, before he can do anything drastic, he finds a dead body and gets caught up investigating the murder. After the depressing opening I was concerned that this last outing would be grim, but I found the ending to be unexpectedly sweet.
(LC Score: +1)
Wobble to Death by Peter Lovesey
I could tell you that after finishing the Pibble books I needed to start a new mystery series, and this one — set at a Victorian six-day “pedestrian” competition and introducing Sergeant Cribb as our sleuth — seemed like a nice option, but we all know I had to pick it up because there’s no way I could resist that title, right?
(LC Score: +1)
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
The (male) Transcendentalists may be obnoxious and annoying at times, but they did hang out with some incredibly brilliant and amazing women. (That I’ve SOMEHOW never heard of. American History, go to your room and think about what you’ve done wrong.) I didn’t quite fall in love with Margaret Fuller the way I have with some others in my recent Alcott-adjacent reading (Elizabeth Peabody, please be my best friend!) but this is a fascinating biography of a talented and unjustly-neglected American.
(LC Score: +1)
Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee
From Concord to Bloomsbury! I’ve read a bit of Virginia Woolf’s fiction (most recently the very charming Orlando) and have been meaning to get back to her (and her motley crew of associates), so I thought this massive biography by Lee would be a good place to start. (If you haven’t noticed, I have a weakness for massive biographies.) As a newbie to all things Woolf, I found it a bit overwhelming — Lee engages not only with her subject, but with all the biographers, commentators, and critics who have written about Woolf over the years. It’s difficult to jump into the middle of that multi-decade conversation, but I enjoyed Lee’s take and am looking forward to reading more about the Bloomsbury (and Bloomsbury-adjacent) folk.
(LC Score: +1)
Yeah, I STILL don’t really want to talk about it: RETURNED UNREAD
(LC Score: -5)
Library Chicken Score for 11/7/17: 2
Running Score: 109 ½
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
- The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton (sequel to The Just City)
- The Poison Oracle by Peter Dickinson (even though I’ve finished Inspector Pibble there is still Dickinson weirdness for me to enjoy)
- The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf (rereading Woolf while reading about Woolf...)
- Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West by Matthew Dennison (...and Woolf’s buddies)
52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 42: Identify Your Negativity Triggers
Recognizing when you get stuck in a negative mindset may be the first step toward changing your thought patterns for the happier.
You can’t always control what happens in your life, but you can—at least to some extent—control your inner narrative about what happens.
We all have a constant stream of conversation with ourselves running in our heads all the time—psychologists call it self talk, and we’re often only semi-aware of what we’re telling ourselves. But in between reminders to throw in a load of laundry or pay the sanitation bill, we’re silently opining on everything we do or see all day long. And the tone of this self talk plays a huge role in happiness—the more critical and pessimistic your self talk, the lower your everyday happiness quotient; the more positive your inner dialogue, the higher your overall happiness level.
The key to turning up the positive in your self talk is recognizing when your inner voice gets stuck in negativity. Some signs you might be focusing on the negative:
- After a great homeschool day, you immediately focus on updating your to-do list instead of congratulating yourself on a successful day full of good experiences.
- When something goes wrong, you jump straight into blaming yourself: your son’s math skills, your homeschool budget, your daughter’s social faux pas—you are responsible for any problems that happen in your homeschool life.
- When something isn’t going perfectly, you immediately leap to the worst case scenario—you missed a music lesson, so obviously your child will never graduate from college, have any friends, or have any kind of happiness in life.
- You tend to see things as good or terrible—either your homeschool life is great, perfect, wonderful, or it’s the worst, most horrible, awful thing you’ve ever done. You have no middle ground.
- You keep rehashing problems and negative events—you’re focused on what went wrong, what you did wrong, and what might go wrong so that you’re spinning your mental wheels instead of moving forward.
- You can’t seem to make any decisions because you get stuck going over the choices again and again in your mind—you can’t teach math because you can’t settle on the “perfect” math curriculum.
Identifying the places where you’re prone to negative self talk isn’t a cure-all—it’s just the first step toward a more positive attitude. But it’s an essential first step toward upping your overall optimism. Only when you recognize your negative thinking can you start to make a mental shift to the positive—and give your everyday homeschool happiness a boost.
Your mission this week: Keep track of your negative thinking. Don’t judge yourself! Just be aware of where you’re ruminating or over-focusing on the negative, and pay attention to possible triggers, from not getting enough sleep or skipping lunch to struggles over history readings or doing homework for outside classes.
Readaloud of the Week: Tua and the Elephant
Tua and the Elephant is a fun adventure story that makes you feel like you've been transported to Thailand.
TUA AND THE ELEPHANT by K.P. Harris
Tua knows every inch of her Chiang Mai neighborhood, but she’s never seen an elephant like Pohn-Pohn there before. Determined to rescue her new friend from his abusive handlers, Tua orchestrates a nighttime elephant liberation, and—with the elephant’s evil owners hot on her trail—makes her way first to her aunt’s house, then to a temple, and finally to an elephant sanctuary where Pohn-Pohn can live happily ever after.
This is a fun adventure story, but what makes it so fun to read aloud is the way that it brings the culture and landscape of Thailand to life so vividly. Tua lives with her hard-working mom, but everyone in the village feels like part of her family: Uncle Somchai, who makes the best banana roti pancakes; Auntie Nam, who always has a curry treat for Tua; Uncle Sim, who tries to teach her how to haggle to get the best deals at the market; and famous Auntie Orchid, one of Thailand’s best known actresses. Everyone loves the “little peanut”—that’s what Tua’s name means—and wants to help her in general and in her quest. It’s great to read a children’s book with a Thai main character who isn’t a refugee, and there’s a strong environmental and ethical message running through the story.
There’s not a lot of subtlety in the good guy/bad guy dynamic for this book—the elephant hunters are unabashed bad guys—but that doesn’t bother me in a kids’ adventure tale. The book is sprinkled with Thai vocabulary and customs—some readers seem to have been irritated by the fact that not all of these cultural notes are explained and defined, but I actually like the way it makes you feel like you’ve dived into a entirely different world. (I’m always looking for ways to decenter Western perspectives, but if you aren’t, you could easily look up foreign words before reading the book with your kids.) I think it’s a lovely little book—I'd definitely pass it on to kids who loved Mr. Popper's Penguins or Owls in the Family—and Tua and Pohn-Pohn are delightful protagonists.
New Books: Recently Read in Middle Grades Fiction
A boarding school on a ship, a demon with a centuries-old agenda, and a haunted house in Chicago bring a little mystery to middle grades fiction.
It’s time for another new books roundup!
Alexander Smith McCall (you may already love him from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) has written a book about homeschoolers! In School Ship Tobermory, homeschooled twins Fee and Ben (they live in a submarine) sign on board a sailing school, where they study with children from all over the world while learning to navigate the ocean and find themselves in the middle of a mystery involving a movie crew on a neighboring ship.
School Ship Tobermory reminded me a little of Swallows and Amazons, which makes sense, since both books are focused around the adventures and pleasures of sailing. They also share a similar old-fashioned vibe—most everyone you meet is nice, except the bad guys, who are immediately and obviously up to no good. While I like a little more nuance in my books, this black-and-white moral universe never really annoys me in middle grades adventure books, which is definitely what this is. There’s lots of explanation of sailing terms and duties, which would be interesting to kids who are curious about sailing but might get annoying to kids who are already familiar with that world. It feels like a solid, pleasant book, and the detailed illustrations are really charming. (Plus it’s always nice to find totally normal homeschoolers in literature.)
Prosper Redding is the only ordinary person in his family of extraordinary people, so it seems pretty unfair that he’s the one who gets bitten by the family curse. Turns out, Prosper’s great-great-great-and-more-great-grandfather made a deal with a demon—and broke it. Oops. The 4,000-year-old demon has been biding its time waiting for its revenge, and now it’s decided Prosper seems like a good ghost. In The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding, Prosper goes from totally ordinary tween to a kid on the run, hiding out in a strange town and sharing his body with a not-so-friendly demon who is just waiting for Halloween to start wreaking vengeance.
This is a spooky, frequently hilarious middle grades thriller with two likable protagonists in Prosper and his recently discovered cousin Nell. Alastor, the demon on a mission of revenge, is surprisingly funny as he attempts to adapt to life in the 21st century, and there’s a half-bat, half-cat creature named Toad that is kind of irresistible. Alastor and Prosper both discover things they never suspected about their families and end up liking each other—with healthy suspicion on both sides—more than either expected. The book has a (predictable) pair of twists near the end, and it finishes on a cliffhanger without resolving most of its plot points, which I find extremely annoying. Still, I think it’s one of the Halloween-iest books I’ve read in a long time, and I can see middle grade readers who like spooky-funny books really enjoying this one.
In another spooky story, Tessa discovers her new house is haunted in The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street. Her family’s spontaneous move from the Florida suburbs to downtown Chicago is a big enough adjustment, but mysterious drawings and crying toys are too much for a new kid in school to handle. Tessa’s ghost hunt catches the attention of some of the kids in her new neighborhood, and she’s soon part of a ghost-hunting squad that helps her learn to appreciate her new neighborhood and make some much-needed new friends in addition to helping her lay her haunted house’s ghost to rest.
This is a real ghost story—the house really is haunted by a restless spirit, and Tessa has to solve the mystery of who the ghost is to help lay the spirit to rest. Lindsey Currie does a great job capturing the lonely frustration of leaving all your friends and having to start over in a new place, and Tessa and her new friends are believable middle schoolers—the book is as much about how to be a friend as it is about the mystery of the Shady Street ghost. There are some creepy haunted house scenes that are just spine-tingling enough without being too scary, and the haunting has a satisfying resolution. I’d pass this one on to kids who love read-it-by-flashlight spooky stories.
Stuff We Like :: 11.3.17
How to tell if you're in an Edward Gorey book, great picture books about Israel (that appreciate its complications), no more shiplap, and more stuff we like.
How it it November already?
around the web
Relevant to my life: How to tell if you’re in an Edward Gorey book
This is a great list of picture books about Israel that acknowledge the complexities of the Jewish state. (Surely I am not the only person who has struggled with this?)
Ha! Pinterest farmhouse design fails. (I realize this may be a controversial opinion, but I just CANNOT with the shiplap.)
There’s a new First Aid Kit album coming out in January! (And apparently they do still call them albums, thank goodness!)
at home/school/life
on the blog: Shelli reviews Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
one year ago: Is it the homeschool blahs or time to stop homeschooling?
two years ago: Mindful Homeschool: What are you afraid of?
three years ago: 10 things we loved in October (we still eat baked avocado and egg with miso butter all the time!)
reading list
OK, so I am probably the last to know this, but Gary Blackwood (whom you may know from The Shakespeare Stealer) has written a Victorian murder mystery called Bucket’s List about the investigator who inspired Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket, and there are all kinds of delicious references to Dickens throughout.
I’m finally getting around to reading Down Among the Sticks and Bones, the second (?) in the Wayward Children series. I really loved Every Heart a Doorway, which made me almost not want to read the rest of the series — in case it didn’t feel like a perfect follow-up — but we all know I can only wait so long before I just give in and read the book anyway.
World History at the Movies
The messiness of history does not easily fit into the mold of a Hollywood blockbuster. But movies can do something history books often can’t — they can bring human stories to life and make us care about them.
Ever since D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, movies and historical fact have had an uneasy relationship. (Griffith himself thought that motion pictures would render history books irrelevant.) The messiness of history — its myriad inassimilable facts — does not easily fit into the regular mold of a Hollywood blockbuster. But movies can do something that history books often can’t — they can bring human stories to life and make us care about them. Here are a few excellent films (appropriate for high school world history students) that do just that.
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925)
Though the film’s central scene — the massacre on the Odessa steps — never in fact took place, Battleship Potemkin is an important record both of Soviet history and the history of cinema. Eisenstein was commissioned to make a film celebrating the 1905 mutiny on the Potemkin, a crucial pre-1917 event in the Soviet imagination, and the result, banned in the Soviet Union, had a huge influence worldwide.
THE LEOPARD (1963)
Based on Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel, Visconti’s The Leopard depicts the changes to Italian society during the Risorgimento and the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy. A classic of Italian cinema, The Leopard movingly evokes the decadent world of the old order and ambivalently registers its loss in the character of the Prince Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster).
THE KILLING FIELDS (1984)
Adapted from the book The Death and Life of Dith Pran, The Killing Fields tells the story of the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia towards the end of the VietnamWar and of two journalists’ attempt to both report on what was happening and stay alive. One of the journalists, Sydney Schanberg, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting while the other, Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran, was captured by the Khmer Rouge. Both risked their lives to communicate what was happening in Cambodia to the world.
SHOAH (1985)
Director Claude Lanzmann spent more ten years making this nine-and-a-half hour documentary about the extermination of six million Jews during the Second World War. The result is the most honest and moving film created about the Holocaust. Lanzmann interviews survivors, Nazi functionaries, and witnesses, never hesitating to ask troubling questions and always refusing to give easy answers.
MALCOLM X (1992)
Spike Lee’s Malcolm X is the story of a man transforming himself — from a small-time crook into a fiery spokesman for racial separation into a prophet of universal brotherhood under Islam. Malcolm X was a complex, multi-faceted personality and Lee doesn’t reduce him to either a hero or a villain.
RABBIT PROOF FENCE (2002)
From the 1800s up until the 1970s, under the policies of multiple Australian governments, thousands of Australian aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their families and brought up in care homes or adopted by white families. Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the story of three mixed-race girls as they trek across the Australian outback to reunite with their families. A necessary film about a shameful period of Australian history.
HANNAH ARENDT (2013)
Arendt is best-known today for “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, the New Yorker article in which she coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Adolf Eichmann’s bloodless approach to mass murder. But she was a fascinating figure who wrote about most of the important subjects of the twentieth century. Von Trotta’s film explores Arendt’s relationships with the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the writer Mary McCarthy and fills in the background to Arendt’s most famous work. —Jeremy Harris
Curriculum Review: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
People have strong feelings about this step-by-step reading program, but it worked great for Shelli's family.
People have strong feelings about this step-by-step reading program, but it worked great for Shelli's family.
Curriculum Review: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann
You will either love it or hate it. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (a.k.a. the Distar Method) is a popular book for homeschooling families. It’s easy in that it’s just one big book, you pick it up, go to the lesson you’re on, and start reading the script to your child. In other words, there’s no prep time, although parents should read the front matter in the book before beginning the lessons. It’ll make more sense, if you do, but don’t get overwhelmed either. (Keep reading, and I’ll explain why.)
I taught my eldest son how to read using this book, and now I’m teaching my younger son with it. I also use Starfall.com and games to help reinforce the blend sounds or sight words, etc., but for the most part, I’ve relied on 100 Easy Lessons.
I could be wrong, but I believe that a child will begin reading when he or she is ready to read. Some children are early readers and others begin reading later. I don’t think this has any bearing on intelligence. There is something about those connections in the brain that makes reading easy for a child to pick up on, or, if the connections haven’t happened yet, it’ll remain difficult — or impossible — until they do. Still, I have found it’s helpful to do short, light-hearted reading lessons, and I bet any reading curriculum (as long as you enjoy it) would do. Once my son was ready to read (at about 8.5 years old), it seemed to happen overnight. Everything I had taught him suddenly clicked.
I had two friends tell me that they tried 100 Easy Lessons, and they and their child hated it. Indeed, the “stories” are silly, and the pictures are too. This is why I say you’ll either love it or hate it. My boys both liked it. They thought the stories were fine, and they always looked forward to seeing the pictures, which I kept covered until they finished reading the story. (This is crucial.)
I recommend that parents read the front matter, and if you do, you may not like it because the instructions are rigid. For example, you’re supposed to follow the script exactly. I did that for a short time until I became comfortable with how the lessons worked. Then I was able to use my own words when doing the lessons. Now I don’t read the script or follow any of the instructions. In fact, I don’t have to say anything, if I don’t want to. My son knows the drill…. he reads all the sounds, words, and story (twice), and I help him, if he needs it. We don’t do the writing exercise because I have him work on handwriting separately.
I also don’t follow the rule that you have to do one lesson every day for one hundred days. This is silly, in my opinion. We do lessons about three times a week, and I find this is a good pace for a child who isn’t an eager reader. Also, for both my sons, I stopped using 100 Easy Lessons for a whole year somewhere between lessons 65 and 70. At this point, it gets harder. So, I waited a year, and then I started again at Lesson 50 and continued until the end of the book. (For my youngest, we’re currently doing that now.) This has worked very well for me because a child matures and is capable of so much more, if you just wait a year.
Some people worry about the Distar Method because it uses an altered orthography or symbols to help a child read the sounds in the book. It also introduces basic grammar slowly, such as that you capitalize the first letter of a sentence. None of this was a problem for my boys. They didn’t get dependent on these “helpers.” First of all, my boys see the written word in many different places. I read books to them! Secondly, by the end of 100 Easy Lessons, there has been so much repetition that they can easily recognize many of the high frequency words. Overall, I found those “helpers” to be, well, very helpful.
You can’t assume that your child will be reading fluently by the time they have finished 100 Easy Lessons. Like I said, my eldest son was 8.5 years old before he began reading fluently. We finished 100 Easy Lessons when he was seven. I followed up with having him read several of the recommended books (listed in the back of 100 Easy Lessons), and we simply continued a reading practice a few times a week, a few minutes at a time. Once everything “clicked,” I never had to do another reading lesson with him.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons worked for us. I think it could work well for many children, but like with any curriculum, you might have to tweak it for your kids’ unique needs. Don’t be afraid to do that. Ever.
Library Chicken Update :: 10.31.17
Why doesn't Harriet Tubman have her own Netflix series yet?? Plus getting the band back together, a Wodehouse homage that didn't work, and more books in this week's roundup.
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Now, I am 100% pro-candy, but hear me out: what if all the bibliophiles got together with all our old books that we are ready to pass on and then we trick-or-treated each other (dressing up as our favorite literary characters and authors, naturally) so that we each ended up with a bagful of books?? I mean, we’d need fairly large bags, obviously, but when I imagine hearing “trick or treat!” followed by the satisfying thwack of a book into my treat bag I get very happy...
I’m a fan of “getting the band back together” stories, where we see how long-term relationships have changed over the decades as friends interact and age. This is literally one of those stories: we follow two couples, close friends since their college days, when three of them were in a band and briefly experienced vicarious stardom via the fourth band member, who left the band, became wildly famous (with one of their songs), and then died young and tragically. Now a movie is being contemplated about their old bandmate and not everyone is excited to see their past up on the big screen. The younger generation (each couple has a teenage child) complicates things further with a possible romance of their own. This is the third novel I’ve read by Straub and my favorite so far.
(LC Score: +1)
I’ve been gradually working my way through Ivy Compton-Burnett’s books without any particular plan, so I was surprised to see (in the introduction to this edition) that this was her last novel, edited and published posthumously. Usually that’s not a great sign, but Ivy’s acerbic dialog and her usual cast of characters (including controlling and passive-aggressive matriarchs, ironic young men, and dourly humorous servants) are all on display here, proving that even at age 85 she was still in fine form.
(LC Score: +1)
If I’m wandering through the library and spot a book with a title like Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse OF COURSE I’m going to pick it up immediately, regardless of how high the to-read stack is at home. This novel is apparently one of a series written by Sullivan about the fictional small town of Harvester, Minnesota and the personalities that inhabit it. Our protagonist is a widowed schoolteacher, who reads novels — especially those by P.G. Wodehouse — to distract herself from the difficulties and hardships of her life. It’s an interesting (and relatable) idea and I’m always up for a slice of small town life, but the more I learned about the citizens of Harvester, the more concerned I became. The schoolteacher receives ugly anonymous threats via mail for decades. Her son is viciously bullied both as a child and as a brain-damaged war veteran. Nasty gossip causes a town newcomer to lose his job, and eventually drives him to suicide. While I agree that Wodehouse is good for what ails you, it seems to me that maybe the schoolteacher would have been better off just moving to a new town.
(LC Score: +1)
I’ve enjoyed Jill Lepore’s nonfiction so I was looking forward to this novel, set in Boston in 1764 and telling the story (in alternating narratives) of a disgraced young woman who disguises herself as a boy and becomes an apprentice to a Scottish painter (who is himself on the run from his creditors). As the painter becomes disturbed by his strange feelings for his young apprentice (and the apprentice wonders whether it is safe to let him in on her secret), we also follow a subplot where two slaves have been wrongfully accused of murder after the mysterious death of their master. A murder mystery in pre-Revolution New England, an over-the-top romance involving disguised lovers, and angry commentary on racism and slavery (provided by the painter’s best friend, a brilliant and highly educated black man) — by all rights I should have loved this book, but somehow it never quite came together for me. Guess I’ll have to go back to the library and get another stack of Lepore’s nonfiction work.
(LC Score: +1)
This is an eclectic collection of Smith’s essays from various sources and occasions. Smith can be intimidatingly intellectual and a few of these pieces were a bit too highbrow for me (hardcore literary criticism involving authors I’ve never heard of, a deep dive into Italian cinema, etc.), but I do love her writing.
(LC Score: +1)
HARRIET TUBMAN IS THE BEST AND MOST AWESOME BUT HOW AM I ONLY LEARNING THE EXTENT OF HER AWESOMENESS NOW?!? (IT IS A TRAVESTY AND FLORIDA’S PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM — LOOKING AT YOU, BREVARD COUNTY — SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF ITSELF.) SHE SHOULD BE ON ALL THE MONEY AND HAVE ALL THE STATUES AND I IMMEDIATELY NEED AN ACTION-ADVENTURE MOVIE RETELLING HER REAL-LIFE EXPLOITS RESCUING ENSLAVED PEOPLE AND SPYING FOR THE UNION SO PLEASE MAKE THAT HAPPEN.
(LC Score: +1)
Picked this up to prepare for our reading of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in middle school literature. I had no idea that Mark Twain was such a diva. I suspect he’s one of those people who I love to read about but would almost certainly have found insufferable in real life.
(LC Score: +1)
Yeah, I don’t really want to talk about it: RETURNED UNREAD
(LC Score: -7)
Library Chicken Score for 10/31/17: 0
Running Score: 107 ½
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
- The Just City by Jo Walton (Pallas Athene helps set up an experimental city based on Plato’s Republic)
- Wobble to Death by Peter Lovesey (murder mystery set during a Victorian ‘pedestrian’ competition)
- Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall (those Transcendentalists just keep on coming)
- Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee (because I think I may need a break from Concord MA)
52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 41: Make Up Your Mind to Make Happiness a Priority
Who knew that putting happiness on your priority list could increase your homeschool's joy level so significantly?
Believe it or not, one of the most effective ways to boost your everyday happiness quotient is to actively decide that you want to be happier.
Just like you can improve your manners by making a habit of saying “thank you” or improve your health by putting a lunchtime walk reminder on your calendar, you can improve your overall outlook by taking advantage of opportunities to be happy. Is there a subject you love teaching that never seems to make it out of the curriculum box? Put it at the top of your to-do list. Does that clique-y mom group at park day make you feel down on yourself? Find another activity to keep you busy on those Tuesday afternoons. Are you happiest when you’re out in nature? Start a family nature journal or relocate your readalouds to take advantage of the fall sunshine. Do you have a tendency to hold on to frustration when you have a challenging day? Practice techniques like meditation or visualization that can help you let go of the negativity and see the positive. Make a point to look for ways to add a little joy to your day, and you’ll be surprised how many you find.
We tend to think of happiness as something that just magically happens—the stars align, and boom! whoosh! happiness. And sometimes happiness is like that. More often, though, happiness comes from the intention to be happy—a commitment for looking for the good stuff in the ordinary stuff of our everyday lives. And just like math or Latin vocabulary, the more we practice happiness, the better we get at it.
Your mission this week: Start a list of happiness opportunities that pop up in your everyday life. You don’t have to seize every one of them—though you certainly can!—just be aware of their existence.
Readaloud of the Week: The Night Gardener
In this spooky middle grades ghost story, Molly must face her own ghosts before she can confront the spirit haunting the crumbling English manor house she hopes to call home.
Molly and her brother Kip are looking for a place to call home—or at least a place that’s not an orphanage where they can work for a living. The crumbling old English manor where Molly’s managed to talk her way into a job is probably the least hospitable place they can imagine, but Molly figures that’s a plus when you’re a 14-year-old girl with a disabled brother to take care of. It’s not as though people are beating down the Windsors’ door to work there.
Molly isn’t even sure she wants to work there after the first night, when Kip sees a creepy man in a tall hat going into the house from the spooky tree in the front lawn. But she doesn’t have much choice—her parents aren’t around, and despite the stories she keeps telling Kip, she knows they aren’t coming back. She and Kip are alone in a strange country, and they have to make it work. So she tries to stay focused on her work and ignore the increasingly scary things that keep happening. Then one day she finds her way through the locked door at the top of the stairs, and she finally understands the dark secret of the house and why the Windsors can’t tear themselves away. Molly feels herself lured to the same bleak fate of the Windsors—unless she can be brave enough to face her darkest fears.
What makes it a great readaloud: This is a terrific middle grades take on classic Gothic literature, complete with a spooky old house, a deliciously creepy ghost, and a slow nightmarish unfolding. Auxier has a deft lyrical voice that echoes classic scary tales like Rebecca and The Woman in White, but the story has a steady action pacing that will appeal to tween readers. Kids will identify with Kip, who really wishes he could just be like everybody else, and Molly, who’s taken on adult responsibilities that are really too big for her to face alone. There’s plenty of suspense and drama, but it winds up with a satisfyingly safe and happy ending for pretty much everyone the reader has gotten fond of over the course of the book.
But be aware: This is a spooky, spooky book with a very creepy ghost who wanders around at night stealing pieces of people’s souls and giving them nightmares. Sensitive kids may want to steer clear.
Quotable: “A story helps folks face the world, even when it frightens 'em. And a lie does the opposite. It helps you hide.”
New Books: Recently Read Roundup
It's all about adventure in these new books, whether you're visiting a fantasy world where one brave guild stands between a city and disaster or meeting a tween determined to start her own restaurant.
Here’s what we’ve been reading:
The Adventurers Guild by Zack Loran Clark and Nick Eliopulos
In Zed’s world, your guild is your destiny—which is why he has his heart set on joining the Mages Guild, even though he knows the chances of a half-elf getting in are slim. So when he gets plucked by the very worst guild, the famously perilous Adventurers Guild, Zed is crushed. The only silver lining: The Adventurers Guild has also conscripted his best friend Brock.
Zed, Brock, and motley crew of new recruits quickly discover that being part of the Adventurers Guild is even worse than they’d imagined. Ever since the monsters took over the outside world, walled cities like Freestone have been the only safe places—but keeping them safe is a full-time, non-stop job. When a new danger threatens the city, Zed and his Guild-mates will have to venture outside the city to save it.
This book is written by a couple of long-time Dungeons and Dragons players, and it totally reads that way—and I mean that as a compliment! It’s playful, action-packed, and peopled with all kinds of unusual characters. The backstory is complex enough to leave room to explore but simple enough to follow without a lot of exposition, and lots of magic and magical creatures keep things interesting. Highly recommended for fantasy fans from about 5th grade and up.
(late elementary to middle grades)
The Song from Somewhere Else by A.F. Harrold
This is a surprisingly weird, tender little book. Frank, facing a rough summer being bullied by a neighborhood jerk, finds unexpected aid from the class weird kid, Nick Underhill. Nick rescues Frank and brings her home with him, and while she’s there, she hears a strange, haunting music that she can’t get out of her head. As Frank discovers Nick’s secret, she starts to realize that she’s not the only person who needs some help. It’s a very particular kind of book, but if you liked The Imaginary, give this one a try.
(late elementary grades)
The World’s Greatest Chocolate-Covered Pork Chop by Ryan K. Sager
What a fun read. Twelve-year-old Zoey Kate has everything it takes to be a great chef but her own restaurant—and after savvily negotiating her first business loan, she’s about to have that restaurant, too.
Plucky, precocious Zoey Kate is lots of fun, and her imaginative dishes (including cinnamon-bacon octopus pho, fried banana fondue and the titular chocolate pork chops) may well inspire some ambitious kitchen projects. The set-up—which requires you to believe that a tween can land a $50,000 bank loan pretty much on her own—is ridiculous and don’t get me started on the lack of insurance for Zoey Kate’s working trolley restaurant—but go with it—the story’s fun enough to suspend your disbelief. I’d pass this spunky story on to late elementary readers who can’t get enough Masterchef Junior.
(late elementary to middle grades)
The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
“Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”
That’s the last message from Alice’s mother, Ella, who’s finally been captured by the hidden enemies she’s been running from for as long as Alice can remember. Alice has lost count of all the rented apartments, houses, and motel rooms she’s called home over the years as her mom moved from place to place, but the one place she’s never been is her famous grandmother’s equally famous country estate, the Hazel Wood. Alice knows that’s where her mother has gone, and despite her mother’s desperate message, she’s determined to follow her and bring her home. But the Hazel Wood is more dangerous than Alice understands—a place where dark, twisty fairy tales are alive, a place where princesses are doomed, and danger lurks around every corner.
This is one of the slow, spooky books that you don’t realize is freaking you out until you’re trying to fall asleep and all you can think about is Twice-Killed Katherine. It’s genuinely eerie, first as the fairytale folk stalk Alice and her mom through the city and then as Alice ventures into her grandmother’s mysterious estate, where the darkest story of all is waiting for her. Great for teens who love the gory original Grimm stories or who are in the mood for a spooky, atmospheric book tinged with horror.
BEVERLY BURGESS is a Homeschool Coach, Blogger, Inspirational speaker, and author of Out of the Box Learning~Empowering YOU On Your Homeschool Journey.
She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and three children.