New Books Roundup: Spring 2018

I am so behind in book reviews this year it’s not even funny, but let’s see if we can make a dent! 

The Rose Legacy by Jessica Day George

I usually love Jessica Day George (case in point), but I didn’t love this one. It started strong: Orphaned Anthea Cross-Thornley is horrified to be shipped off, yet again, to another family member — this time an uncle whose home is even outside the walls of the civilized world she’s always known. But her uncle turns out to have a secret: He raises horses, which have been outlawed inside the kingdom for centuries, and Anthea has the gift of understanding horses, too. It’s a whole new world and a world that calls into question everything Anthea has believed to be true for her entire life — including that both her parents are dead. 

Then … I’m not really sure what happens? Anthea is bonded to a horse named Florian, who narrates part of the book — and while it feels rude to criticize a horse’s writing style, a lot of it was so weird and stilted I found it hard to get through. There’s (obviously) a whole big horse-related conspiracy going on in the main part of the kingdom, which Anthea is the only one who can resolve, and which she decides to tackle in what honestly seems like the most ridiculous and complicated way possible. I don’t know — things keep happening, but the second part of the story feels like it’s missing a plot. And it’s the first in a series, but the end feels tacked-on and unsatisfying in a way that didn’t really make me excited to read the next book.

This could be a Horse Girl thing. I was not a Horse Girl, and that could be the thing that creates my disconnect with this story.

(Middle grades)

---

Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All by Candace Fleming et al

I think this collection of stories — each section pairs a first-person story from one of Henry’s wives with a first-person account from Henry himself — would be a lot of fun if it were your introduction to the wild and wacky world of the Tudors, but if you are already a big Tudor nerd, it’s going to feel flat and superficial.

Henry VIII married six fascinating women, and his justifications for loving, leaving, marrying, and occasionally executing them are fascinating. Having a different author tackle each wife’s section was a good approach because it helped make each wife’s voice sound unique (Jennifer Donnelly’s Anne of Cleves story was particularly nice, I thought, though I kind of love Anne of Cleves, so I may be biased. I felt like Lisa Ann Sandell’s section on Jane Seymour was the weakest link.), but I didn’t think the Henry sections had the oomph they needed to transition between the wives’ stories. Henry was a bigger than life character as a husband and a king, and not having him take over the story must have been a challenge, but I think it erred too far in the other direction. It might have made more sense to eliminate Henry’s sections entirely and have no transition between stories or some kind of historical scene as a transition.

(High school)

---

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty 

Oh, I really liked this one!

Lucy was struck by lightning, resulting in superpower-level math skills — and OCD that manifests in rigid routines and patterns. Her grandma, whom she lives with, has homeschooled her ever since, and Lucy’s academically ready to head to college — but her grandma insists she needs to experience middle school for at least one year first. (I don’t love the whole “unsocialized homeschooler finds friends and fulfillment when forced into traditional school” trope and that is definitely A THING in this book.) So Lucy finds herself in a 7th grade classroom, pretending to be “normal.”

The plot of this middle grades book is not going to surprise you (new friends! middle school bullies! becoming comfortable with who you are!), but it’s a charmer nonetheless. I’m especially fond of how well the author wove Lucy’s math-iness throughout the book — so often, being good at math is an entry point to a character that never really gets mentioned again or a substitute for character development. In The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, math is part of how Lucy experiences the world throughout the story. (I think it also manifested as the author using the number 1 instead of the word “one” at some places in the text, which totally matches up to Lucy’s brain but which threw me off occasionally.)

I also appreciated the treatment of Lucy’s OCD, which is also a part of how she experiences the world and not just a problem that she can magically solve by finding a friend or getting a prom makeover. 

---

City of Bastards by Andrew Shvarts 

I started reading this without realizing that it was the second in a series — and while I was able to follow the plot fine, I kept thinking I was going to get a big flashback to explain some of the events and people the main characters kept referring to.

It was fine. I mean, it’s action-packed. Tilla and her friends have returned to the capital Lightspire after some serious action defeating — at least for the moment — her traitor father. (That all happened in the first book.) But they haven’t left trouble behind: More than one plot is afoot in the glittering city of magic, and while Tilla’s life is luxurious and pampered, it’s also under constant observation. When one of her friends is murdered in the room they share, Tilla gets pulled into a mystery that may be even deadlier than the one she’s just managed to escape. There’s romance (pretty standard YA stuff), violence (actually A LOT of violent violence, so be aware), and so many twists and turns that you may need a yoga session when you’re done. The author is definitely not afraid to go dark, and while some things are predictable, there are plenty of surprises. (Sometimes the surprises seem to exist just to surprise the reader with no textual logic behind them, but it certainly did keep me turning pages.) 

(High school)

---

A Friendly Town That’s Almost Always by the Ocean by Kir Fox

Nothing but Wayside School will ever be Wayside School, but this collection of interconnected stories has a definite Wayside-adjacent vibe — and I mean that in the best possible way.

Davy’s the new kid in Topsea, where dogs are mythical and mermaids are real, gravity is turned off once a year for routine maintenance, and sometimes you get the locker at the bottom of the swimming pool. Just watch out for the tides and stay clear of the shady PTA, and you should be okay. It’s silly and odd, and it totally works. Alternating stories with newspaper articles, school newsletters, and excerpts from a town guidebook and — like Wayside — telling lots of student stories, this book has a quirky rhythm that makes it feel like a super-speedy read. I found it the perfect mix of whimsy and action — I think if you add one book from this post to your library list, it should be this one.

(Middle grades)

---

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi

When I got this book, I was thrilled — “It’s Percy Jackson with Indian mythology!” And while I enjoyed reading it, I was less thrilled when I finished reading because it was almost exactly Percy Jackson with Indian mythology.

Prickly, unlikable hero(ine) who discovers she’s actually a descendant of a god? Check. Unleashed evil ready to take over the world? Check. Plucky sidekicks who assist hero(ine) and also illuminate the value of friendship? Check. Secret mythic world hidden in plain sight? Check? Hero(ine) the only one who can put things right? Check.

I mean, it’s a good story. And there’s a lot of Indian mythology here, which requires the author to both explain the basics and specifics of Indian myth (challenging since a lot of readers might not come to the story with a working knowledge of Indian mythology) and to do it well enough so that people will get all the jokes and real world connections. I think Chokshi does that really well, and I love that the book gives voice to a whole world of literature that kids might be inspired to go and explore. Some of the descriptions are lovely (“There was a Night Bazaar where you could purchase dreams on a string. If you had a good singing voice, you could use it to buy rice pudding dusted with moonlight.”), and the incarnated pigeon is often hilarious. There’s a lot to like — but it really ends up feeling like a badly dubbed movie version of the first Percy Jackson book sometimes. And I couldn’t shake a dislike of Aru’s character, which probably didn’t help.

I’ll definitely read the next book in the series — there’s a lot of set-up in this book for what comes next — but I’m hoping it finds more of its own voice and style. If it does, this could easily become a favorite.

(Middle grades)

---

More Reading List Inspiration

Stuff We Like :: 6.8.18

How does it always go from lovely almost-spring temperatures to blazing desert with no balmy transition period?

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE

My homeschool planner is officially on sale!

Also on sale: Our comprehensive high school curriculum.

Are you coming to the SEA conference? (Suzanne and I will be there! And I am sitting in on a homeschool 101 panel and giving a little workshop on using literary theory to teach literature, which is basically my favorite thing in the world, so please come and say hi!)

on the blog: Suzanne always reads the best books, Library Chicken score be darned. Also: A great book list for studying the Oregon Trail.

one year ago: How we homeschooled 9th grade. (I need to do a 10th grade post!) Plus: Shelli’s favorite resource for elementary current events.

two years ago: Our plan to homeschool high school. (Two years in, I feel like we were on the right track!) Also: An eerie middle grades novel about a girl who sees ghosts.

three years ago: I love this post from Idzie on how travel — near or far — helps us grow independence and confidence.

THE LINKS I LIKED

This was my feel-good story of the week: Sephora now offers beauty classes for the trans community.

I wish this collection of doomed Roman emperor cartoons had been available when we were reading SPQR this spring!

Incels may have their roots in the medieval code of courtly love. (Lots of shade-throwing on Capellanus, if you’re into that — which I totally am.)

What does Native American art look like if we move beyond its very real past tragedies? How do you acknowledge, honor, and transcend your cultural history — all at the same time? I think this is one of the big questions of the postcolonial world.

Just for fun: Literary classics retold as two panel comics

I haven’t lived around the corner from Caffe Vivaldi for more than a decade, but the thought of it not being there when I visit NYC has gotten me all choked up.

WHAT I’M READING AND WATCHING

I am working on a gigantic book review post of all the books I read and never got around to reviewing this spring, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, I am not letting the fact that I am very behind deter me from reading new books, including The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden, which I am looking forward to gushing over a bit when it comes out in September. (If you haven’t read The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, you are missing out.)

On my night table: How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide; Victorian People and Ideas; After the Funeral (and I can't remember whodunnit, so it's very suspenseful!); and The Invisible Library. I just finished The Invisible Library, and I was so prepared to love it, but it was ultimately just too much — I loved the central idea of a library that exists interdimensionally, and I was willing to buy the whole steampunk alternate world and the dragons and faeries, but when the vampires came in, I just felt like the author had taken all the popular literature from the past three decades, tossed it in a blender, and run with it. Which isn’t to say that it was bad, per se — I quite enjoyed parts of it — but with all the STUFF happening, you really notice that the development of the main and secondary characters is lacking.

RANDOM THINGS ON MY MIND

These strawberry fried pies are addictively good and so easy if you use refrigerated pie crust. (Trader Joe’s is my favorite readymade pie crust, but they don’t always have it at my store.)

I am always getting messages from people about reading levels for book lists, and I’ve been trying to incorporate more guidance in that department — but am I the only one who just honestly thinks reading levels are kind of pointless? I’ve always read what I enjoyed, whether it’s a picture book like Julian Is a Mermaid (which you should all go and get right now because this book is just pure delight) or a big fat tome of existential philosophy (hi, Heidegger), and I really want my kids to do the same. I do understand that it can get frustrating if something is too challenging for a kid to read on her own (though I’ve found readalouds are a great solution for that), and I’m definitely not critical of people who opt to read on grade level — I have just always found that letting my kids read what they are excited to read has been the best way to grow them as readers. What is your experience with reading levels like? Am I missing something important? 

---

More stuff we like

Library Chicken Update: 6.6.18

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!

I haven’t posted an update in a while, so this is Catch-Up-Week here at Library Chicken HQ. My summer reading has so far involved a good bit of rereading, since this is about the time of year that I get stubborn about my to-read pile — YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, PILE — and wander off to grab whatever looks good from my poor neglected shelves. I’m also busily reorganizing all the books in the house so I can actually find what I’m looking for come the fall, which means, as I’m sure we all know, (a) frequent shopping runs to Ikea for new bookshelves, and (b) leaving new bookshelves half-assembled all over the floor when I drop everything to read this one book I just rediscovered that I forgot I even had.

Lovecraft’s Monsters edited by Ellen Datlow

It’s hard for modern readers to celebrate well-known awful-person H.P. Lovecraft, but his influence on contemporary fantasy/horror is undeniable. The good news is that you can bypass the original Lovecraft stories entirely if you so desire and still enjoy a large selection of Lovecraft-inspired works, written by a diverse set of authors. This excellent anthology, which includes stories by Neil Gaiman, Kim Newman, and Caitlin Kiernan, is a great place to begin — there’s one story in here that caused me to gasp out loud when I reached the final sentence, which is not something that often happens.

(LC Score: 0; read on Kindle)

---

• Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer

• City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer

Continuing the 2018 Summer of Weird: I’ve been meaning to reread VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (consisting of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) for a while, so I picked up an edition that collects all three short novels in one book, which I think actually improved the experience (surprisingly, given how much I loved them the first time around). I haven’t yet seen the movie adaptation of Annihilation (has anyone seen it? is it good? is it going to give me nightmares?) but I can’t even begin to imagine how you put this bizarre story on screen. I also started working my way through some of the VanderMeer backlist: City of Saints and Madmen is a collection of stories, narratives, journal fragments, etc., all set in the strange and dangerous city of Ambergris. (Remember to STAY INDOORS during the Squid Festival, folks.) VanderMeer writes my favorite kind of weird.

(LC Score: +1)

---

HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Wow, what a great premise for a horror novel: a 17th century witch, burned at the stake, continues to haunt the town that burned her into the 21st century. (This book wins the “Best Use of a Fictional SmartPhone App” award hands down.) It grabbed me right away... but as the story went on, I began to have some problems with the execution. Unfortunately, this is one of those premises that you can’t think about for more than five minutes before it starts to fall apart, and it doesn’t help that the author doesn’t seem to have actually figured out the rules of his own fictional supernatural world. My biggest problem was with the misogyny and sexual violence that ran throughout the book. Tied to the original death of the witch, the misogyny might have made sense, but it never really seemed to connect to any larger theme (other than violence against women, unlike men, must always be sexual in nature?) and I found it extremely off-putting. This book also has a strange history, in that it’s translated from Dutch and based on Heuvelt’s original Dutch novel, but when Heuvelt sold the English-language rights, he rewrote the novel to change the setting to America and, in the process, completely rewrote the ending. I’m not sure what to think about all of that, but I don’t think the change in setting necessarily improved matters. I struggled with this one, but in the end it didn’t work for me.

(LC Score: +1) 

---

• The Brandons by Angela Thirkell

• Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell

• Cheerfulness Breaks In by Angela Thirkell

• Northbridge Rectory by Angela Thirkell

Time to take a break from the scary and weird and visit Thirkell’s Barsetshire! These books (#7 through #10 in the series) see the arrival of World War II in the little villages of Barsetshire, but mostly life goes on as always. I was going through these like potato chips, but one of the problems with Thirkell’s world is its inherent conservatism. She mostly plays it for laughs in the guise of old-fashioned British country squires and their ridiculous antics, but the books clearly celebrate that old-fashioned world which (in real life, if not in these novels) ultimately leads to racism, sexism, and — especially as the war goes on both in the author’s and the characters’ world — some nasty classism, which is not amusing or adorable in any way. I still love these books, but once I hit a couple of “he’s not really our kind, is he?” comments I needed to take a break.

(LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)

---

Bel Lamington by D.E. Stevenson

Stevenson is another writer of WWII-era adorableness (see both the Miss Buncle and Mrs. Tim series). This one is a later novel about a lonely but sweet secretary in 1961 London who ultimately finds friendship and love. A pleasant and quick read.

(LC Score: +1)

---

Buried for Pleasure by Edmund Crispin

Gervase Fen, Oxford professor, takes a break from professoring to run for a seat in Parliament and (of course) solves a couple of murders along the way. Not my favorite Fen, but a fun read nonetheless.

(LC Score: 0, Kindle)

---

• Yes, Please by Amy Poehler

• Lafayette in The Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell

• As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of the Princess Bride by Cary Elwes

One of my adventures so far this summer has been driving the eldest child up to his summer internship in Omaha, Nebraska. (ROAD TRIP!!!) It was a great opportunity to finally check out some audiobooks from my library. Years ago I was an Audible subscriber, but lately I’ve been more of a podcast gal. Once I installed the Libby app, however, borrowing audiobooks on my phone became super easy. I picked these three to listen to in part because the audiobook versions have the “bonus” content of guest readers, including Seth Myers on Amy Poehler’s book, Nick Offerman (as George Washington) on Sarah Vowell’s book, and an assortment of costars on Cary Elwes’s book. All three were great road trip choices and now I’m searching through the catalog for more options when I have to go up again in August to fetch the kid. (NOTE: Since these audiobooks were checked out from the library, Library Chicken HQ has determined that they absolutely count in the Library Chicken score.)

(LC Score: +3)

---

Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood

Why yes, I would like to read a book about people faking their own deaths! The topic is fascinating; the narrator less so. Greenwood’s conceit as she explores the hows and whys of death fraud is that after running up six figures in school loan debt she’s tempted to fake her own death to get away from it all. I found that framing device a little annoying, but the actual stories are interesting.

(LC Score: +1)

---

Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage by Glyn Williams

Are you watching The Terror yet? Did Ciaran Hinds (aka Sir John Franklin) get eaten by the SNOW MONSTER? Unfortunately, there are no SNOW MONSTERS in Williams’s solid overview of the history of European exploration in search of the Northwest Passage. There is cannibalism and plenty of scurvy, though, so you know I’m a fan. If I could make one request of Mr. Williams it would be to give your poor reader MORE MAPS. Arctic Circle geography is not my strong point. (Nor was it Sir John Franklin’s, apparently. Sorry, Ciaran.)

(LC Score: +1)

---

• Returned Unread: LC Score: -10 (YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, TO-READ PILE.)
• Library Chicken Score for 6/5/18: -2
• Running Score: -24 ½ 

On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:

• Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller (Arctic Circle science fiction set in a floating city full of refugees from the climate wars)
• Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer (more about Ambergris)
• Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand (hippie folk rock band spends a summer in a mysterious England manor house)
• Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen’s Ghost Ship by Martin W. Sandler (SPOILER: they all die of scurvy)

---

More Library Chicken

Read All About It: Exploring the Oregon Trail Through Literature

In May of 1843, one thousand pioneers set off from Elm Grove, Missouri toward the Willamette Valley, marking the first great migration along the route that would become the Oregon Trail. Mark the 175th anniversary of the wagon train that kicked off two decades of westward expansion by learning more about the wagon trail-turned-westward-highway that made their journeys possible.

The 2,000-mile journey from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon, wound along trails through Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho, though not always the same way every time. We tend to think of the Oregon Trail as a set route, but it was more flexible than that — settlers followed the same rough path, but everyone was always looking for a shortcut or a way around some of the trail’s trickier obstacles. It was no easy journey: Just planning it could take as long as a year, and the Oregon-California Trails Association estimates that one-tenth of the people who set off on the trail died along the way, many from disease, others from accidents. Hasty graves lined the trail. Surviving settlers scrawled and carved their names on rocks and into trees they passed, leaving evidence that they had passed that way — their marks are still visible today. Settlers in prairie schooner wagons — so many that the rutted trails they left in their wake are still visible across the prairie today — waited to write their names on Independence Rock, a huge granite boulder that marked the trail’s middle point. Settlers who reached the rock by July 4 knew that they were on schedule to reach Oregon before the snows started.

PRIMARY SOURCES 

Read the first-person stories of people who actually made the trek.

Seeing the Elephant: The Many Voices of the Oregon Trail by Joyce Badgley Hunsaker

This book collects the journals of settlers who traveled the Oregon Trail over a 40-year period, offering both the stories of what life on the trail was really like and an opportunity to chart how the travel experience changed over the life of the trail.

Buy It: Seeing the Elephant on Amazon

---

Overland in 1846, Volume 1: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail edited by Dale L. Morgan

The first book in this two-volume series focuses on the experience of being on the trail, collecting diaries and letters from settlers, including some written by members of the infamous Donner Party, whose delayed trip forced them to weather the winter in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The second volume, which focuses on life after the trail, is a compelling glimpse into the challenges of life on the frontier.

Buy It: Overland in 1846 on Amazon

---

The Prairie Traveler by Capt. Randolph B. Marcy 

Think of this 1859 guidebook as the ultimate Oregon Trail travel agent: Marcy, a West Point grad and veteran traveler, compiled the information he thought pioneers needed to safely traverse the country, from how to choose between mules and oxen for your team to tips for finding and purifying water to how to treat a rattlesnake bite when you’re miles away from civilization. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the concerns and challenges of trail life.

Buy It: The Prairie Traveler on Amazon

---

NONFICTION 

Get the lay of the land from these well-researched and informative resources for studying the history of westward expansion.

Don't Know Much About the Pioneers by Kenneth C. Davis

This handy Q&A guide starts with the Louisiana Purchase and continues through the period of western expansion, acknowledging Native American contributions (including the fact that the trail followed Native paths) and the work of non- white-men in pioneer activities. Though it’s not specific to the Oregon Trail, it’s a practical, fast orientation in frontier history.

Buy It: Don't Know Much About the Pioneers on Amazon

---

If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine

Levine’s trademark blend of humor and history enlivens this books about life along the Oregon Trail, which may be difficult for modern-day kids accustomed to GPS directions and ready bridges to fully grasp. Lots of details help kids understand the courage and hard work required to set out on the trail — plus there are plenty of opportunities to see the things that hold true for human experience across the centuries.

Buy It: If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon on Amazon

---

In Pursuit of a Dream

In this 2010 documentary, 24 students from across the United States journeyed from Wyoming to Oregon, using the same tools and supplies they would have used in pioneer days. (No cell phones! No cars!) It’s fascinating to see how they adjusted to life on the trail — and to see how small decisions could have a big impact in this kind of travel.

Buy It: In Pursuit of a Dream at Oregon-California Trails Association

---

Daily Life in a Covered Wagon by Paul Erickson

The Larkin family sold up in 1853 and left their Indiana farm for Oregon. Erickson uses their story, including letters, diaries, records, and recollections, to describe what life was like for families on the trail. Though there’s no glossing over the hard parts, all the Larkins survived the journey west — partly, perhaps, because when they boiled water for coffee (which they all drank regularly), they also killed off cholera germs without realizing it.

Buy It: Daily Life in a Covered Wagon on Amazon

---

HISTORICAL FICTION 

Fiction brings this part of history to life with a vividness that you won’t soon forget.

Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell-1847 by Kristina Gregory 

This entry in the Dear America series definitely illuminates the dark side of the Oregon Trail experience — including group conflicts, violence, death, and danger — but it also highlights the attitudes and determination of the pioneers.

Buy It: Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie on Amazon

---

Rachel's Journal by Marissa Moss

This elementary-age book is written like the scrapbook of a virtual pioneer girl, who keeps a diary and pasted-in mementoes of her experiences during her family’s seven-month journey from Illinois to California.

Buy It: Rachel's Journal on Amazon

---

Westward to Home: Joshua’s Oregon Trail Diary by Patricia Hermes

There’s nothing particularly surprising about this historical fiction novel, but it’s nice to have a pioneer story told from a boy’s perspective — so many seem to be inspired by the experiences of young women instead. Joshua’s family is headed west from Missouri to Oregon, a journey that will require Joshua to face his fears. 

Buy It: Westward to Home on Amazon

---

OTHER OREGON TRAIL RESOURCES

Get hands-on with these activities designed to help you explore the stories of the Oregon Trail.

The Bureau of Land Management has an elementary/early middle grades unit study pack for the Oregon Trail that includes trail math, creative writing, planning, and more. 

Learn the basics of writing historical fiction with the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Go West: Imagining the Oregon Trail curriculum plan. You’ll start with research and big questions before crafting your own story. edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/ go-west-imagining-oregon-trail

Westward Ho!: An Activity Guide to the Wild West by Laurie Carlson includes simple-but-fun activities like cooking flapjacks, sewing sunbonnets, and panning for gold. It’s not all Oregon Trail-specific, but it’s a fun collection of projects.

You’ll find some more complex activities in Pat McCarthy’s Heading West: Life with the Pioneers, 21 Activities, including butter churning, candle dipping, and animal tracking. Again, the activities tend to be more about pioneering in general and less about the Oregon Trail specifically, but most would certainly be relevant for settlers headed west to Oregon.

And, of course, you can’t study the Oregon Trail without playing a few rounds of the classic computer game. 

---

Stuff We Like :: 6.1.18

How is it June already?

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE

• Did you win our homeschool planning package?
• You can still get our special preview discount if you order our new high school curriculum by June 15. (After that, preorders get a 10 percent discount, so it’s not like you’re totally out of luck.)
• If you haven’t preordered my homeschool planner and you want to, it looks like it’s on sale right now for $13.59.
• Maggie has a great post up about homeschooling with dyslexia, whether you want to support your own student or someone else’s. (As many as one in five people have some kind of dyslexia.)
• Maybe you’d like to read another magical fantasy like The Wizard of Oz?
• one year ago: Our favorite advice for homeschooling high school and what to read next if you loved Swallows and Amazons
• two years ago: How homeschooling can be a springboard to the education you wish you’d had and a reading list for the awesomeness that is Harriet Tubman
• three years ago: Jackaby is the supernatural Sherlock Holmes, but his would-be paleontologist sidekick Abigail Rook steals the show

THE LINKS I LIKED

• The secret charm of internet ghost towns
• The case for seeing motherhood as a genre instead of as a subject
• Relevant to my reading life: How annotating makes your reading life richer
• Are you participating in the Great American Read?

WHAT I’M READING AND WATCHING

• I am basically just working my way down my list of recommendations from Suzanne this summer, so you may not be surprised that I’ve just knitted my way (still working on my Magical) through the entire 1980s series of Mapp and Lucia. On to the 2014 version! (I accidentally signed up for a Britbox subscription, but I am enjoying it so much I don’t want to cancel.) 
• I love big, dense books for pool season, and London: The Novel is hitting the sweet spot for me right now. I suspect it’s no secret to regular readers that I am a little obsessed with British history, so I think it’s kind of impressive that this book manages to be interesting and even suspenseful even though I already know a lot of what’s going to happen.

---

RELATED POSTS

5 Dyslexia Truths that Everyone Needs to Know

It’s estimated that as many as one in 10 or even one in five people is dyslexic, but there are still so many untruths about dyslexia floating around. Even if someone in your family isn’t dyslexic, it’s almost certain that someone you care about is. Here are five truths to help you be an ally and advocate for those people in your life.

Myth: Dyslexics see letters backwards.

Truth: Dyslexia is a not a vision problem (though vision problems can be comorbid with dyslexia). This misconception comes from the letter reversals that dyslexic children commonly make. Neurotypical adults easily see the differences between b, d, p, and q. To a dyslexic child, however, those letters can be quite confusing. A chair turned to the left, to the right, or upside down is still a chair. But each turn of what is essentially the same letter shape makes a different letter. That can be really difficult to pin down for someone who struggles with working memory or visual processing issues. It’s also important to note that many dyslexic children don’t reverse letters at all. 

b

A chair...

d

still a chair...

p

still a chair...

q

And Still a chair.

Myth: Kids with dyslexia just need to try harder.

Truth: Children with dyslexia are trying harder than you can imagine. They want to be able to read. They want to be able to keep up with everyone else, but no amount of trying harder will change their physiological differences that make it virtually impossible to learn from routine literacy instruction. Rather than our judgement, dyslexic kids need our compassion, patience, and efforts to specialize instruction to the ways they can learn.  

Myth: If kids are having a hard time learning to read, just relax and wait until they’re older.

Truth: If there’s one widespread myth within the homeschooling community that needs to expire, it’s this one. Children do not outgrow dyslexia. It’s a lifelong condition. Waiting even a year to provide help for a child who may have dyslexia means a vital, precious year of intervention that is lost. It’s another year of letting a child’s self esteem suffer as he or she believes that everyone else must be smarter. It’s losing even more ground that that child will have to make up. 

I love that in homeschooling we have more time to let our children’s gifts and abilities unfold in their own time, but experts agree that suspected dyslexia needs attention, and it needs attention early.   

Myth: Kids have a hard time learning to read because their parents didn’t read to them enough.

Truth: Talk to parents of dyslexic children, and you may be surprised to find out that they’ve read early and often to their children. I started reading to my children on the day they were home from the hospital, and even now, I read aloud to them for at least an hour every day. Their comprehension and vocabulary are extraordinary, but my efforts didn’t change the fact that their brains are wired differently. 

Myth: If we make accommodations (like the use of audiobooks) for a dyslexic child, it will be a crutch, and the child won’t be able to be successful in college. 

Truth: On the contrary, if we want dyslexic children to succeed in college and careers, we need to help them learn about the accommodations that work best for them in adapting to a neurotypical world. Giving kids practice with tools like audiobooks, text-to-speech software, and C-Pen Readers will help them focus on the information that inundates them in this new setting rather than struggling to also find a way to make that learning feasible. 

Accommodations for dyslexic people aren’t unfair, and they don’t encourage laziness. They’re simply a way to level the playing field. We couldn’t deny a wheelchair ramp to a physically disabled person, and we shouldn’t deny accommodations to people with learning disabilities either.

---

Related Posts

Stuff We Like :: 5.25.18

The pool is finally open! I like that a lot.

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE

We launched our high school curriculum this week — it’s the liberal arts curriculum I helped create for Jason’s hybrid high school, so it’s all about critical thinking, reading, and writing. You can read all about it here. 

Shelli muses on the difference a few years can make in your homeschool life.

Have you entered to win our homeschool planning package? 

one year ago: The Power of Now: Or Why Maybe This Is the Summer to Start that Homeschool Co-Op

two years ago: At Home with the Editors: Amy’s 2nd Grade

three years ago: Q&A: How can I help my student focus?

THE LINKS I LIKED

Honestly, I’m sharing this just for the headline.

I found this essay subverting the notion of Greek “whiteness” fascinating, and I can’t wait to teach Homer again with this in mind.

This charm bracelet — and what it says about hope and art in dark times — really is remarkable.

The comfortable mythology of imperialism is complicated for the authors embraced by Western culture: “All of us on that world-literature list are basically safe, domesticated, just exotic enough to make our readers feel that they are liberal, not parochial or biased. That is, we are purveyors of comforting myths for a small segment of the dominant culture that would like to see itself as open-minded.”

WHAT I’M READING AND WATCHING

I’m knitting Magical for my son’s Hanukkah sweater — I got a lot of flack from the kids about trying to sub hats for the usual holiday sweaters last year, so I am taking advantage of summer knitting time — and I am finally watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine while I work on it. Trust me: Suzanne is always right about television shows, and if she tells you to watch something, you should watch it.

We just started our third official Harry Potter readaloud. It was an accident — we just meant to read the first chapter because we were discussing what makes a great first chapter — but once you start, apparently you can’t stop. Oh well, there are worse ways to spend a summer!

---

Now Available to Pre-Order: Our High School Curriculum

I decided to go for it, y’all! Starting right now, you can buy a copy of our Year One high school curriculum, a liberal arts program that incorporates history, science, philosophy, literature, Latin, and composition into a cohesive program that emphasizes critical thinking, reading, and writing.

Originally, I planned to recreate the first year of our curriculum and offer the Classics Year, but now that I am actually in the thick of it, I am finding it much easier to write the curriculum as I work, so we’re making Year One European history instead. That means fourteen glorious weeks of the Enlightenment for the first semester — Newton! Rousseau! Swift! Pope! And even a little Kant! — and fourteen magical weeks of the Victorians in the second semester, including Dickens, Browning, Carlyle, Mill, Darwin, and more. We’ll read some of the classics, but we’ll also explore the woman question, interrogate issues of slavery and racism, and dig into some of the meatier questions these periods of unprecedented social, political, and literary change raise. It’s going to be great.

In science, this is our biology year — how could we not hone in on biology when we can read Darwin with it? We’ll alternate a comprehensive traditional biology program (complete with labs), with primary readings chronicling the history of biology that connect to our history, literature, and philosophy readings. Our emphasis in science is on understanding and applying the scientific method and on ensuring that we establish a solid framework based on the current best scientific understanding of the natural world.

I’m so excited about this program and thrilled to get to share it beyond the ten students who get to use it at my husband’s hybrid high school. I’ve put together some sample pages that you can download right here — I think they give you a good idea of what the curriculum would actually be like to use, though they are not final pages since the curriculum is still a work in progress. I am committed to completing it by August 5, 2018 for those of you who want to start using it in the fall. (And if you want to use it but you need more specifics to start your planning, please email me, and I am happy to help!)

If you are a high school parent who might be interested in this curriculum, I hope you’ll consider supporting it with a pre-order. I’ve taken 30% off the cost of the print edition and 20% off the cost of the digital edition for everyone who pre-orders before June 15 (the price is reflected in the store). And as a special thank-you bonus, if you pre-order the curriculum before July 15, you can choose one student essay from each subject in this program when you use it to send me, and I will give your student individual feedback. (This may not seem like a great bonus, but my essay feedback is legendary at Jason’s school. I consistently see significant writing improvement from students who apply my — admittedly copious — essay feedback.) I definitely want to show my appreciation to the people who offer early support to this project, which is big and challenging and time-consuming.

[Edited: The curriculum is 10% off digital and print editions through August 1.]

On to all the details you could possibly want:

Included in This Curriculum

Full 28-week curriculum, including lectures, assignments, and readings for:

• History: Our first semester focuses on Europe from roughly 1688 (when William and Mary took the throne of England in the Glorious Revolution) to the French Revolution in 1789-1799. In the second semester, we’ll turn to the Victorian era, which begins with Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne in 1837 and continues through her death in 1901. Students will read a variety of primary and secondary sources and write comparative, analytical, and DBQ essays during each semester.
• Literature: During the first semester, we’ll focus on the wide variety of literature made possible by improved printing techniques (and looser printing regulations) during the Enlightenment, including journalism and non-fiction, poetry, drama, so much satire, and the beginning of the novel. In addition to selections of all of the above, we’ll be reading Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and another novel (chosen by the student from a list of options) in their entirety. In the second semester, our focus will be Victorian literature, specifically the fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry that served as a link between the Romantics and the modern writers of the 20th century. In addition to shorter selections, students will read Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and another novel (chosen from a list of options). Students will explore specific works and the broader generic (as in genre-specific, not the more common definition of not specific) connections and implications of each period. Written output includes critical, comparative, and rhetorical essays in addition to frequent timed free response essays.
• Philosophy: With so many impassioned essays and reasoned arguments to explore, philosophy this year will concentrate on evaluating arguments, including recognizing biases, fallacies, rhetorical appeals, and more. In addition to considering history and literature readings through this lens, we’ll also be reading selections from Immanuel Kant (in the fall) and John Stuart Mill (in the spring) as philosophical representatives of their times.
• Composition: Our focus in composition this year will be on writing better essays, so we’ll be working through major essay forms, including comparative, analytical, rhetorical, narrative, and argumentative essays. We’ll also focus on building a toolkit for self-evaluation and revision so that students can develop and improve first-draft essays.
• Latin: We’ll be using the Ecce Romani 1 textbook as a resource for improving English grammar skills while learning the fundamentals of Latin grammar and vocabulary. 
• Biology: Our biology year uses Miller & Levine Biology to explore cells, energy, reproduction, genetics, human systems, and of course evolution—as biologist Ernst Mayr says, “there is not a single Why? question in biology that can be answered adequately without a consideration of evolution.” In addition to labs (designed to be done at home with minimal equipment, with additional options for students who want to use more sophisticated lab tools), students will engage in projects and activities to develop understanding of concepts and ideas. Students will also read primary sources that connect to the history, literature, and philosophy of the Enlightenment and Victorian age.

Supplemental Units

(These are optional units that you may use for summer learning, independent projects, or enrichment. They're included with the curriculum — we treat them as Friday enrichment at Jason's school.)

• Film Studies (A nine-week introduction to film history that focuses on the tools and techniques needed to read movies as a text)
• The Ramayana (A five-week investigation into the history, art, literature, and significance of India’s great epic poem)
• Music Appreciation (A 14-week study of the music of the Enlightenment and Victorian periods)
• Book Club (A six-month guide with discussion topics, mini lectures, and and reading guides, focused on modern African literature)

Included:

• History: Enlightenment
• History: Victorians
• Literature: Enlightenment
• Literature: Victorians
• Philosophy: Building and Evaluating Arguments
• Composition: The Essay
• Latin: Year 1 (Includes English Grammar)
• Biology: Lesson Guide
• Biology: Lab Notebook
• Parent’s Guide to the European History Year
• Audio Lectures for All Subjects

Provided by You:

• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (at the library, free ebook, or—my favorite—the Norton Critical edition)
• Great Expectations (at the library, free ebook, or—my favorite—the Norton Critical Edition)
• Secondary novels (student choice)
• Miller & Levine Biology (available used on Amazon)
• Ecce Romani 1 (available used on Amazon)
• Films for Film Studies, optional (available to rent on Amazon)
• Music for Music Appreciation, optional (available to stream on Amazon)
• The Ramayana: A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian Epic by Ramesh Menon, optional (available on Amazon)
• Book Club Books (all available on Amazon)
• Math curriculum

Important Notes

• This curriculum was designed to cover two 14-week semesters, for a total of 28 weeks of structured academic time. Because of the short time span, it’s a very focused, rigorous curriculum—you could definitely slow down and spread it across more time if you wanted to.
• This is a reading- and writing-intensive curriculum. While you could definitely modify it to make it less so, critical reading and writing are such essential parts of it that if you hate those things, this curriculum might not be the best fit for you.
• All of the information in this curriculum was reviewed by and created by or in close collaboration with people with advanced degrees in the subject area.
• This is a secular curriculum, and it’s our biology year. There is a lot of information about evolution in this curriculum.
• This sample does not include complete lessons and is only a sample—the completed curriculum may differ from what you see here. 
• I love the idea of publishing this curriculum if people can use it, but I will be using advance sales as an indication of interest. If there is enough interest, I will ship the completed curriculum by August 5, 2018. If there is not enough interest, I will issue full refunds by July 31, 2018.
• You can order a digital or a print edition of the curriculum. Each subject comes as its own file or book so that you can work through them at the speed you prefer.

---

The Benefits of Having Older Kids

My boys are only eleven and eight years old, so when I say “older kids,” I mean they have passed that age when I have to constantly supervise them. I know other parents will tell me that having teenagers is even more beneficial, and I’m sure they are right. I mean, what a great day it’ll be when I can send my kid to the store for something! But right now, I’m basking in this “a little bit” older stage. I’ve noticed a lot of good things about it lately.

Though I haven’t had to do this for a while, it’s worth mentioning that I don’t have to dress them, bathe them, or even brush their teeth. It seemed like that stage of dependence would never end, especially since my boys are three years apart, but then suddenly it did. I still savor the extra time this gives me. A few more minutes of freedom here and there is wonderful!

My boys also play together or by themselves for long stretches of time — time when they leave me alone to do house chores or whatever I need to do. Though they’ve been doing this for a long time, the play time has been stretching out longer and longer. They need me less and less to help them with this or that.

My boys like to play games — board games and digital games — and over the years, I’ve had to read a lot of instruction manuals to these games. In the last year, as the games have become a growing interest, my 11-year-old has taken over the job of reading instructions. This alone, in my opinion, is one of the biggest benefits of having older kids!

Slowly, ever so slowly, I have been able to turn over more daily chores to the boys, though I try not to be a slave driver either. They sweep up their crumbs after dinner, clear the table and wipe it, put the wet clothes into the dryer, and do other, random clean-up jobs. I should probably think about expanding their chore list even more.

By far my favorite benefit of having older kids, however, took place this past week, which was spring break for the local schools. I wasn’t planning to do a spring break in our homeschool, but the weather turned perfect, and my eldest son mentioned a project that we had been talking about doing for about a year. That was to clear the little trail in our woods. 

Before I had kids, I created a trail through a small patch of woods in our backyard. I used that trail a lot when my eldest son was a toddler, but later, as the boys got older and we began the time-consuming journey of homeschooling, our yard, especially the woods, were neglected. Weeds and other natural debris had completely covered the path. 

Since my eldest suggested it, and my younger son was excited about it too, I decided to go “lite” on the lessons so that we could spend a few days on the trail. What fun we had! I was prepared for it to be a lot of work on my part, but the boys worked hard too. Together, we cleared the path in just three days, and now we’re motivated to do some other yard work too.

It’s always been a goal of mine to get the boys out into nature as much as possible. When they were younger, we did a lot of simple gardening and nature walks at local parks, and though we still try to do those things, our homeschooling schedule gives us less time. Now I see that as the boys get older, their experiences in nature may expand to new projects. They will do more because they finally can.

If there’s any mom out there making her way through the path of infanthood, toddlerhood, and still not quite independent enough years, I want to be a beacon of light ahead of you — whether you are looking forward to the future or not, there are a lot of great things up ahead!

---

Stuff We Like :: 5.18.19

You can always tell right after an issue comes out because I have so much to talk about. :)

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE

It’s all been very exciting:

• The spring issue is out!
• I wrote a homeschool planner! (You can order it on Amazon. You can see how I'm using it on Instagram. And you could win our Ultimate Homeschool Planning Package, which includes so many of my favorite planning tools.)
• Subscribers can check out a sample of our liberal arts high school curriculum. (So far people seem to like it!)
• Suzanne is being PERSONALLY targeted by her library and Dan Simmons, but she is persevering with Library Chicken despite that.
• I’m working on our summer reading guide for 2018, which means I get to go back and look at all our old summer reading posts, and you might want to do that, too, because they are full of good ideas.

one year ago: Nanette recommended the Myths and Legends podcast. Plus: How I use my bullet journal for our homeschool’s as-we-go planner. (Someone on Instagram asked me whether my bullet journal had stopped working for me — it definitely didn’t, but who could say no to the opportunity to custom-build a homeschool planner from scratch? In fact, some of my favorite things about my new planner are ideas that I borrowed from the flexibility of my bullet journal! You know I think the planning solution that works for you is the right one for you.)

two years ago: Nine great books for Latino Book Month. Plus: Seven great resources for critical thinking and a peek inside Shelli’s kindergarten.

three years ago: Lisa wondered: “What’s so special about homeschooling?”

THE LINKS I LIKED

I feel like I’d remember if I had Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s remains in my cellar, don’t you?

The new Nancy Drew graphic novel series looks AMAZING. (Suzanne, did you see this?)

I cannot wait to read this one. (And I don’t have to — at least not completely — because there’s an excerpt here.)

I have been trying to explain this to my kids for years: Food just tastes better in bowl!

WHAT I’M READING AND WATCHING

I am plowing through Peter Ackroyd’s history of England in the wrong order: I started with Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution because I am brushing up on the Glorious Revolution before I reread Gulliver’s Travels again, but I loved it so much I kept going to Revolution: The History of England from the Battle of the Boyne to the Battle of Waterloo (which is also relevant and which is my favorite so far), and since I have to wait until October for Dominion: The History of England from the Battle of Waterloo to Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, I think I'm just going to go back to Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors and start over from the beginning because I am really enjoying them so much. 

And I’m finally ready to catch up on the latest season of Jane the Virgin, which—if the silly name has put you off trying it—is such a great show, the perfect combination of sweet and spectacular, with the best writerly jokes of any show I can remember watching. (Plus Rogelio is my favorite.)

IN OUR HOMESCHOOL

We are spending the spring exploring India because we realized that this country always gets short shrift in our history studies (and probably also partly because Haroun and the Sea of Stories was one of our family’s favorite readalouds of the past few months). We’re trying to do it together, which means figuring out things we can do with an almost-11th grade super-reader and a we’re-not-sure-if-we’re-calling-it-4th-grade-or-5th-grade-for-next-year-yet who isn’t always keen to dive as deep. Fortunately, the Ramayana is perfect for both of them—my daughter is reading this version on her own (my friend who studied Indian philosophy says it's the best translation for first-timers because it doesn't over-condense but it does try to keep the story's flow), but we have read a couple of picture-book versions together (I mentioned two that we really liked in the spring issue world mythology roundup) and we all enjoyed a lecture on the Ramayana by Neil Gaiman from the British Library’s podcast. We have also had a great time making shadow puppets, even though ours are nowhere near as spectacular as some of the ones we’re seen. Now that they’re both totally interested, I think this project is going to be a lot of fun. 

---

Library Chicken Update: 5.16.18

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!

It’s a dark week at Library Chicken HQ, my friends. First of all, my husband’s library card expired, and since he doesn’t get to the library on a near-daily basis like a NORMAL person (I really don’t know how he spends his time) he hasn’t yet renewed it and suddenly all of the books that he — or, you know, totally well-intentioned spouses — had checked out on that card came immediately due. You can see the casualty numbers towards the end of the post. Secondly, on a sadder note, I reluctantly made the decision to return (unread) two short story collections, one by Sherman Alexie and the other by Junot Diaz. As you may know, both of these esteemed authors have recently been accused of sexual harassment (minimally). Sigh. I think I’ll get back to them at some point, but right now I have so many books on my to-read list that I decided to set these aside. I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed reading them just now. And speaking of problematic authors: don’t you hate it when you eagerly start a sf novel by one of your favorite authors and it turns out to be a dystopia in which Obamacare — together with married women who choose to keep their own names instead of using their husbands’ — brings about the destruction of the United States? Yeah, well, that didn’t exactly happen this week, but you’ll understand when you read the update.

• EMINENT VICTORIANS by Lytton Strachey
• LYTTON STRACHEY: THE NEW BIOGRAPHY by Michael Holroyd

Girl Who Reads Woolf and Woolf-Adjacent Non-Fiction: Strachey, a core member of Bloomsbury and one of Virginia Woolf’s closest friends, is one of those fascinating people who I love to read about but who probably wouldn’t have bothered to say two words to me if we had ever met in real life. (Actually I think that applies to pretty much all of Bloomsbury.) He was his generation’s Oscar Wilde, shunned by “polite” society because of rumors about his “deviancy” (homosexual acts still being illegal in England at this time) until his snarky little collection of biographical essays on beloved Victorian figures (including Florence Nightingale and General Gordon) became a best-seller and worldwide phenomenon. He was an oversized man (he may have had Marfan syndrome; you can see wonderful portraits of him here and here) who usually spoke in a squeaky high-pitched voice, and who went around falling in love with all sorts of unsuitable people and creating surprisingly stable triangular relationships (again, like pretty much all of Bloomsbury). Michael Holroyd’s 1994 biography is interesting not only for its subject matter, but also because Holroyd’s original 1967 two-volume biography of Strachey (of which this is an update) was controversial when first published because it openly acknowledged Strachey’s homosexuality and relationships with other men.

(LC Score: +2)

---

• OTTOLINE: THE LIFE OF LADY OTTOLINE MORRELL by Sandra Jobson Darroch
• DECEIVED WITH KINDNESS: A BLOOMSBURY CHILDHOOD by Angelica Garnett

Girl Who Reads Woolf and Woolf-Adjacent Non-Fiction Continued: I love Lady Ottoline. I don’t see how anyone can not love Lady Ottoline. She was a wealthy patron of the arts, including many of the Bloomsbury set, who ran various houses and salons where the intelligent and talented could meet and rub off on each other. (Her hospitality would become very important during World War I, when many of the conscientious objectors among her friends would find sanctuary and government-approved employment at her country farm.) She had relationships with the likes of as Bertrand Russell (turns out he was a massive jerk) and D. H. Lawrence (ditto, but I already suspected that). Unfortunately, Lady Ottoline is also somewhat of a tragic figure, in that while her brilliant friends were using (and occasionally abusing) her generosity, they -- particularly the Bloomsbury folks, who do not come off well here -- were also often ridiculing her in vicious and cruel ways in their letters. Darroch’s biography of Ottoline, while interesting, didn’t do much to illuminate that disconnect for me or explain why she was seen as so ridiculous (apparently Ottoline wore silly clothes? and too much makeup?), nor does it succeed in going beyond documenting Ottoline’s life to showing us what she thought and felt, leaving me wanting more. Another tragic and slightly mysterious Bloomsbury figure is Angelica (Bell) Garnett, daughter of Vanessa Bell and niece to Virginia Woolf. Angelica grew up amid one of those complicated Bloomsbury triangular relationships: while her father was officially Clive Bell, Vanessa’s husband (who no longer resided with her), it was an open secret that her actual father was Duncan Grant, Vanessa’s longtime love-interest who also happened to be gay. At the time of Angelica’s birth, Vanessa lived with Duncan and Duncan’s lover, David Garnett, who (a) was always hitting unsuccessfully on Vanessa, and (b) looked at baby Angelica in the crib and said he’d marry her when she grew up. In a disturbing twist, he did. In 1985, Angelica wrote this memoir of her Bloomsbury childhood and the damage done by the secrets around her parentage. She speaks of being “brainwashed” by Vanessa’s suffocating mothering, but leaves so much unsaid that it’s sometimes hard to understand what exactly went so wrong (beyond the obvious problem of lying to your daughter about who her father is). That something did go wrong is clear in Angelica’s history with Garnett, who looks an awful lot like a sexual predator to modern eyes. Bloomsbury’s inability or unwillingness to protect Angelica from Garnett has to be reckoned as a major failure.

(LC Score: +2)

---

PASTORALIA by George Saunders

I don’t have much to say about this collection of George Saunders stories except that they are strange and excellent and Saunders should write more quickly so that I don’t have to ration out his older stories so carefully.

(LC Score: +1)

---

WEEKENDS AT BELLEVUE: NINE YEARS ON THE NIGHT SHIFT AT THE PSYCH ER by Julie Holland

Dr. Holland had some fascinating experiences during her years in charge of the psychiatric ER at Bellevue, but I had a hard time with this memoir, mostly because I had a hard time warming up to the author. She deals with being a woman in a male-dominated profession by being a super-flirty one-of-the-guys gal, and handles the stresses of her job by becoming callous and overly-macho. To her credit, she doesn’t like the “bullying” (to use her own word) side of her that comes out in the ER and works hard to change, but while I appreciate her commitment to warts-and-all storytelling, I have to question Holland’s self-awareness when she implies that she finds sexual harassment to be a huge turn-on. (Which is more than discouraging to read in a book published as recently as 2009.)

(LC Score: +1)

---

READINGS: ESSAYS AND LITERARY ENTERTAINMENTS by Michael Dirda

This collection of fun little bookish columns from the Washington Post (1993-1999) is just the kind of soothing reading I need these days — and it was especially nice to discover that Dirda is a Mapp & Lucia fan!

(LC Score: +1)

---

THE ABOMINABLE by Dan Simmons

Sigh. I saved the worst for last. You all know from my last post that I am a big fan of the scurvy-and-SNOW-MONSTER fun fest that is Dan Simmons’s The Terror (are you guys watching the AMC show? is it good? don’t tell me anything!), so of course I was excited to pick up this novel about a (fictional) 1925 expedition to Mount Everest (immediately following the 1924 death of George Mallory on the mountain). Unfortunately, I have to report that there is NO scurvy (I guessed that going in) and (SPOILERS but I don’t even care) NO snow monsters. I knew this book would be something of an uphill climb (LEAVE ME ALONE I’M SAD AND PUNS ARE A COPING MECHANISM) because I am the poster child for “Not Getting It” when it comes to mountain-climbing and Everest-climbing in particular, and Simmons handles some of the uncomfortable elements surrounding the culture of Everest climbers (childish interchangeable sherpa-characters who never become distinct individuals and only exist to be killed off screaming? CHECK!) in less than adroit fashion. Even so, I wasn’t expecting that the first half of this 650-page novel would read like a lecture entitled “Look At All the Cool Research Dan Simmons Did!” (SPOILER: it’s not actually that cool.) But none of this raised the book to Truly Awful status until the ending, where Simmons reveals what is actually “abominable” and yeah, there are Nazis, but even Snow Nazis couldn’t cheer me up with this one. Simmons is one of those authors whose books I (usually) love, but whose politics I can’t stand, as I discovered when I read his other Truly Awful book, Flashback, where Obamacare and women’s lib combine to destroy the country. So why do I keep reading him? He’s a great writer (and really has a way with scurvy) and in books like The Terror, with its almost complete lack of women and liberals, it’s easy to overlook the issues I have with his personal beliefs. During this last reread of The Terror, I was a little uncomfortable with the fact that the one human (i.e., non SNOW MONSTER) villain in the book is gay — which allows the other Victorian-era characters to go on about how disgusting that is — but he actually has a positive portrayal of another gay couple, so... This book doesn’t have that kind of redeeming virtue. NOT RECOMMENDED. And I’ll just be over here in the corner rereading books I ACTUALLY LIKE because YOU’VE MADE ME VERY SAD, DAN, VERY VERY SAD.

(LC Score: +1, but I’m not happy about it)

---

• Returned Unread: LC Score: -40
• Library Chicken Score for 5/9/18: -32
• Running Score: -22 ½

On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:

• The Brandons by Angela Thirkell (I’ll just be going back to my Thirkell happy place now)
• Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer (not a ‘happy place’, so to speak, but definitely a good reread)
• Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda (I trust that fellow-Lucia fan Dirda will only give quality recommendations)
• Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood (because that’s an awesome topic and I am here for it)

---

Win the Ultimate Homeschool Planning Package!

---

Congratulations to:

Kristie Snyder 2 weeks ago · 0 Likes

  My tip, if you have to report to the state or are building a transcript -- jot down ANYTHING education that your child has done, every day, in a planner, journal or notebook. I organize mine by subject. So much easier to just go back and type up all that info when it's in one place, and I don't forget the extras (field trips, one-off classes, etc.) that way.

You're the winner of the ultimate homeschool planning package! If you will email us at hello@homeschoollifemag.com with your address, we'll get your prize package on its way to you!

---

It’s planning season, and I thought it would be fun to up the ante on a giveaway of my new homeschool planner. I’ve put together a package with all my planning essentials, and you can enter to win by leaving a comment on this post with your best homeschool planning tip. (You already know mine is color-coding by kid—hence the felt tip pens below!)

The winner will receive:

• A signed copy of The A+ Homeschool Planner—my brand-new secular homeschool planner
• Zebra Midline Highlighters—they’re less neon but no less effective
• Joy Journal for recording happy moments—keeping one of these is still the best homeschool advice I ever got
• Felt tip pens—for color coding anything you want to color code
• Binder clips—to organize pages in sections
• Sticky notes—to make it easy to get where you want to be in your planner
• home/school/life Library Tote—to carry it all around in
• One-year subscription to home/school/life magazine—to give you new ideas to fill your planner up!
• A family readaloud chosen by Amy—because we can’t not include a readaloud

We’ll randomly choose a winner (using a random number generator) on May 27!

The fine print:

The value of this package is $150. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents aged 21 or older. Employees of home/school/life magazine and the Academy are not eligible to win. Contest entries will be accepted between May 12 and May 27; entries posted after May 27 at 12:01 a.m. will not be counted. The number of eligible entries determine the odds of winner. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited by law.

We will announce the winner on this page on May 27. If the winner has not claimed her prize by June 3, we will choose a replacement winner on that date and post the announcement on this page. Please be sure to check back to see if you have won! This page is the only way we have to contact the winner.

The prize will be mailed (with a tracking number) to the winner within two weeks of officially claiming the prize and providing mailing information.

Stuff We Like :: 5.3.18

This spring has been one of my most challenging homeschool seasons. I’m sure I’ll be talking a lot about some of those challenges after the dust settles, but right now, I’m enjoying a little homeschool break with my kids, which mostly involves reading books aloud to each other in the sunshine.

What’s happening at home/school/life

The spring issue should be out this weekend, so keep an eye out! (I know it’s been delayed twice (grr), but I think it turned out great!)

I wrote a homeschool planner!

Shelli reviewed a writing curriculum that’s been inspiring her reluctant writer.

Suzanne is reading many, many books, a disproportionate number of which seem to involve scurvy.

We rounded up some of our best advice for making the transition from middle to high school.

Suzanne put together a great list of all her favorite short stories to read with your homeschooler.

one year ago: How I homeschooled 3rd grade, plus Shelli reviewed My Side of the Mountain and Carrie considers the art of knowing when to push your kids to try something new.

two years ago: Lisa got comfortable with homeschool messes, plus tips for starting your own homeschool group.

three years ago: Learning on wilderness time

four years ago: A forensic science program for high school

The links I liked

I loved this so, so much: Reading to children to save ourselves

Probably you saw this, but just in case: If male authors described men the way they describe women

Is it time to revisit the ERA? (Yes! Yes, right?) 

Fake news: Literary edition

I thought this was really interesting (and definitely relevant to my life): Why are we so obsessed with the relationship between motherhood and creativity and not even a little bit interested in, say, the relationship between fatherhood and creativity?
Related: Why are so many white men so mad?

Science never stops being amazing: Maybe we have another organ we didn’t know about.
Related: The internet helps give a woman scientist from the 1970s some long-overdue appreciation.

There are some great new books about the social, economic, and emotional implications of crafting out right now.

What I’m reading and watching

I read The Letter for the King, and I am now utterly obsessed with Tonke Dragt’s children’s books. They are just lovely and delightful and a little bit ramble-y. (I also loved The Song of Seven, you’ll remember, and I can’t wait to get a copy of The Secrets of the Wild Wood.) I knew almost nothing about the author except that she’s Dutch, so I was fascinated to discover that she was actually born in Indonesia and spent part of her childhood in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, which she credits with inspiring her career as an author. Now I am even more obsessed!

I picked up The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval Europe on a whim, and I thought it was a really fun approach to the topic. If you’re doing the Middle Ages in high school, I think it would be lots of fun to read.

---

Here’s What You’ll Find in My New Homeschool Planner

As you know if you follow HSL on Facebook, I’ve written a homeschool planner! As you also know if you follow HSL at all, I have strong feelings about planners, so getting to design this one was a lot of fun. My goal was to come up with something that would be really flexible, so it could adapt to changing goals, changing grades, and changing homeschool philosophies. Now that my oldest is about to be a junior in high school, I’ve been through pretty much every stage of homeschooling, so I know that what I want to manage my 4th grader’s schedule is different from what I need to keep up with my 10th grader’s schedule — and that’s totally different from what I wanted with a kindergartener or a 7th grader. And that’s just grade differences — my totally different kids also have totally different ways of processing information and working, so their to-do lists and we-did-that lists usually look completely different. I wanted a planner that could accommodate all those differences, plus my never-ending book lists and the occasional extended rabbit trail or big project. I think this planner gets pretty close. 

The Monthly pages of the A+ Homeschool planner have a space to track attendance.

You will want to see all the weekly and monthly pages, but I think it’s important to point out that this planner encourages you to start not with a to-do list but with the big picture of what you want your homeschool to accomplish. You can skip this section if you hate these kinds of exercises, but I always find them helpful — and because it’s so easy to forget in the middle of February sometimes that you, too, are a person with dreams and goals, intelligence and passion, there’s space for you to set some goals for yourself, too. I find this kind of thing helpful because homeschooling is hard work, and on bad days or when I’m not sure what to do next, going back to these big-picture goals can point me in the right direction and remind me why all this time and effort I am putting in matters.

But on to the main planner! It’s generously sized (8.5 x 11 inches) because I think most planners are a little on the small side. It’s perfect-bound in paperback, so it’s not too bulky and heavy, and there’s no spiral to get caught on your bag every time you pull it out. (Maybe that’s just me?) Best of all (for me anyway), it’s full of containers that you can use however you want.

Bigger Picture: The Year and Month at a Glance

Sorry if you too now have that Beautiful south song stuck in your head, but even if your students have less earwormy names, there is plenty of room to keep up with their studies in the weekly planner pages.

After you’ve set goals, there’s room to pencil in the annual events that you don’t want to forget, like Grandma’s birthday or the dates of the annual Science Fair that you always manage forget about until it’s almost the last day. You can also jot down the deadline for filing your homeschool paperwork (if that applies to you) or events like NaNoWriMo or Pi Day that you want to celebrate in your homeschool. I find this handy when someone says something like, “What if we do the co-op talent show in April?” 

The monthly calendars break it down a little more—as you can see, they’re undated, so you can fill them in as you go. (You don’t have to waste a month of pages if your homeschool shuts down for winter break in December or if you get too busy to even have time for a schedule one month.) There’s a space to mark attendance for up to six students — even if you don’t track attendance as a homeschool requirement, I like being able to go back and see how much time we’re spending on school. I use tick marks to indicate the number of days we spend 4.5 hours engaged in active learning, but you could track individual hours or use the bigger monthly boxes to chart monthly attendance and total the hours for each month in the attendance box. 

The Weekly Schedule

You can organize your planner by subject instead of by student if that makes more sense to you. (Color-coding is always a good idea.)

The best part, though, I think is the weekly schedule. It’s got six rows, so you really do have room to keep up with the schedules for six different kids. (You can see the example page does that.) If you are one of those people who plans out every week in advance, you will love having space to actually do that for every single kid. But what if you only have two kids, or three kids? Do you just have a ton of wasted space? Nope — at least, you don’t have to. As you can see from the schedule I wrote out for my two kids, you can use the sections to organize your kids, or — as I’ve done here — your subjects. (Since I color-code my kids’ homeschool stuff, it’s easy for me to see what’s going on this way.) You could also use multiple squares for students who have more stuff going on or use squares to manage To-Dos, Reading Lists, Writing, and other specific tasks. And while the layout works great if you are an advance planner, it works equally well for people like me who engage in what I call as-we-go homeschooling. Instead of trying to map out what we’ll do in advance, I focus on recording what we’ve actually done each day.

The Extras page gives you a place to keep up with all the stuff that's unique to your homeschool.

Since we all have those things that don’t fit neatly into traditional planners, I wanted to have a space to accommodate everything from tracking project-based learning progress, to individual reading lists, to nature journal highlights, to science supply shopping lists, and all the other things that pop up, sometimes every week, sometimes just every once in a while. The Extras page is designed to accommodate your homeschool as it changes and grows — you can use one list per student for up to six students, but I like treating each section as a mini-container that I can fill with whatever information is most important for our homeschool on a given week.

There’s also a grades page, which may not get much use for you if you’re homeschooling younger kids. (Though you can see it’s a handy way to keep a running progress report for your younger students — that’s how I have used it in this example.) If you have older students, though, especially if you’re working on a high school transcript, having a place to track grades can be useful. Grading has definitely been one of the challenges of homeschooling high school for me, and I really like having the grades next to the work we did that week, so it’s easy to reference if I need to.

You can use the grades page for actual grades but also as a running progress report.

Finally, there’s a section at the back for end-of-the-year evaluations, where you can consider how well you’ve succeeded at accomplishing your goals — or, as is often the case, how they morphed and changed over the year. I love this section because it gives you planner closure — you get to pause, evaluate, and celebrate before you move on to the next planning session.

Oh, and it passes the Three-Step Real Life Planner Test:

1. My son has already highjacked one of my author copies to keep track of his Little Pet Shop school lesson plans. (Yes, my son will write lesson plans for his toys. No, he will not write in a journal.)
2. You can lose/forget about/fail to use this planner for three months and come back to it without having to feel guilty about all the bank pages in the middle. It’s undated, so if you date as you go, you can skip months for spontaneous vacations without notice.
3. It passes the flip test, especially if you use different colored pens for each kid. You can find information you need quickly and without having to sort through computer files whose names totally made sense when you created them but that now do not seem to be named anything relating to what they actually contain if your computer search has any idea what it is doing.

So that’s the scoop on my planner. If you’re interested, it’s available on Amazon — and while you definitely don’t need a planner to homeschool happily, if you think it’s a good fit for your planning style, please check it out. The more of us who shop for secular homeschool products, the more companies will feel that secular homeschool products are worth publishing, and I know we’d all love to see more secular homeschool resources out there.

---

Library Chicken Update: 4.25.18

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!

Pour out a glass of lemonade (you’ll see why in a minute) and pull up a chair for this weeks’ stories of scandalous forbidden love, Lovecraftian Old Ones, and SNOW MONSTERS...

• The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon
• The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Now that I’m teaching grammar in the homeschool-hybrid school I’ve been running through my list of “interesting grammar books to check out one day” (which, yes, is a list that I actually have) to see if there’s anything I would like to add to the curriculum. These two are definitely cuter and more entertaining than your run-of-the-mill grammar handbooks, but I wonder if the complexity and playfulness of the text and the examples would make them difficult to use with beginners in the classroom. I do think they’d be fun additions to any homeschool reference shelf.

(LC Score: +2)

---

Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter by Diana Souhami

Girl Who Reads Woolf (and Woolf-Adjacent Nonfiction): Okay, so Virginia Woolf had an affair (possibly platonic?) with Vita Sackville-West, who was famous for running away with an earlier lover, Violet Trefusis, who in turn was the daughter of King Edward VII’s mistress, Alice Keppel (though probably not the daughter of Edward himself). Are we all clear? The Vita-and-Violet narrative is a hugely dramatic tale, where the abandoned husbands end up jumping into a two-seater plane (in 1920!) to fly to France to retrieve their wives, and forever after, Vita and her husband (and all their relations and descendants) treated Violet like she was some kind of evil disease that Vita had temporarily caught and had to be kept isolated from for the rest of her life. This biography attempts to give us Violet’s side of the story. (I don’t quite understand the title, as Mrs. Keppel doesn’t figure much into the story except as Violet’s overbearing mother, but whatever.) Violet is certainly not the villain that Vita and co. made her out to be, and it’s hard to condemn her given that she was born into a culture that punished her twice over (for being a woman and for her sexual orientation), but honestly there’s not a lot to admire in her behavior. (I was surprised to learn that—like Vita and Virginia—Violet was a successful published writer in later life. I don’t know what to say about that except what was going on at the time with all these fascinating women writers named ‘V-something’?)

(LC Score: +1)

---

American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny From the 1940s to Now edited by Peter Straub

This is the second of two anthologies of “fantastic tales” put out by the Library of America (the first is From Poe to the Pulps). Like all Library of America editions, it’s a lovely book, and Straub put together a great mix of genre and non-genre authors.

(LC Score: +1)

---

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw

In this novella, a hardboiled film-noir P.I. (who is more than he seems) goes up against Lovecraftian monsters in modern-day London. Good stuff—my only complaint is that I wanted more!

(LC Score: +1)

---

The Terror by Dan Simmons

I LOVE THIS BOOK. Simmons takes the historical story of Sir John Franklin’s lost 1847 expedition to find the Northwest Passage—which already involves polar bears, scurvy, and cannibalism—and adds SNOW MONSTERS. It is completely and utterly awesome. I first read it about 10 years ago, and immediately went around grabbing both friends and strangers on the street to tell them YOU MUST READ THIS. I quickly learned that 750-plus pages of British sailors stuck in the ice (with occasional guest appearances by the above-mentioned SNOW MONSTER) is not everyone’s idea of a great time which is MYSTIFYING TO ME. Apparently though, AMC sees things my way, as they recently debuted their new 10-part series based on the book, starring Ciaran Hinds as Sir John Franklin. (I’ve had a soft spot for Ciaran Hinds ever since he played another British sea captain—Captain Frederick Wentworth—in the wonderful 1995 adaptation of Persuasion.) We don’t get AMC at my house, but the first two episodes were available for streaming and I’ve watched them about three times now and of course I had to run to the library to get the book again and AHHH IT’S SO GOOD. The SNOW MONSTER only makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him appearance in the early episodes, but frankly I’m more worried about the scurvy. (I’m sure you’ve heard of scurvy, but have you ever read about the symptoms? It’s basically the ebola of the sea. DRINK YOUR LEMON JUICE, PEOPLE.) Anyway, I love this book and the show looks great and we’ll have to see if I can hold off buying the remaining episodes until it shows up on Netflix or something. (SPOILER: probably not. I can’t be expected to resist SNOW MONSTERS and scurvy AND Captain Frederick Wentworth. Although—HISTORICAL SPOILER—he probably doesn’t make it past the fourth episode.)

(LC Score: +1)

---

The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage by Anthony Brandt

My initial read of The Terror set me off on an all-things-polar-exploration-related binge, but fortunately since then there’s been another stack of books published. This is a solid overview of the 19th-century British obsession with the Northwest Passage, including noteworthy explorers like John and James Clarke Ross, Edward Parry, and of course the boots-eating man himself, John Franklin. (He became famous for eating his boots on an earlier expedition to the Arctic.) Brandt also details the confusing series of search-and-rescue expeditions that followed Franklin’s final mysterious voyage. There’s more cannibalism, the occasional polar bear, and as always, an abundance of scurvy, but sadly a complete lack of SNOW MONSTERS.

(LC Score: +1)

---

Returned Unread: LC Score: -15 (Yeah, so there was another stack of neglected books that had to go back. I’d blame all 750-plus pages of The Terror but it really isn’t the SNOW MONSTER’s fault.)

• Library Chicken Score for 4/25/18: -8
• Running Score: +10 ½

On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:

• Lytton Strachey: The New Biography by Michael Holroyd (more Woolf-adjacent Bloomsbury reading)
• American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny From Poe to the Pulps edited by Peter Straub (yes, I’m reading these out of chronological order I’M DOING MY BEST LEAVE ME ALONE)
• Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen’s Ghost Ship by Martin W. Sandler (I’m betting that scurvy will be involved)
• The Good House by Tananarive Due (I’m not sure which is scarier: scurvy or a seriously haunted house, but in any case I’ll need a break from all that ice)

---

Can Parents Find Any Free Time While Homeschooling?

Finding time for yourself as a homeschool parent is essential — but it’s probably not something that’s going to happen on its own. You need a plan — and you need one that adapts with your homeschool.

Once I heard a potential homeschool mom say that she thought homeschooling would benefit her children, but she didn’t see how she could handle the lack of down time. I think this is a valid point to consider, if you are thinking about homeschooling. Parents need time to recharge, or they aren’t going to be good parents, and homeschooling doesn’t leave much free time.

Before a family makes the plunge to homeschool, it’s a good idea for both partners to be clear about their responsibilities and how might they help each other get some down time. If one parent works outside the home, can that parent plan to take the children one day a week to let the other parent have a day off? Can the parent who stays home with the kids make sure the working parent gets some alone time, too, so that their downtime from work isn’t drained by family obligations? Or, is there a way for both parents to work part-time, sharing homeschooling duties? If it’s possible to have these conversations before you begin to homeschool, that will be a big help, but remember — it’ll always be a process because as children grow, so do their needs.

If you’re thinking about homeschooling but you’re reluctant to give up your free time, I’d like to remind you that every day, you are changing with your family whether you realize it or not. Being a parent is all about adapting to your family’s needs, and it may not be as bad as you think it’ll be. What I once thought I couldn’t live without, I find myself living without now, and I’m mostly doing it for my kids, but I’m also doing it for me -- this is the lifestyle that I wanted for my family. When I remember that, the sacrifices don’t seem bad at all.

Looking back at my journey of going from a single 30-something introvert to a married woman with a talkative husband, and then to becoming a mom of two boys, and then becoming a homeschooling mom, I have realized that my abilities to withstand constant company and background noise, the monotony of daily chores, and the lack of free time has improved. How can it not, when I do it out of love? It’s as if this ability to withstand stress is a muscle, and daily life is my workout. With each passing day, that muscle grows stronger. 

But this isn’t to say that I don’t require “me time,” and I’ve learned how to wiggle it into my day. I get up a little earlier than my family, the boys play alone in the afternoon so that I can do work, and then in the evening, I read quietly for a few minutes before bed. Some days this feels like plenty of down time, and other days, I feel like it isn’t enough. I try to remember that my kids won’t always be here, and in the larger picture, I’m so glad that I have this time with them.

How do make time for yourself while homeschooling your kids? Potential homeschooling families may benefit from your insight too.

---

Library Chicken Update: 4.11.18

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!

I completed a MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT this week: I finished moving several years’ worth of to-read wishlists from Amazon (where the wishlist functionality fluctuated almost weekly, making me want to throw things at Jeff Bezos) to GoodReads. Which, yes, I know is actually owned by Amazon. Which makes you think that there’d be a simple way to move information like that over, but no! I had to transfer every single entry by hand. It only took me five months or so! That was fun! With all that time freed up I should now be able to catch up on my reading - except I’m going to start transferring all my LibraryThing entries over to GoodReads also. (LibraryThing is still my main catalog, but I like having the GoodReads functionality. I may be a little obsessed with my book-cataloging systems.)

THE HUNGER by Alma Katsu

It’s been a long while since I last stayed up past my bedtime with a book too good to put down, but this alternate history of the Donner Party was a super-fun, super-scary page-turner. (SPOILER: Even in this version, things DO NOT END WELL.) The only problem with picking the Donner Party as your starting place is that even with the additional of complicated backstories, illicit love stories, and the supernatural, it’s very hard for fiction to top the real-life story. That said, this one is too good to miss.

(LC Score: +1)

---

THE FAMILY PLOT by Cherie Priest

A family-run salvage business takes on the job of breaking down an old mansion at the base of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga (hey, I’ve been there!) and the house - DUN DUN DUN - turns out to be HAUNTED. A fun, compelling read, but I was left wishing that the author had taken the premise even further.

(LC Score: +1)

---

MARGARET THE FIRST by Danielle Dutton

This novella imagines the inner life of the fascinating Duchess of Newcastle, a creative, brilliant, and intellectually ambitious woman born into a time (she lived during the English Civil War and the Restoration) that treated her like a freak of nature. It’s an amazing accomplishment by Dutton that will leave you wanting to learn more about this incredible woman.

(LC Score: +1)

---

MY HOLIDAY IN NORTH KOREA: THE FUNNIEST/WORST PLACE ON EARTH by Wendy E. Simmons

I have several books about North Korea on my to-read list, but I haven’t gotten around to them, in part because I know they will be difficult emotionally. This one was an easy place to start, but I’m still not sure how I feel about the tone. Simmons went on a 10-day solo tourist trip to North Korea and this book of photographs and short-essay reminiscences is the result. Simmons details her frustration and bewilderment during the trip, every moment of which was stage-managed by government representatives, with sharp-edged humor that can come uncomfortably close to mockery, especially when we’re looking at the visuals of a privileged white American tourist against the backdrop of tragedy that is North Korea. I don’t think her intention was to make fun or be disrespectful, but it’s a difficult line to walk.

(LC Score: +1)

---

THE ARGONAUTS by Maggie Nelson

This is Nelson’s much-praised book-length essay on gender, identity, sexuality, motherhood, and relationships - particularly Nelson’s relationship with her non-binary partner, Harry. Fascinating and incredibly erudite; reading this felt like attending a graduate seminar that I was totally unqualified to be at but that I’d managed to sneak into somehow. And I mean that in the best possible way.

(LC Score: +1)

---

• ART AND AFFECTION: A LIFE OF VIRGINIA WOOLF by Panthea Reid
• VANESSA AND VIRGINIA by Susan Sellers
• VITA: A BIOGRAPHY OF VITA SACKVILLE-WEST by Victoria Glendinning

Girl Who Reads About Woolf: The first two books here, a biography of Virginia and a fictional re-imagining of Virginia’s relationship with her sister Vanessa (told in Vanessa’s voice), tell the story of the sisters’ lifelong competition and how it broadened into an ongoing argument about the merits of Art versus Literature. Both books show how one sister was narcissistic, demanding, and deliberately cruel, while the other, although not entirely innocent, was continually bewildered by the viciousness of it all. In the first book, Vanessa is the bad guy, while the second one has Virginia as the villain of the piece. It seems most likely that both books, by creating a ‘good sister’ and a ‘bad sister,’ are simplifying what was, by all accounts, an incredibly complex and often challenging relationship. I enjoyed Reid’s biography (though it was at times hard to follow, with each paragraph absolutely crammed full of quotes, citations, and minute details), but I was less impressed with Sellers’ Bloomsbury fanfic (if you’re interested in something similar, I much preferred Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar). Meanwhile, Glendinning’s biography of Vita Sackville-West (Virginia’s friend/lover and the inspiration for Orlando) was a very enjoyable read about another amazing woman (it helps that, unlike the previous bio I read of Vita, Glendinning does not appear to despise her subject).

(LC Score: +3) 

---

• Returned Unread: LC Score: -3
• Library Chicken Score for 4/11/18: 5
• Running Score: +18 ½ 

On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:

• The Terror by Dan Simmons (reread—had to pick it up after seeing the first episode of the AMC adaptation)
• Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter by Diana Souhami (a biography of Vita’s lover, Violet Trefusis, to complete my Woolf and Woolf-adjacent collection of women whose names begin with ‘V’)
• Art History for Dummies by Jesse Bryant Wilder (the more I read about the Bloomsbury artists, the more I am embarrassed by my utter ignorance of art)
• American Fantastic Tales: Terror and Uncanny from the 1940s to Now edited by Peter Straub (from the anthology stack)

---

Grammar Is as Grammar Does

Every year without fail, I’d have kids who entered my ninth grade English class not knowing the parts of speech. No kidding, about half of the kids who came through my classroom door couldn’t tell me what an adjective is, let alone label one in a sentence. I spent a few years being flabbergasted about it and trying to be the hero teacher who would finally help my students grasp a basic that had heretofore eluded them. It wasn’t until I came into my own as a teacher that I decided to say, “So what? Grammar is as grammar does.” I realized that, short of a Jeopardy-contestant situation, most of us will never need to call upon our knowledge of the definition of a subjunctive clause. We all, however, need excellent writing skills to succeed in careers, to be engaged citizens, and to avoid looking like a cotton-headed ninnymuggins on Facebook. 

That’s when I decided to chuck the weeks of class time I might have spent on grammar book exercises and jump headlong into helping students address the grammar gremlins that were haunting their writing. They were happier, I was less frustrated, and their writing benefitted in ways that no hammering of the nuances of grammatical study could touch. And sometimes on Fridays we’d do Mad Libs, which never made anybody slam a book shut or tear up in frustration. 

Now, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t do any formal grammar instruction in your homeschool. By all means, please, give your younger students a strong foundation in how our language works. 

But, if by the time your kids have reached high school, you’re both still tearing your hair out trying to grasp all of that jargon, I’m telling you that it’s okay to let it go. LET IT GO. Spend that time working on the writing that’s in front of you, learning from mentor sentences, finding the errors your student makes habitually and digging in to address those issues. 

Your kid’s employer or college admissions officer won’t care if he or she can diagram a sentence. What will matter is whether he or she can produce a well-crafted piece of writing. 

---

Stuff We Like :: 4.6.18

It’s the weekend! Words cannot even express how much I like that!

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE

I’m wondering if you might be interested in a high school curriculum I helped put together. (I'd love your opinion!)

Watch the history of our understanding of space travel evolve through these classic space movies.

A controversial question: Why does it sometimes feel like homeschoolers are so flaky?

one year ago: Shelli’s tadpole adventures (I really want to try it this year!), some of our favorite living math books, and the winner of HOMESCHOOL MADNESS 2017.

two years ago: The pleasures of spring homeschooling and a Charles Dickens reading list

three years ago: A flashback to how I homeschooled 1st grade and the everything-is-connected approach to homeschooling

four years ago: How this magazine got started

THE LINKS I LIKED

“The internet does not hate women. People hate women, and the internet allows them to do it faster, harder, and with impunity.” This is one of those great pieces that is also incredibly sad, but it’s really worth reading.

I really dug Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, and I love her even more after reading this piece about how she uses Twitter as an academic tool.

Oh my gosh, go read this if you watched Reality Bites on cable one weekend when you had the flu and realized that Ethan Hawke’s character is THE WORST and how did you miss it the first three times you watched it?

This is an absolutely fascinating piece on how we can use stories to change systems: “We need to develop new processes of collective storytelling to help us navigate these turbulent and polarizing times.”

WHAT I’M READING AND WATCHING

I’m still in the throes of finals season at Jason’s school, so my reading is mostly student papers on Augustus Caesar’s leadership qualities, but I have been reading myself to sleep with Madeline Miller’s new Circe.

When the going gets tough, the not-so-tough watch Parks and Recreation and try to channel their inner Leslie Knope.

IN OUR HOMESCHOOL

This is the time of year when I just feel tired of everything, but this year, I was actually prepared, and we’ve been working our way through The Imaginary World Of… It’s a Keri Smith book, so it’s part doodle, part imagination, and just the thing to give us a much-needed after-breakfast boost.

We’re reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories together, and it is delightful.

---

Great Space Movies for Your Homeschool

A century ago, on March 3, 1915, the United States created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the agency that would eventually become NASA. Host your own space adventure by tracing the history of space exploration through these films, most of which were actually screened or supported by the folks at NASA. Watched chronologically, these movies offer a fascinating glimpse into our developing understanding of space travel, but they’re pretty fun just on their own, too.

Destination Moon (1950)

Why: Sputnik wasn’t even ready for takeoff when sci-fi producer George Pal decided to make a realistic movie about what space travel would be like.

FYI: The lunar sets were created by noted astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell.

---

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Why: It’s not just a cinematic classic, it’s also one of the most painstakingly detailed depictions of space travel ever created. 

FYI: Kubrick hired technical consultants from more than 50 different aerospace organizations to get the details right

---

Marooned (1969)

Why: Released just four months after the Apollo 11 landing, this film used replicas of real NASA equipment. 

FYI: Look for an early Skylab prototype.

---

The Right Stuff (1983)

Why: This epic chronicle of the Mercury 7 astronaut program blends archival footage, cutting-edge effects, and meticulously created miniatures for maximum realism. 

FYI: sound barrier-breaker Chuck Yeager was a consultant on the film.

---

Apollo 13 (1995)

Why: This docudrama of the ill-fated Apollo mission to the moon is full of insider details. 

FYI: The cast filmed in NASA’s space simulation jet, a.k.a., the Vomit Comet.

---

Space Cowboys (2000)

Why: Real astronauts were impressed by the authentic details in this movie about retired astronauts returning to space to repair an aging satellite. 

FYI: The sets were built from NASA blueprints.

---

Europa Report (2013)

Why: Kevin Hand, astrobiologist and expert on Europa at NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory, was a consultant on this hard sci-fi flick about the search for water on one of Jupiter's moons. 

FYI: Watch for a cameo by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

---

Interstellar (2014)

Why: Caltech physicist Kip Thorne was scientific advisor on this film about a search for habitable planets.

FYI: Neil deGrasse Tyson gave it props for its rendition of concepts like Einstein’s Relativity of Time and Curvature of Space.

---

The Martian (2015)

Why: NASA's planetary science director, Jim Green served as a consultant on the film, even providing plan mock-ups for a real NASA Mars mission tentatively scheduled for the 2030s. (Fingers crossed!)

FYI: The Martian windstorm that kicks off the events of the movie is a fictional convention—you’re not going to run into big windstorms on Mars.

This was originally published in the spring 2015 issue of HSL.

---