Stuff We Like :: 3.23.17
What intersectional Confederate history can look like, the philosophical punch of Black Panther, science books for kids, and more stuff we like.
The weather right now is like that last person at a party who won’t stop talking to you even though you have already starting clearing the glasses. Go away, winter, it was nice while it lasted, but I’m done!
WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE
Suzanne may need a short story intervention, but I appreciate her reading all the crummy collections for Library Chicken so I don’t have to.
We put together a little reading list of YA westerns you might be interested in.
I actually get asked variations on this question a lot: How do you help an unschooler write a high school transcript for a college with a traditional bent?
Our riddled of the week is one of my favorites: The Wild Robot, a middle grades novel that’s part survival story, part meditation on the meaning of being alive.
THE LINKS I LIKED
Colin Kaepernick has (rightly) gotten a lot of press for his political activism, but he is definitely not the first Black athlete to use his position to take a political stand. This is an interesting look at another act of protest in 1969 — and the response to it, which will sound a little too familiar.
Oh, man, how am I just finding out about this exhibit? I would have loved to see it in person, but the pictures are pretty fabulous.
I think I will be buying all the books on the short list for this year’s Cook Prize, starting with The Hidden Life of a Toad.
This was hard to read (we loved A Series of Unfortunate Events), but it asks a really good question: Where is the #metoo fighting back against racism?
There’s a lot of great writing about Black Panther out there, but this piece is one of my favorites. (Spoilers, though, so go see it before you read it.)
WHAT I’M READING AND WATCHING
Even though A Wrinkle in Time did not hit my sweet spot, I have continued my L’Engle readathon quite happily. You will be glad to know that I did finally make it to An Acceptable Time, the last book in the Time quintet, which stars Meg’s daughter Polly and Zachary Gray, whom Polly meets in A House Like a Lotus and Vicky meets in The Moon by Night. (That Zachary gets around.) I moved on to The Small Rain (one of my favorites), about the pianist Katherine Forrester, who is moody and unlikable but to whom I relate maybe a little much) and to A Severed Wasp, which brings back Dave from The Young Unicorns and Katherine (now in her 70s and on the verge of retirement). After that, I travel back in time to Ilsa, which I scored a copy of at a library sale many years ago before the internet was a Thing. I don’t love Ilsa, which is darker and grittier than much of L’Engle’s other work, but I can’t skip a book, and I have to read Ilsa before I can jump ahead to A Winter’s Love because its main character is married to a descendant of Ilsa’s Henry Porcher. (Mimi, from A Severed Wasp, shows up here as a boarding school friend of the main character’s daughter — she’s also related to the Reniers, who show up in some of the Polly stories.)
I’m also planning classes for fall, and since we’re diving into the Enlightenment, that means I get to reread Gulliver’s Travels (I am reading this one with my son, and he’s finding it hilarious) and Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
Did you know Case Histories is a series? I feel like Suzanne told me this, but I must have gone off and immediately forgotten because I discovered it on Amazon and am thoroughly enjoying it. I loved the book — it remains my best-ever spontaneous airport bookshop purchase — and the series is a nice adaptation. (Plus it stars Jason Isaacs, which is pretty much always going to be Very Okay with me.)
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN OUR HOMESCHOOL
My daughter’s doing a current events class, and it’s making me realize that we haven’t spent much time on modern geography. (We can map Mesopotamia and every part of Odysseus’s journey, but the modern world — not so much.) I picked up a copy of Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics, thinking it would help. I don’t know if it’s actually helped us make sense of the map as thoroughly as I might have hoped, but it has definitely got us thinking about how geography influences everything — and maybe that’s ultimately as important as being able to find the capital of Vietnam.
Library Chicken Update :: 3.21.18
Suzanne's still reading stacks of short stories, plus a not-as-fascinating-as-you'd-think history of diagramming sentences, some feminist classics, and the occasional novel.
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’ve got a stack of memoirs and nice thick novels--not to mention my still unread Christmas presents and way too many can’t-pass-up-this-great-ebook-deal Kindle books--waiting patiently for me to get over this short story obsession, but it’s showing no sign of slowing down. I’d like to say I can quit anytime, but (with the occasional break for other ongoing obsessions) I’m not actually sure that I can.
A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Virginia Woolf
Girl Who Reads Woolf continued: I really have no excuse for not reading this years ago, but now that I finally have, I’m going to retroactively declare it a personal all-time favorite. (See also: “The Yellow Wallpaper” below.) It felt surprisingly contemporary, which is, I guess, a reflection of how far we still have to go. (Challenge Accepted: “A Classic You’ve Been Meaning to Read” from home/school/life’s 2018 Reading Challenge Bingo)
(LC Score: +1)
THE CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN READER edited by Ann J. Lane
I had heard of Gilman’s famous feminist horror story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a long while back, but somehow never got around to tracking it down. Fortunately for me, it is anthologized all over the place, so once I embarked on my current Season of Short Stories, it was only a matter of time before I encountered it. And it is CREEPY and WONDERFUL and so much FUN to read — go find it immediately if you haven’t had the pleasure. As is my standard operating procedure, I immediately set out to track down Gilman’s other work, only to find that this is pretty much the only story of hers that is widely known and available. The selections in this Reader, including other short stories and excerpts from her novels (including the feminist utopia Herland) may demonstrate why that is. Gilman used her fiction to try to change the world, to make it a more equal and better place for both men and women, and so with the exception of “Wallpaper”, most of it is simplistic and didactic and not very fun or interesting to read. However, Gilman herself turns out to be a very interesting person, so I’ve got a biography on hold and in the meantime will probably read “Wallpaper” two or three more times.
(LC Score: +1)
TELL ME A RIDDLE, REQUA I, AND OTHER WORKS by Tillie Olsen
Olsen is another author I recently discovered via my current short story binge. Her two most well-known stories are “I Stand Here Ironing” (which I stop to reread every time it shows up in yet another ‘best of’ anthology and which you should definitely check out after you finish “The Yellow Wallpaper”) and “Tell Me a Riddle” (ditto). She is a deeply compassionate writer and my only disappointment with this collection, which includes her short stories, a fragment of an unfinished novel, and a few pieces of her nonfiction writing, is that it is so very short. Apparently Olsen, who died in 2007 at the age of 95, was too busy being a social activist and labor organizer to sit down and do much writing. Her biography is also now on its way to my home and I confidently expect to be intimidated by her hard work and lifelong commitment to meaningful causes.
(LC Score: +1)
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF AMY HEMPEL by Amy Hempel
Unlike Gilman and Olsen, Hempel is a modern short story writer. This collection collects her previous four collections, consisting of mostly bite-sized stories of everyday life that mostly include at least one dog. Her fourth collection is noticeably harsher than the first three, with more sex, more violence, and more bitterness, but this was a great read all the way through.
(LC Score: +½, returned overdue)
- THE NORTON BOOK OF AMERICAN SHORT STORIES edited by Peter S. Prescott
- THE PUSHCART BOOK OF SHORT STORIES edited by Bill Henderson
More giant anthologies! Because clearly I have a problem! I thought the Norton anthology was a not-bad roundup of solid stories, many of which I had encountered previously in similar anthologies, though I didn’t love the slightly lit-snobby introduction or the giant photo of the editor (because editors are a big selling point? what?) that took up the entire back cover. The Pushcart anthology covers Pushcart Prize winners from 1976 to 2001 and boy howdy, do we ever start out with a terrible no-good truly awful entry from 1976. It’s one of those stories about a sexy sexy lady from a male author that leads the reader to wonder if said author has ever actually encountered a female human. One also has to assume that editor Henderson (who chose to include this story) has lived a life entirely devoid of mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, female friends and/or romantic companions. Unfortunately, it takes a while for the collection to improve after that low-point beginning and I didn’t much enjoy the remainder of the 70s and 80s (aka the Era of Melancholy White Men). Things do begin to perk up in the 90s and it finally gets interesting once we hit authors such as Junot Diaz, Katherine Min, and Steven Millhauser. As is obligatory (by law, I believe) in any anthology of American short stories, a Joyce Carol Oates story is of course included, but the one here was notable for NOT exploding into senseless violence at the end, so that was refreshing.
(LC Score: +2)
THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison
This is the third ‘Best American’ anthology I’ve read (see: “yes I know I have a problem” above) and I was frankly not expecting all that much from editor Updike in this 1999 collection covering stories from 1915 to 1998. I was surprised early on by the relative lacks of overlaps (even from the other Best American books I’ve read), but I still dreaded the approach of my least favorite decade, the 70s. Updike shocked me, however, with wonderful stories from the likes of Rosellen Brown and Alice Adams, leading me to the surprising conclusion that maybe I don’t actually hate the 70s, I just hate the MEN of the 70s! Granted, we’re still very much in White Suburbia Land, but believe me when I say it’s a vast improvement. Updike and Kenison are also the first editors of this type of anthology that I’ve encountered who seem to care about how one story flows into the next, and how each reflects its neighbors’ themes. An unexpectedly good read.
(LC Score: +½, returned overdue)
THE NEW WEIRD edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The VanderMeers are my go-to couple for weird and wonderful stories and this anthology does not disappoint, even though it is perhaps a teensy bit padded with essays attempting to define the “Weird” genre and an open-ended round robin story that finishes off the book. Nevertheless, a very fun read with many new-to-me authors that I can add to my to-read list.
(LC Score: +1)
AMERICAN GOTHIC TALES edited by Joyce Carol Oates
I may not always be thrilled to see Yet Another Oates Story in the table of contents of my current anthology, but I do enjoy her editing choices. This was a great anthology of the creepy and horrific in American short fiction, including both the classic “literary” authors and a fair amount of genre representation. It would be a lot of fun to use this as the basis for a homeschool literature course.
(LC Score: +1)
SISTER BERNADETTE'S BARKING DOG: THE QUIRKY HISTORY AND LOST ART OF DIAGRAMMING SENTENCES by Kitty Burns Florey
Florey sets out to tell the history of sentence diagramming--and as it turns out, there’s not all that much to it, so in this very short book (with many illustrations and lots of blank space) we also get a digression on Gertrude Stein and the author’s opinion on the use of “ain’t”. It’s interesting, but very slight, and Florey occasionally got on my nerves with her “witty” jabs at modern-day political correctness. I felt cheated, though, to learn that she didn’t even diagram all the examples in the book herself, passing off the real Henry-Jamesian monsters to another expert. Sheesh.
(LC Score: +1)
HOLY DISORDERS by Edmund Crispin
Hey, look: it’s a novel! I was worried I’d forgotten how to read these! This is the second Gervase Fen mystery, staring Crispin’s English professor turned fourth-wall-breaking sleuth in a murder plot that involves mysterious attacks on church organists and eventually leads to dastardly German spies. (It’s set during WWII.) I have to confess that I lost track of the plot fairly quickly, perhaps because I was reading it in 10-minute chunks on my phone while waiting in my car to pick up assorted teenagers from various social/school events, but that didn’t really impact my enjoyment of Fen and friends. As a bonus, one scene seems to exist primarily to give Fen the opportunity to make an extended riff on “The Raven,” so that was fun.
(LC Score: 0, read on Kindle)
MULTIPLE CHOICE by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell
This quirky, original book has a narrative organized in the style of the Chilean college acceptance exam (think SATs) and was a fun, quick read, though I can’t really count it among my novel-reading this week since it’s barely a novella. The storyline never really resolves into a cohesive whole, but it’s a great book to pick up for an hour or so, especially if you’re looking to get into more works in translation.
(LC Score: +1)
- Library Chicken Score for 3/21/18: 10
- Running Score: +10 ½
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
- JACOB'S ROOM by Virginia Woolf (the Girl Who Reads Woolf continues)
- MARGARET THE FIRST by Danielle Dutton (historical novel about Margaret of Newcastle, inspired by Woolf’s mention of Margaret in A Room of One’s Own)
- INTERPRETER OF MALADIES by Jhumpa Lahiri (another author I’m finally getting around to reading after seeing her in the anthologies)
- THE COLLECTED STORIES by Grace Paley (ditto)
Readaloud of the Week: The Wild Robot
A robot washes up on the shore of deserted island in this Robinson Crusoe-Blade Runner mash-up that's as philosophical as it is charming.
THE WILD ROBOT by Peter Brown
One day, a robot washes up on the shore of a lonely island.
Roz is an ordinary robot, but she’s definitely not in ordinary robot circumstances. Once she’s extricated herself from her packing crate, she explores the island, which is a wilderness untouched by civilization — unless you count the wrecked bodies of other robots on the shore. Though Roz has the processing capacity to learn the languages of the wild animals living on the island, they want nothing to do with the weird metal creature who has intruded on their space. As time passes, though, Roz figures out not just how to survive on the island herself but also how to help the rest of the island’s inhabitants survive bigger dangers than they’ve faced before. Of course, the mystery of how she ended up on the island is bound to catch up with her eventually — and that may bring the biggest dangers of all.
Even though the main character is a robot, this book is firmly in the classical survival-in-the-wild genre that also includes classics like My Side of the Mountain and Hatchet. In the same spirit, there’s the idea running through the story that the challenges we face in the wild may be harder than life in the civilized city, but there is a value in overcoming them that our more urban lives can’t match. It’s also an interesting middle grades entry into the “what does it mean to be human?” genre, of which Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and I, Robot are excellent examples. Roz is a robot, so she doesn’t feel things the way a living creature would, the book reminds us again and again — as it shows us example after example of Roz caring for other living things. These two stories seems like an unlikely mash-up, but in The Wild Robot, they fit together perfectly.
I particularly like the arbitrary “she” pronoun instead of “it” or “he.” Roz is a robot. Even in the one scene where she’s covered in flowers, she looks like a robot. There’s no reason to refer to her as male or female. But those are the times when I especially love for someone to default to the female pronoun. (This may just be a me-thing.)
Quibbles you might run into: This is a simple story told in simple words, but some of the ideas are quite complex — and there are some dark and sad moments that might be too much for the youngest readers. It may feel like an “easy” middle grades read, but I really think that’s the right audience. The ending is similarly complex — don’t expect a simple “and they all lived happily ever” at the end.
For me, it sits firmly in the “delightful” category. It’s a lovely story all on its own, but it’s also got beautifully rewarding layers for deeper reading and conversation. Plus, the illustrations are great!
Stuff We Like :: 3.16.18
Lots of spring break movies, a new citizen science project, better-late-than-never obituaries for women, and more stuff we like.
Watching the school walkouts this week was so inspiring, and at first some of the more negative commentary, complaining about the students and the protest got to me a little. Then, though, I realized that this is so much the response protests got during the civil rights movement — and I thought about how we look back now at those people who were brave in the face of criticism and worse. I think about that, and I think about these kids, and it makes me feel better about the whole world.
WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE
I have pretty much found my homeschool sweet spot with high school, partly because I get to do things like this comparative literature class built around Studio Ghibli adaptations. (I’m actually going to do a talk on how to do this yourself at the SEA conference this summer if you want to come listen to me nerd out about literature.)
Maggie has some great advice for helping readers trying to get comfortable with reading more.
one year ago: We were down to the Final Four in Homeschool Madness. (Also: Great spring readalouds and our favorite advice for homeschooling the early years)
two years ago: Shelli looks back at a music gap that filled itself. (Plus: Biographies of mathematicians for Women’s History Month)
three years ago: How Shelli homeschooled 2nd grade and preschool
THE LINKS I LIKED
Have you seen this amazing series The New York Times is doing reporting the obituaries of women who didn’t merit obituaries in the paper when they died? Amazing women, like Ida B. Wells and Qiu Jin.
I think this is fascinating whatever side of the political spectrum you fall on: Our level of fearfulness seems to correlate to how politically conservative or liberal we are.
I love Lisa Simpson so much, so I really loved this profile of the actress who gives Lisa her voice.
Before Google, there were librarians.
WHAT I’M READING AND WATCHING
It was spring break for Jason’s school this week, so I have been catching up on all the movies.
First I finally watched Get Out, which is brilliant, and now I want to teach a class about it because apparently that’s what I want to do when I watch a movie I like now. (Also television shows — I really want to teach an ethics class with The Good Place.)
Then I watched Black Panther, which I pretty much loved. There were three or four times during the movie where I just started crying because the women were so amazing and strong and beautiful. (The costumes were also beautiful, but they didn’t make me cry.) Can we have more superhero movies like this please?
Jason and I watched Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, and the cinematography was just gorgeous. It was maybe a little too star-studded — I’m sure it’s the inevitable consequence of adapting a movie from a book that has so many characters, but it sometimes felt more like a series of beautifully filmed cameos than a film with fully developed characters. I appreciated the sheer ridiculousness of Poirot’s mustaches (which can only be described in the plural). I thought it was a nice adaptation overall — I’d definitely watch another Branagh Poirot — even if it wasn't life alteringly amazing.
I also saw A Wrinkle in Time, which (as you know) I’ve been so excited about but which, ultimately, was a miss for me. I hate saying that because there were so many things to love about the movie. The actress who played Meg is brilliant, and the movie is often very beautiful, and the story — of Meg coming into an awareness of her own strength and beauty and Meg-ness — is really a wonderful story. It’s just not A Wrinkle in Time. It lacks the nuance and mystery, the philosophy and odd other-ness that I think is what I really love about A Wrinkle in Time. If I didn’t love A Wrinkle in Time and I went to see this movie, I would probably have liked it a lot. But as a hard-core Madeleine L’Engle fan (I’ll update my reading list next week!), it was a disappointment. Did you see it? What did you think?
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN OUR HOMESCHOOL
We love recording cloud observations in our nature journals, so it was really fun to discover that NASA has a citizen science project going on that asks people to do just that. Shelli really inspired me with her year of citizen science, but it’s been hard for me to find projects that actually work with our everyday life so I am really excited about this one.
How to Support Overwhelmed Beginning Readers
When early readers feel overwhelmed, there are practical things you can do in your homeschool to help them build their reading confidence.
Years ago, I decided to try out a step class at the gym. I arrived early and scouted out a front-row spot because, by golly, I’m a go-getter. The teacher was so friendly as she introduced herself and welcomed everyone to class. And then the horror began. With music blaring and commands flying, everyone knew the steps but me. When they were already onto the next move, I was struggling to replicate the last move. And I was in the front row. The front row. Everyone could see how much I was struggling, how much I was failing. It was mortifying. With almost a full hour of class remaining ahead of me, I gave up. I gathered my things and slunk out of there through a path of people effortlessly doing all of the moves that I just couldn’t figure out.
No doubt, you’ve had some moment in your life when you felt yourself flailing like I did at step class. You know that feeling — the humiliation, the sense of being underwater, the injury to your confidence.
Some of our beginning readers feel that way, too. But reading is a critical skill, so giving up and slinking out of class isn’t an option for them. Our job is to make it less overwhelming, to throw our kids the support they need to keep their heads above water.
Here are my real life tips for taking some of the tears and terror out of reading.
Try Shared Reading Books
Shared reading books feature two-page spreads with one page to be read by the parent and a more simple page to be read by the child. Usborne offers some fiction shared reading selections in their Very First Reading Collection. In addition to fiction readers, the We Both Read series published by Treasure Bay offers some fantastic nonfiction selections at a variety of levels.
Be an Ally with Buddy Reading
When a child is struggling, opening up a book and seeing all of those words on all of those pages can feel defeating at the outset. Make the task feel smaller by taking turns with buddy reading. The child reads one page, you read the next page, the child reads the next page, and so on. Not only does buddy reading give the child a break, but when a child’s fluency is low, causing reading to be disjointed and jerky, the pages read by the parent can be a big comprehension help.
Find a Furry Audience
Lots of libraries have read-to-a-dog programs these days. When they’re done well and with a minimal audience aside from the dog, they really can be motivating for a child. At my house, we’ve also had success with our Humane Society’s Reading Team program. My kids have “work” shirts, they sign up for shifts, and they wear badges at the shelter that identify them as volunteers. In their orientation, they learned that reading to the shelter pets improves the animals’ socialization level, which makes the animals more adoptable. They take their job very seriously, and the results are real. While it can be a struggle for one of my kids to make it through half of a reader at home with me, the same book might be read twice in its entirety at a Reading Team shift. Win-win-win.
Make Peace with Hitting the Pause Button
When our kids are struggling, we feel a lot of pressure to push, to get them caught up. The thing is, though, that if you’re pushing your child to continue beyond his or her point of frustration or exhaustion, you’re hurting more than you’re helping. It’s okay to be gentle, and it’s okay to push the pause button. Coming back to it hours later (or even the next day) will be much more fruitful.
Lots of Pictures, Lots of Colors
If you have a spread of workbooks in front of you, which one are you most drawn to? One with crowded pages and lots of black and white text or one with lots of colors, pictures, and open (or negative) space that gives your eyes a place to rest? Just about all of us would pick up the colorful choice first, and we’re grownups. Pictures and colors are inviting. For a child who’s struggling, the importance of that can’t be overstated.
Use GRL to Find Appropriate Books
Most books that you find on the early reader shelves at the bookstore or library are labeled with a 1-2-3-4 system, and it’s a system that a lot of us find fairly frustrating and misleading. How many times have you opened up a level 1 reader and wondered, “How in the world is a beginner supposed to know this word?” A system I find to be much more accurate is the GRL system, which uses a wider range of alphabetic leveling. In fact, when I when through our own collection of books and labeled each with a GRL level sticker to help my children find choices that would be accessible to them, I was surprised to find that some of our “Level 1” books were rated at the same GRL as some of our “Level 3” books.
It’s fairly easy to find the GRL of most children’s books via Google search, and the Scholastic website also offers tools for finding a book’s GRL or browsing books by GRL.
Readaloud of the Week: Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective
Logic lovers, reluctant readers, and everyone who loves a good puzzle will enjoy these short stories mysteries.
Logic lovers, reluctant readers, and everyone who loves a good puzzle will enjoy these short stories mysteries.
ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN: BOY DETECTIVE by Donald J. Sobol
When you have a kid who loves logic and problem-solving but claims to hate reading, detective stories seem like a perfect solution. Happily, not only did my reluctant reader dig the adventures of Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, so did the rest of us.
Leroy Brown picked up his nickname because of his encyclopedia ability to recall information. At home at the family dinner table, Encyclopedia weighs in on his police chief dad’s cases, often spotting clues the Idaville police force has missed. After school, Encyclopedia takes cases from the neighborhood kids (many time involving the antics of local bully Bugs Meany) for $0.25 a day plus expenses. The real fun, though, is that each story ends with a question, prompting the reader to try to solve the mystery before flipping to the end of the book to find out if his guess is as good as Encyclopedia Brown’s. Some clues went over our heads (I can’t say I am familiar with the velocity difference between cooked and uncooked eggs), but when we were able to piece together the clues and figure out the right answer, it was always thrilling. Because each of the stories is just a few pages, this is an easy readaloud to squeeze into those weeks where you’re super-busy. The short stories are also appealing to reluctant readers, who may be tempted to read “just one more” on their own.
The Encyclopedia Brown series was written in the 1960s, and there are definitely parts that feel dated. No one could call the book feminist, and the characters are a homogenous lot. In spite of that, this first entry in the series makes a fun readaloud, though, that makes a great gateway to other fictional detectives, including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Stuff We Like :: 3.9.18
Why our best friends are so much more than friends, what would W.E.B. DuBois think about the Black Panther, and more stuff we liked.
Seriously, I was typing the headline for this post, and I started with 2014. Can you tell next week is spring break for Jason’s school? I’m ready!
WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE
I think Suzanne is trying to read All The Short Stories Ever.
Shelli has some perfect-for-spring readalouds for kids who are interested in birds.
You may be interested in this list of great epistolary novels to read with your kids, especially if you’re trying to cross that item off the 2018 Reading Challenge.
February was a slow reading month, but there are a few new releases you might want to check out and Suzanne and I shared our small-but-mighty list of good reads.
one year ago: Shelli shared her favorite homeschool gadgets. Plus: How do you know when it’s time to break up with your curriculum?
two years ago: Maybe you’d like to read some great biographies of scientists for Women’s History Month. Also: Rebecca reviews Beast Academy’s comics-based curriculum.
three years ago: Tracy asks, “So what if all they do is play video games?” Also: Alistair Grim’s Odditorium is an odd but charming little middle grades fantasy.
THE LINKS I LIKED
I’m not sure there is a word that sums up Shelly, who is my other half in a profound way, but I loved this piece about the way that women talk about their best friends.
The question on all of our minds: What would W.E.B. DuBois think about the Black Panther movie?
What if Monopoly was even more like capitalism? (Start by ordering turns by privilege.)
Jane Smiley goes in search of the real Grant Wood, and what she discovers is fascinating.
These riffs on the Claudia-focused Baby-Sitters Club covers by Angry Asian Man are totally worth the time suck they will quickly become.
WHAT I’M READING AND WATCHING
I’m making slow but steady Madeleine L’Engle progress — honestly, I’m at the point where it’s sad to think that I will be done with Madeleine L’Engle when I’ve made it through this list, so I don’t mind slowing down a bit. I’ve been on the great Austin family road trip in The Moon by Night, one of the most oddly paced books I’ve ever read and one that makes me want to take a long road trip with my children who would not want to read genetics tomes aloud over the campfire. (The Moon by Night, incidentally, is taking place during the same summer that Adam is off studying starfish with Dr. O’Keefe in The Arm of the Starfish, in case you are keeping up.) I have discovered weird, weird stuff happening in New York City when Dr. Austin takes a fellowship there in The Young Unicorns, which is my least favorite of the Austin books. (I do love Dave, so I am glad he reappears later in a much better book.) And I am just starting A Ring of Endless Light, which is one of my favorites. I’m coming for you, An Acceptable Time! Eventually.
Also near the top of my TBR list is An African American and Latinx History of the United States, which has gotten spotty reviews but which I’m very excited about because its existence is inevitably going to make writing an intersectional U.S. History curriculum so much easier.
We’re planning the reading list for Jason’s high school next year, which means I have been reading all the Swift, Pope, and Voltaire I can get my hands on to prepare to dive into the Enlightenment. (I have to warm up for Kant. No offense, Kant.)
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN OUR HOMESCHOOL
One thing that helping get Jason’s school off the ground has taught me is that is impossible to overemphasize the importance of time management. I’m trying to give my 10th grader more (and more complicated) long-term projects with stages of due dates so that she gets practice managing multiple deadlines. This is a low-stakes business right now, of course, but it won’t always be, so this feels like the time to discover what works for her (and — just as often — what really, really doesn’t work for her). It’s cool to discover things — for example, she is not a fan of the bullet journal (which I, as you know, adore), but she loves those old-school agendas with all the tabs and dividers.
Library Chicken Update :: 3.7.18
Suzanne continues to push the limits of just how many short story collections one reader can tackle in this week's edition of Library Chicken.
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
As I’m writing this, it’s a gray rainy day outside, perfect for getting comfy in a bathrobe next to a giant stack of books. Which is good, because I need to get some reading done if I’m to avoid another embarrassing stack of returns...
- FIFTY BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 1915-1965 edited by Martha Foley
- 100 YEARS OF THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES by Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor
On the principle that anything worth doing is worth overdoing (right? or is that just me? it’s just me, isn’t it?) -- and to recover some of my self-respect after the most recent Library Chicken debacle -- I’ve been frantically reading the massive short story anthologies I checked out a while ago so that I don’t have to return them unread. The annual Best American Short Stories anthology series began publishing in 1915, and I read both the fifty year collection from then series editor Martha Foley, and the centennial collection from current series editor Heidi Pitlor and guest editor Lorrie Moore. There is very little overlap between the two books and you can definitely see how tastes and styles have changed as time has moved on. Unsurprisingly, I preferred the 2015 collection, but the 1965 collection also had its high points (including Dorothy Parker and a very entertaining Ring Lardner story).
(LC Score: +2)
GREAT AMERICAN SHORT STORIES by Wallace and Mary Stegner
This 1957 anthology starts off with a snobby little introduction about the good ol’ days, when stories were actually about something. After that, we get 24 stories, beginning with the old masters (Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe) and continuing through a selection of “modern” authors that aren’t very well-known today. Unfortunately, two of the authors I did recognize, O. Henry and Eudora Welty, were represented by lesser-known super-racist stories, so that was fun.
(LC Score: +1)
THE MONKEY'S OTHER PAW edited by Luis Ortiz
The idea for this 2014 collection is interesting: modern authors revisit classic tales of horror and fantasy. The list of inspirational stories (which includes The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Saki’s “The Open Window”, along with “The Monkey’s Paw") is an odd mix, however, and none of the new stories really worked for me.
(LC Score: +1)
SISTERS OF THE REVOLUTION: A FEMINIST SPECULATIVE FICTION ANTHOLOGY edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
The Vandermeers are a great editing team who always put together fascinating collections, and this 2015 anthology does not disappoint. Important female writers from both the past (Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, Ursula Le Guin) and the present (Nalo Hopkinson, Catherynne Valente, Nnedi Okorafor) of the genre are represented. Not always a cheery read, but always fascinating.
(LC Score: +½, returned overdue)
VANESSA BELL by Frances Spalding
My Girl Who Reads Woolf project continues with a biography of Virginia’s talented and intriguing sister, a professional artist in her own right. Sadly, most of it went over my head, due to my embarrassing ignorance of art history and the art world. One of these days I’m going to check out “Art History for Dummies” and try to learn a thing or two…
(LC Score: +1)
- Library Chicken Score for 3/7/18: 5 ½
- Running Score: + ½
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
- The Pushcart Book of Short Stories edited by Bill Henderson (I’M GOING TO FINISH ALL THESE ANTHOLOGIES, PEOPLE)
- The Norton Book of American Short Stories edited by Peter S. Prescott (I’M SERIOUS ABOUT THIS)
- Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin (Gervase Fen #2; remember when I used to read the occasional novel instead of short stories all the time? that was fun, right?)
- Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande (I even used the read the occasional memoir--that was fun, too)
Storybooks for Young Bird Lovers
Shelli's son's bird obsession has fueled their homeschool reading list. Here are some of their favorites.
My youngest son loves birds, but he doesn’t always want to read bird guides or other science-related books. He’s just a little too young for that. So I made an effort to find storybooks that featured birds, and these have been a hit with him. There’s also a couple of non-story books here that are great for young kids too. Feel free to leave your recommendations in the comments area too.
He’s already asked me to read this classic book about one hundred times. Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey is about Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, who are trying to find the perfect spot to build their nest. They finally find it in Boston, Massachusetts.
My son’s favorite bird is the black-capped chickadee, so Chickadee’s Message by Douglas Wood was a perfect fit for him. The story is based on a Lakota Indian legend. It’s about the resiliency of the human spirit and how the chickadee became the people’s messenger.
If you love Owl Moon, Jane Yolen also published this book of poetry about birds. Along with Ted Lewin’s gorgeous illustrations, it’s a lyrical book that you can savor for a long time.
I was so happy to receive this book by Jacqueline Davies as a present for my son who loves drawing birds too. I couldn’t let him go without learning about John James Audubon. It’s the most text-heavy book in this list, so it’s perfect for bird lovers of all ages.
If you have a child who likes reading about science, this book by Melissa Stewart is all about the importance of feathers and how birds use them.
This isn’t a storybook, but I’m including it here because it’s such a lovely book and my son loves it. Of course, you could just use an app, but there’s something fun about having a book that plays two hundred bird songs. The best part is that you can find used versions of these large, gorgeous books for a reasonable price.
Reading Challenge Readalouds: Great Epistolary Novels
This week, I am focusing on one of my very favorite things: novels written in letters.
Are you participating in the 2018 Reading Challenge? Someone suggested on Facebook that it would be fun to have a list of recommendations for some of the different categories, so I thought I would occasionally dedicate a Readaloud of the Week post to some ideas for a Reading Challenge category. This week, I am focusing on one of my very favorite things: novels written in letters. I’ve tried to note approximate-ish reading levels, but if you’re reading these out loud, that’s probably less important.
UNUSUAL CHICKENS FOR THE EXCEPTIONAL POULTRY FARMER by Kelly Jones
Sophie’s not super-excited to pack up and move from Los Angeles to the farm her family inherited from her late uncle, but her interest is piqued when she discovers a very unusual chicken in the backyard. Through her correspondence with Agnes at Redwood Farm Supply, Sophie discovers that her late Uncle Jim had a fondness for chickens with unusual abilities and decides that maybe she’ll follow in his poultry-raising footsteps. Told through letters — to Agnes, but also to her late and beloved abuela, her late uncle (she’s not expecting to hear back from him, of course), and her friends in L.A. who never seem to write back — this is a delightfully Roald Dahl-ish book with a charming heroine and a fun story. (Middle grades)
DADDY-LONG-LEGS by Jean Webster
This is an old-fashioned book starring a plucky orphan who goes off to college and ends up getting married at the end, so if that’s not your family’s jam, feel free to skip ahead. Jerusha Abbott has grown up in an orphan asylum, and when a mysterious benefactor pays to send her off to college — so long as she promises to keep him apprised of her academic progress through monthly letters. Jerusha — now nicknamed Judy — blooms at school and in her increasingly confident letters. Always clever and spunky, now she really has a chance to shine. It’s a pleasure to read as she discovers her sense of self, finds new friends, and has a really lovely adventure for the first time in her life. (Middle grades/Young adult)
DEAR MR. HENSHAW by Beverly Cleary
Sixth grader Leigh Botts writes his favorite author for a school assignment, but when Mr. Henshaw writes back, Leigh is inspired to write many more letters, discovering that writing gives him a place to deal with his feelings about being bullied at lunchtime, dealing with his parents’ separation, and finding a place for himself in a new town. Cleary is pitch-perfect here, showing us Leigh’s emotional growth without resolving everything with a neat bow. (Middle grades)
ABSOLUTELY NORMAL CHAOS by Sharon Creech
Mary Lou’s summer homework is to read The Odyssey and keep a journal. She’s not particularly thrilled about either one but finds herself enjoying both more than she suspected, as her journal gives her a place to puzzle through the summer’s mysteries: her best friend’s brain-sucking crush on an older boy, a friendship of her own with a cute boy from her class, and the appearance of her impossible-to-define cousin Carl Ray, who comes with a mystery of his own. (Middle grades)
THE YEAR OF SECRET ASSIGNMENTS by Jaclyn Moriarty
Suzanne has often lamented Moriarty’s lack of U.S. popularity since her YA novels are so much fun to read, and this book of hers is chock full of letter-writing goodness. Emily, Lydia, and Cassie have signed up for a pen pal program with boys who attend their town’s rival high school, a project that kicks off a year of pranks, secrets, dares, and discoveries. (Young adult)
LETTERS FROM CAMP and REGARDING THE FOUNTAIN: A TALE, IN LETTERS, OF LIARS AND LEAKS by Kate Klise, illustrated by M. Sarah Klise
These two books come from the same author-illustrator team and use the same epistolary technique to tell their stories, so I am lumping them together. In Letters from Camp, campers at a camp for squabbling siblings discover that the famous siblings in charge may be hiding something. In Regarding the Fountain, a middle school’s effort to commission a new drinking fountain when the old one cracks leads to unexpected drama. In both, hilarity frequently ensues. (Elementary)
ELLA MINNOW PEA by Mark Dunn
This one’s an epistolary novel and a lipogram, you guys! If you are a fellow word nerd, you will adore this, so I am recommending it in this list even though it actually gets kind of hard to read aloud in places — mostly because the fictional South Carolina town in which it is set starts banning letters of the alphabet as they fall of the aging statue of their town’s namesake, (also fictional) pangram coiner Nevin Nollop. In fact, the town’s language totalitarianism pushes the limits of reason, and it’s up to young Ella to fight for freedom of speech. (Young adult)
THE JOLLY POSTMAN by Janet Ahlberg, illustrated by Allan Ahlberg
You actually get to open the letters and take them out of their envelopes when you’re reading this playful picture book, which follows a postman as he delivers the mail to the fairy tale characters along his route. (Elementary)
LETTERS OF A WOMAN HOMESTEADER by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
These letters aren’t fictional, but they read like a novel: In 1909, widowed Elinore Pruitt Stewart and her young daughter set off for Wyoming to stake their claim on a ranch. In her chatty letters back to an old friend in Denver, Pruitt Stewart recounts her adventures camping out in the wild, planning a spontaneous wedding for a fellow settler who hasn’t seen his bride-to-be for a quarter of a century, delivering babies for her neighbors and her cows, cooking campfire breakfasts, and always taking the time to pause and soak in the magic of landscape around her. She’s plucky and positive and perpetually interested in everything around her. (She’s also a Southern woman in 1909, so be prepared for some very apparent racism to casually pop up.) (Young adult)
SORCERY AND CECELIA by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
We have already raved about this book so many times, but the letters cousins Kate and Cecelia write each other during Kate’s first London season are too delightful not to include in this list. Kate and Cecelia inhabit a Jane Austen-ish England, with gowns, balls, and plenty of complicated social land mines to navigate — and, as it happens, there’s also magic. As Kate and Cecelia get pulled into separate magical conspiracies, they keep each other updated with action-packed letters — only to realize that their separate adventures may actually be connected after all. (Young adult)
CATHERINE, CALLED BIRDY by Karen Cushman
It’s problematic, of course, to pretend that we can understand what might have gone on in the head 14th century girl, but Cushman makes a solid effort here, and this novel — which takes the form of Catherine’s journal — paints a fascinating (and well researched) picture of medieval life. Catherine doesn’t have a lot of agency: She’s going to have to do what her father says, including marrying the man he’s picked out for her, however much she might rebel against the idea in her diary. That rebelling feels a little anachronistic, but I’m not sure a middle grades reader would be able to identify with Catherine at all without it so I think it’s an understandable conceit. If you’re studying the Middle Ages any time soon, you will definitely want to have this one on your list. (Middle grades)
THE IDES OF MARCH by Thornton Wilder
If you are interested in Roman history, you will be over the moon to discover this fictional collection of letters set during the end of Julius Caesar’s life. (A life, you remember, that will be ended by assassination in the Roman Senate on the Ides of March.) The letters, from Caesar, his friends, his family, his Egyptian mistress Cleopatra, his friends, and his enemies, paint a picture of Rome on the brink of civil war. The details of everyday life in ancient Rome are fascinating. And since we know where all of this is leading, there’s a sense of inevitability as Caesar alternately pushes his advantage and tries to compromise in the name of peace. Definitely recommended for high school ancient history. (Young adult)
ANNE OF WINDY POPLARS by L.M. Montgomery
This one isn’t a full epistolary novel — there are narrative sections, too — but Anne’s adventures teaching at a girls’ school in a very clannish town are so funny and charming that if you’re an Anne of Green Gables fan, you won’t want to miss them. (Middle grades/Young adult)
New Books Roundup: February 2018
A charming middle grades mystery and a gender-bending take on Oliver Twist are highlights in this month's new releases.
As part of my resolution to do a better job keeping up with reviewing new books in 2018, I’m going to dedicate one Friday each month to rounding up interesting new books you might spot on your library’s “new releases” shelf.
OLIVIA TWIST by Lorie Langdon
OK, so just go with it: Oliver Twist is actually a girl, who’s pretended to be a boy because her old nurse warned her the world was no safe place for a pretty girl. When she’s picked up for stealing and serendipitously reunited with her upper class family, Olivia happily adjusts to having enough to eat and a safe place to sleep, but she still pulls on her old cap to help street urchins who, like she once was, are struggling to make it on the London streets. She also does a little thieving to keep the family budget going strong. Then, one night at a party, she runs into the Artful Dodger, all grown up and posing as an Irish lord. He knows there’s something familiar about Olivia, but he doesn’t connect the elegant young lady with the little boy who used to run with his gang. Sparks fly, but there’s plenty of danger lurking in the shadows for Olivia and Dodger both.
I mean, either this is your kind of book and you have already stopped reading this and gone to put it on your library hold list, or this is not your kind of book and you are rolling your eyes at the premise. I’m firmly in the pro camp, but I realize that camp is a fluffy, sometimes silly place that doesn’t always come with redeeming literary value. This book is fun, but it runs on its premise (which is, let's be honest, pretty delightful) and doesn’t have much to offer beyond that. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think if you fit the very specific niche group of people who love Dickens, fan fiction, and YA, you, too, will find it a fun, frothy delight that doesn’t change your life but definitely makes you happy other people are out in the world thinking about things like this.
A SIDE OF SABOTAGE by C.M. Surrisi
This is the third book in the Quinnie Boyd mystery series for middle grade readers, but it was the first one I read and I didn’t feel like I was missing any major plot points. (I’m excited to check out The Maypop Kidnapping and Vampires on the Run, the first two books in the series.)
With middle grade mysteries, you’re always walking kind of a fine line, I think: You want action and adventure, but you don’t want terrible things that keep you up at night to pop up at the end of every chapter. A Side of Sabotage is safely in the mild camp, but it has enough suspense to keep you hooked without too much kids-in-peril action. Set in coastal Maine, the detective-in-resident is the 14-year-old daughter of the town sheriff and the owner of Gusty’s, the town’s hot-spot coffee shop. Her dad’s cafe is getting some competition this summer, thanks to a hipster chef from Boston who has set up a swanky eatery down the road. When weird things start happening at Gusty’s, Quinnie immediately suspects the new restaurant in town and makes up her mind to figure out what’s really going on.
I love a mystery with meddling kids, and this one definitely fits the bill. The detective work is more nuanced than, say, Nancy Drew and more action-packed than, say, Encyclopedia Brown — there are clues that you can follow along with Quinnie and her friends. A middle grades mystery usually depends at least a little on parents being absent or unconvinced there’s a problem, and there’s definitely some of that here, but it doesn’t read as particularly neglectful. Quinnie’s parents are busy, and there’s no real reason to suspect that the problems at Gusty’s are more than unfortunate coincidences. Quinnie and her friends are nice, normal kids who enjoy hanging out together, and they don’t feel like generic “types,” which is one of my middle grade detective novel pet peeves. All in all, I found this charming, and it made me want to go back to Maine this summer.
I STOP SOMEWHERE by T.E. Carter
This book is very buzzy, and it’s probably just me, but I just don’t get it. Disclaimer: I have a teenage daughter, so books about (kinda spoiler but not really since it’s the whole premise of the book) bad things happening to teenage girls have to get over a pretty steep threshold for me to appreciate them. That could be the problem. Or it could be that I am just so, so, so tired of these kinds of stories in general, where we spend our time falling in love with young women who end up being victims of male violence. This is the same reason I can’t watch Westworld or The Handmaid’s Tale — it feels like these stories ultimately end up seeing things through the same lens they are supposed to be critiquing. Really, I could be the problem here.
Sort of like The Lovely Bones (which, come to think of it, also didn't work for me), I Stop Somewhere is a coming-of-age story set in a young woman’s afterlife. Ellie was brutally attacked and murdered, and now her spirit lingers in the empty suburban house where her attackers hid her body, watching them assault (but not murder) a series of other young women. At the same time, Ellie’s remembering her life, which was mostly lonely and confusing, where the best thing she could hope for was just not to be noticed. There’s some talk about the power women have inside them and some watery sort of less-unhappy endings for some of the side characters, but the book never stops feeling bleak. Maybe there’s some stuff to unpack here about rape culture and invisible girls, but I think there are other books that do this better.
It wasn’t for me. Obviously. If you read it, treat it like it’s plastered with trigger warnings about every kind of sexual abuse and violence, and if it works for you, please tell me what I’m missing.
TESS OF THE ROAD by Rachel Hartman
I really dig the Seraphina books, which manage to be feminist, inclusive, and nonbinary, and have dragons. This is, loosely, the third book in Seraphina’s world, focusing not on the part-dragon protagonist of the previous two books but on her all-human half-sister Tess.
I did find the premise of the book — which is that Tess is persona non grata with her family and polite society because she’s had a baby out of wedlock — frustrating, and even though the bulk of the book is about how Tess transcends this narrow definition of womanhood and even though Seraphina totally avoids most of those misogynist tropes, the set-up kept me from falling in love with this entry in the series. (I think, like a lot of people right now, I am just genuinely fed up with this treatment of women. Honestly, Rachel Hartman is clearly fed up with this treatment of women, too, and that’s part of the point of this book.)
When Tess disguises herself as a boy and sets out on her own, she’s expecting to wallow in her solitude. Instead, she finds herself on a series of adventures on the hunt for a legendary serpent, posing as a priest, working as a laborer, and thwarting robbers. As she makes the journey, she slowly works through the bitterness of her past, finally recognizing that she has spent most of her life taking responsibility for things that are not her fault and that the standards to which her world has held her are damaging and destructive. Ultimately, Tess grapples with her relationship with shame, and by the end of the novel, she’s shed a lot of her anger and bitterness as she’s discovered her own sense of self and purpose. This is definitely a novel of the #metoo movement, and a good one, and if that’s on your reading list right now, I can recommend Tess of the Road enthusiastically. If you need to put it on your TBR list for later, though, I think that’s OK, too.
Library Chicken :: Suzanne and Amy’s Favorite Reads in February
Suzanne and Amy pick their favorite reads of February, including a couple of short story collections, an unexpected dose of chick lit, a cozy British family story, and more.
February wasn't the most exciting reading month for Amy or Suzanne, but there were a few notable high points.
Suzanne's Picks
100 YEARS OF THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES edited by Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor
The annual Best American Short Stories anthology series began publishing in 1915, and to celebrate the 100-year anniversary in 2015, current series editor Heidi Pitlor and guest editor Lorrie Moore chose over 700 pages of great stories to make up this collection. Beginning in 1917 with an Edna Ferber story and continuing until 2014 with Lauren Groff, a broad range of American authors throughout the century is covered. And I found waaaaaay too many people to put on my to-read list.
GET IN TROUBLE: STORIES by Kelly Link
Kelly Link had been on my to-read list for several years, and now that I’ve finally read her work I want to track down all the authors and critics and fellow readers who recommended her and say, “Yes, I know you TOLD me to read her, but why didn’t you MAKE me?” Her weird-fantastical stories hit the sweet spot for me and the story “Secret Identity” (from this collection) is going on the list for my next short story class with tweens and teens.
ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE by Gail Honeyman
For this, the only novel on my best-February-reads list (which reflects the amount of short fiction I’ve been reading lately) I had to wait on the hold list for quite a while, but once I began reading it I realized that it was not what I had expected. The effusive blurbs and reviews had led me to anticipate a sweet, quirky story about a younger (or older) woman who transforms a somewhat lonely life by finding friends (and perhaps romance) and creating an extended if unusual family-of-choice. I LOVE books like that (read Elinor Lipman for some good examples) but a few pages into this one I was thinking that this particular Eleanor had a lot more problems (and was a lot more annoying) than I would have thought. As it turns out, she has a very dark backstory, which is revealed over the course of the book (though never in detail), making her transformation more about survival than superficial change. Once I adjusted my expectations, I raced through to the end of the book, and I will definitely be picking up Honeyman’s next novel.
THE ART OF THE PERSONAL ESSAY: AN ANTHOLOGY FROM THE CLASSICAL ERA TO THE PRESENT edited by Phillip Lopate
I enjoy essay collections and this thick volume (published in 1995) goes all the way back to Seneca, Plutarch, and Montaigne to explore the beginnings of the “personal essay.” I was a little surprised that I actually preferred the older authors to the most of the modern ones (Edward Hoagland, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, etc) included here and, as usual, I have a whole new stack of names to add to my to-read list (as if it needed to get any longer).
Amy's Picks
I didn’t get in a lot of fun reading this month, so I only have a few books I can rave about for our February book picks.
THE NAKED OLYMPICS: THE TRUE STORY OF THE ANCIENT GAMES by Tony Perrottet
Obviously this was a theme pick, but it was a surprisingly fun read anyway. It’s a good cross between a scholarly study (Perrottet uses a great mix of primary sources, including a Greek Handbook for a Sports Coach that I now have on my personal TBR list) and an entertaining expose (bacchanal tents and nude workouts!). I picked it up thinking it would be fun to read with the kids, and that did not prove to be the case — it was a little raunchier than I anticipated. But it was a fun read for me, and it has allowed me to make many nerdy comments when the Olympics commenters get annoying, so it’s on the list!
SAFFY’S ANGEL by Hillary McKay
I love books about big, messy families who have tea and make art at the kitchen table, so I was thrilled to discover this book about the Casson family (and even more thrilled that it’s the start of a whole series!). Mom Eve is a working artist who keeps the family functional by taking care of the house (at least in theory), the kids, and the family finances, while perpetually absent artist-artist dad Bill lives the high life in London, popping back just long enough for the family to make a show of waving goodbye to him from all the windows of their rattly old house. There are four children, all named for paint colors: Caddie (Cadmium Gold), the oldest who is not quite ready to launch; Saffy (Saffron); Indigo, the only boy; and baby Rose. In this first book, Saffy discovers that she’s actually Eve’s niece, adopted when Eve’s twin sister died in Italy. This makes her feel both weirdly more connected to and weirdly alienated from her adopted brothers and sisters, so that she ventures down the street to make friends with another girl who feels similarly isolated. Together, Saffy and her new friend Sarah hatch a scheme to get to Italy to visit the town where Saffy lived with her mom. This book is the best kind of comfort food reading for me.
PHILIP K. DICK’S ELECTRIC DREAMS
I have not made time yet to watch Amazon’s new Philip K. Dick series, but I couldn’t resist the urge to revisit the short stories that comprise the new series. Most of them I have probably read before — I had a whole obsessive Philip K. Dick period when I discovered Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep — but I didn’t remember them vividly enough to spoil the fun of reading them. I especially appreciated the dark, political overtones of “The Hanging Stranger” and the shifting notion of reality in “Exhibition Piece.” Now I just have to find time to watch the show!
The Problem with Writing as a Punishment
When you use writing as a form of punishment, every writing assignment can make kids feel like they're in the homeschool version of detention.
When you use writing as a form of punishment, every writing assignment can make kids feel like they're in the homeschool version of detention.
When your kids misbehave, what punishments do you use? I’m guessing that you don’t punish them with ice cream or a new toy. You probably don’t offer to bake cupcakes with them or have a family movie night. That wouldn’t make any sense, would it? I mean, why in the world would you reward bad behavior with something fun? When our kids make poor choices, we parents hand down punishments or consequences that we hope will cause our children to reflect on what they’ve done, that might lead them to remedy their wrongs, that will improve the chances of them making a better choice next time.
Sometimes well-intentioned parents try to correct laziness or transgressions with writing assignments. Whether it’s the classic “I will not…” sentence copied over and over, spelling words copied many times beyond any real learning purpose, or an apologetic reflection letter, I’d like to encourage you to reconsider using writing as a punishment.
The thing is that if you use writing as a punishment, all writing assignments will feel like punishment to your child. And that’s not what writing should feel like. It should feel yummy like ice cream, stimulating like a new toy, challenging like baking, and fun like family movie night. Kids are smart. They know that if we use something as a punishment, it must be because it’s something we find distasteful. If writing is used as a punishment, without ever uttering the words, we are teaching children that writing is undesirable, that’s it’s something to be avoided.
I’m no parenting expert. I’m bumbling through this thing just like we all are. I do know, though, that if we want our kids to feel good about writing and feel good about themselves about writers, we have to leave writing out of the discipline mix and choose some other consequence that will get everyone back on the right path.
We tend to do unto our children what was done unto us, but I think that most of us in the homeschooling community would agree that just because something has always been done, it isn’t necessarily for the best. Let’s leave writing as punishment where it belongs — in the past.
Readaloud of the Week: Blood on the River: James Town 1607
The earliest days of U.S. history come to life in this readaloud about the James Town settlement of 1607.
BLOOD ON THE RIVER: JAMES TOWN 1607 by Elisa Carbone
Blood on the River: James Town 1607 by Elisa Carbone is a young adult historical fiction account of the first permanent English settlement in North America. I read the book to my 11- and 8-year-old boys, and though they felt the beginning chapters were a little slow, they eventually got into the story and wanted me to keep reading. As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole book.
The story is told from the perspective of Samuel Collier, a young orphan boy who was almost destined to live his life in the streets of London. He got a second chance when he was assigned a job aboard the Susan Constant as page to Captain John Smith. Now he has to make his way in the New World, and what he needs to do to survive there will be much different from what he’s learned about living on the streets. He soon finds out that he’ll need to get along with others whether he likes it or not. He’s also going to need to learn the language of the Algonquian Indians.
Carbone does an excellent job of relating the major events of the James Town settlement in an appropriate way for young adults without sugarcoating the hardships or atrocities that took place. I especially appreciated how she clearly defined the characteristics of a good leader, which is a good lesson for children. She begins each chapter with a quote from a primary source, which allows kids to hear snippets of eyewitness accounts.
If you feel your child is very sensitive, you may want to read this book first, but most children will probably find the story fascinating. Since the book is fiction, the historical account should be read with a skeptical eye, but it may spark an interest in early American history, and that’s always a win.
Stuff We Like :: 2.23.17
Harry Potter in Scots, more reasons to love Adam Rippon, enjoying art when you can't like the artist, obsessing a little too much over the correct reading order of Madeleine L'Engle's books, and more stuff we like.
Ugh, I think I caught Suzanne’s bug. All I want to do is curl up in bed with a cup of tea and my copy of Emily Climbs, so this may be a cold medicine-fueled edition of Stuff We Like.
What’s happening at home/school/life
Suzanne’s Library Chicken roundup for this week includes some short stories I can’t wait to get my hands on.
Sometimes, you want to do something good for the world but you also don’t want to change out of your pajamas. This list is great for those times.
I was thrilled to discover this middle grades biography of civil rights activist Dr. Betty Shabazz.
One year ago: It felt like the right time for a Watergate unit study. (Also: Shelli took on a homeschool project just for her, and we decided to be OK with being OK.)
Two years ago: Lisa embraces the (all-too-rare) sounds of silence. (Plus: A peek back at our homeschool — apparently note-taking was a big project at the time.)
Three years ago: Lisa adapts to life with a child who tends to see the negative side first.
Four years ago: Way more than you ever wanted to know about me, including why I describe our homeschool philosophy as “Classical, Dude style.”
The links I liked
There’s a Scots translation of Harry Potter, and it is DELIGHTFUL.
Adam Rippon has definitely been a highlight of this year’s Olympics for me, and I got a little choked up reading this essay by a 30-something gay man about what it means to have an openly gay U.S. athlete competing in the Olympics.
Why is it not surprising that being a woman is a major risk factor for anxiety?
I first ran into this problem some years ago with Woody Allen, and I still don’t have a good answer: What happens to art when the artist turns out to be a terrible person?
Yes, yes, and yes: Alexander Chee on writing for love AND money. (Because writers have bills to pay, too, you know? And writing — like creating homeschool curricula or taking photos or anything else we’re tempted to source for free — has value that deserves to be appreciated.)
What I’m reading and watching
I am continuing my Pre-Wrinkle in Time readathon, and I am currently working my way through the Austin books to loop back around to book five of the time quintet. For me, the Austin family starts with the two Christmas books (The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas and A Full House: An Austin Family Christmas, both of which are sweet but ultimately kind of meh for me but which must be read before Meet the Austins because THAT IS THE CORRECT WAY), and I have to read the short story “The Anti-Muffins,” which was cut from Meet the Austins, as soon as I finish Meet the Austins. I apparently have a lot of strong feelings about this subject.
I watched the first season of Agent Carter and loved it but never managed to get around to the second season, for some reason. I am watching it now, and I once again wish I could be as cool as Peggy Carter on her worst day.
What’s happening in our homeschool
We’re still on our super-chill Olympics schedule and I’m fighting off what is definitely-not-the-flu, so we haven’t been doing a lot of hands-on homeschooling this week. One thing that breaks always remind me is that our family does better when we have a schedule — as long as we have our wake-up readalouds and afternoon tea time, the days go smoothly. If we don’t have those things to structure the days, by the middle of the week, everyone’s a little grumpy and stressed. Happily, even on breaks, it’s easy to make sure we anchor the days with those little rituals, and an occasional day off-schedule always feels like a bit of a treat.
Library Chicken Update :: 2.21.18
Even the flu can't keep Suzanne from short stories, bookish memoirs, surprisingly intense popular fiction, and a little Vonnegut.
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!
Well, it all had to come crashing down sooner or later. I’ve been on a bit of a book bender for the past couple of months, but I could only juggle two full library cards’ worth of books for so long (as per usual, please don’t mention the two cards thing to my local branch), and as we all know, in Library Chicken the house (i.e., the library) always wins. I don’t want to discuss the ‘returned books’ score (which you can find at the end of this update) except to note that I had THE FLU last week so I’m blaming everything on that. (If you happen to see my husband out and about and he claims that I had a bad cold, not the flu, tells him that you DON’T BELIEVE HIS LIES and it DOESN’T MATTER that when everyone else in the house got sick they were only down for a couple of days because maybe they just had a cold but I had the REAL ACTUAL FLU. Also please remind him to get more Tang at the grocery store because I am a child of the 70s and 80s and I know for a fact that Tang and Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup — served side by side, not mixed together because that would be stupid and gross — make up an all-powerful healing potion and my recovery is entirely due to their miraculous effects.)
Anyway, thank goodness that’s all over and I’m sure I’ll never have such a large Library Chicken crash ever again, and pay no attention to the rumbling and creaking noises coming from the large remaining stacks of library books clustered around my bed because I’m sure that’s completely normal and totally not an ominous foreshadowing of the future.
BOOKMARKED: READING MY WAY FROM HOLLYWOOD TO BROOKLYN by Wendy W. Fairey
MY LIFE WITH BOB: FLAWED HEROINE KEEPS BOOK OF BOOKS, PLOT ENSUES by Pamela Paul
Two reading memoirs from two interesting women. Wendy Fairey, a professor of English literature, is the daughter of Sheila Graham, known in her time both for being a gossip columnist during Hollywood’s “Golden Age” and for being in a relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald during his final years in California. As a child, Fairey first learned to love books by browsing through the library of classic novels that Fitzgerald had given to her mother long ago. Fairey tells the story of her life as it parallels some of her all-time favorite books, including David Copperfield, To the Lighthouse, and Howard’s End. In comparison, Pamela Paul did not grow up in a household that valued reading, and often felt that she could never get enough books to satisfy her. As a high schooler, she started keeping a list of books read — the Book of Books, aka Bob — and this memoir reflects back on her life through Bob and the books that meant the most to her at particular times. Paul is only a couple of years younger than I am, so her list of favorite books in childhood looks very familiar, but beyond the voracious reading I don’t think she and I have much in common. Except, that is, for our joint all-consuming hatred of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman, a book that I was tricked into reading years ago when it kept showing up on lists of favorite humorous books (in Paul’s case, a boyfriend made her read it). Flashman merits a chapter in her memoir, in which she exposes it for the racist, wildly misogynistic mess that it is, and Paul will always have a special place in my heart for that alone.
(LC Score: +1 ½, Bookmarked returned overdue)
THE ART OF THE PERSONAL ESSAY: AN ANTHOLOGY FROM THE CLASSICAL ERA TO THE PRESENT edited by Phillip Lopate
I enjoy essay collections and this thick volume (published in 1995) goes all the way back to Seneca, Plutarch, and Montaigne to explore the beginnings of the “personal essay.” I was a little surprised that I actually preferred the older authors to the most of the modern ones (Edward Hoagland, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, etc.) included here and I have a whole new stack of names to add to my to-read list (as if it needed to get any longer). (Challenge Accepted: “an essay anthology” from the Read Harder 2018 challenge)
(LC Score: +½, returned overdue)
THE OXFORD BOOK OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY GHOST STORIES edited by Michael Cox
ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S SPELLBINDERS IN SUSPENSE
More short stories! I’ve read several Oxford anthologies at this point and they generally do a good solid job of rounding up a collection of quality stories from (mostly) familiar authors. This 1996 collection takes us from 1910 (E. Nesbit) to 1994 (Jane Gardam), with the likes of Angela Carter, Penelope Lively, and Fay Weldon making appearances along the way. The Alfred Hitchcock collection is one of dozens of short grab-bag anthologies published under Hitchcock’s name in the 60s and 70s for young readers (I certainly gobbled up my share of these from the children’s section of my hometown library). I picked this one up because it had a particular story that we’re going to do in our homeschool class this semester, but beyond that it’s a little bit like buying a lottery ticket and waiting to see what you’re going to get. This one includes a Dorothy Sayers’ standalone mystery, Daphne Du Maurier’s “The Birds” (the inspiration for the film), and a cute little mystery involving a Saint Bernard and starring a husband-and-wife team of amateur sleuths from an author I’d never heard of (but I’ve already ordered a used copy of the first book in their out-of-print series, so I’ll let you know how that goes).
(LC Score: +2)
GET IN TROUBLE: STORIES by Kelly Link
VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE by Karen Russell
SELF-HELP by Lorrie Moore
Of course, short story anthologies inevitably lead me to authors that I want to read more of, which is how I found my way to these three collections. I’ve been hearing about Kelly Link as a talented writer of bizarre and fantastical short fiction for years, and now that I’ve finally read her work I want to track down all the authors and critics and fellow readers who recommended her and say, “Yes, I know you TOLD me to read her, but why didn’t you MAKE me?” I expect I’ll be reading my way through her backlist in the very near future. I had read (and enjoyed) Karen Russell’s novel, Swamplandia!, a few years ago, so I was not surprised that I enjoyed this collection of strange and melancholy tales, about topics ranging from Japanese women literally morphing into silkworms to U.S. Presidents reincarnated as farm horses to, yes, vampires in a lemon grove. Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help doesn’t have the fantastical elements of the other two collections, but she still manages to create her own mini-worlds in this short collection, explaining (among other things) “How to Talk to Your Mother” and “How to Become a Writer.” Each of these short collections is an entertaining and memorable read.
(LC Score: +2, Get in Trouble and Vampires returned overdue)
ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE by Gail Honeyman
I was on the hold list for a while waiting for this buzzy book, but once I began reading it I realized that it was not what I had expected. The effusive blurbs and reviews had led me to anticipate a sweet, quirky story about a younger (or older) woman who transforms a somewhat lonely life by finding friends (and perhaps romance) and creating an extended if unusual family-of-choice. I LOVE books like that (read Elinor Lipman for some good examples) but a few pages into this one I was thinking that Eleanor has got a lot more problems (and can be a lot more annoying) than I would have thought. As it turns out, she has a very dark backstory, which is revealed over the course of the book (though never in detail), making her transformation more about survival than superficial change. Once I adjusted my expectations, I raced through to the end of the book, and I will definitely be picking up Honeyman’s next novel.
(LC Score: +1)
PLAYER PIANO by Kurt Vonnegut
Somehow I missed Vonnegut as a younger reader. I’m not sure how. As a committed reader of science fiction I was always seeing his name as one of our “respectable” sf writers (a category of two, as I recall, consisting only of Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury), but I just never got around to reading anything by him beyond a few famous stories like “Harrison Bergeron.” It’s past time for me to remedy that, so I’ve begun with his first novel, Player Piano, set in a near-future world where managers and engineers rule the world in the name of greater efficiency and greater profits, and most of humanity has been mechanized out of a job. (It’s an Ayn-Randian utopia written as a Vonnegut dystopia.) Vonnegut’s writing drew me in right from the very beginning, though the world that he builds is not very complete or believable. More upsetting was the realization that Vonnegut’s world, at least in this novel, is almost completely free of women (except as wife-accessories) and people of color; essentially it felt like a novel written by a white man for white men about white men screwing over other white men, which made it a little hard for me to get into. I generally think of Vonnegut as a compassionate and deeply humane man, ahead of his time, so perhaps my expectations were a little too high when it comes to his treatment of issues around sexism and racism. That said, I’m looking forward to continuing my Vonnegut odyssey.
(LC Score: +1)
GRATUITOUS EPILOGUE by Andrea K. Host
IN ARCADIA by Andrea K. Host
Books 4 and 5 in the Touchstone trilogy (just go with it), a self-published science fiction YA series. The trilogy that preceded these “extra” works, about an Australian teenager named Cass who finds herself suddenly in another world where she is fortunately rescued by super-hot teenage psychic space ninjas, was a very fun read and I have to love any author who dares to title her work Gratuitous Epilogue. As foreshadowed, the fourth entry in the series has very little plot, instead devoting itself to Cass’s happily-ever-after life of weddings, babies, and home decor. In Arcadia switches narrators to follow Cass’s mom, newly immigrated to Cass’s world, and her romance with the older leader and mentor of the previously mentioned super-hot psychic space ninjas. I’m not much of a romance novel reader, so I may have skimmed here and there, but both “extras” are entertaining and fun reads, in part because Cass and her mom are both huge science-fiction/fantasy/gaming/anime nerds and references to all things nerdy and wonderful abound.
(LC Score: 0, read on Kindle)
RETURNED UNREAD: LC Score -25
Library Chicken Score for 2/21/18: -17
Running Score: -5
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
- VANESSA BELL by Frances Spalding (more girl who reads Woolf and Woolf-adjacent reading)
- HOW TO READ A BOOK: THE CLASSIC GUIDE TO INTELLIGENT READING by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren (better late than never, right?)
- NECESSITY by Jo Walton (final book in the Thessaly trilogy — yes I know this was on here before but I MEAN IT this time)
- PUZZLE FOR PLAYERS by Patrick Quentin (first book in that husband-and-wife sleuth series - fingers crossed that it’s good!)
Volunteer Projects for Homeschoolers: Little Ways to Make the World a Better Place
Easy volunteer projects your family can do together make community service part of your everyday homeschool life.
Many of us have become more politically active than ever before over the past year, but activism doesn’t always have to mean protests and petitions. These everyday actions can have a positive impact that benefits your whole community and let you see how your good deeds benefit real people.
CLEAN IT OUT
- Organize your pantry, and donate extras and duplicates to a food bank. (Check the expiration dates!)
- Clean up your room, and collect outgrown shoes and clothes to donate to a family shelter.
- Sort through your books, and donate outgrown or unloved titles to a homeschool
- group library.
- Collect old sport equipment to donate to your parks and recreation department.
- Offer to help an older neighbor rake leaves or mow the lawn.
SHARE YOUR TALENTS
- Drop off your artwork at a senior center.
- Organize a board game day for younger kids at a homeschool group.
- Volunteer to read to kids at your library.
- Write a thank-you note to someone who has encouraged or inspired you.
GET ORGANIZED
- Start a food drive for a food pantry through a homeschool group.
- Put on a talent show with a group of friends to raise money for a cause you believe in.
- Get a group of friends together to assemble care kits for homeless people. (Include snacks, hygiene items, water, socks, and a list of local resources.)
- Organize a lemonade stand or bake sale to raise money for a charity.
- Put together a toy drive for kids stuck in the hospital.
- Visit a local animal shelter to help socialize animals waiting for adoption.
PROTECT THE PLANET
- Plant a bee garden on your patio or in the backyard.
- Use your allowance to buy a reusable water bottle.
- Sew or knit reusable grocery bags, and donate them.
This list is excerpted from “You Can Make a Difference,” a feature in the winter 2017 issue of HSL.
Readaloud of the Week: Betty Before X
A lovely coming of age story about a girl who would grow up to become a key player in the civil rights movement.
BETTY BEFORE X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renee Watson
Eleven-year-old Betty doesn’t know she’s going to grow up to be a famous civil rights activist. All she knows is that when she’s in church, listening to speakers like Paul Robeson and Thurgood Marshall, the world makes much more sense. Life is not easy for a Black girl in 1940s Detroit, and Betty struggles to find a sense of self in a world where she’s always second-best because of the color of her skin. Suspicious that even her own mother didn’t really want her, Betty slowly finds her own voice through the voices of people speaking up for social justice.
Ilyasah Shabazz wrote this book about four formative years in her mother’s life, when the woman who would become Dr. Betty Shabazz was still Betty Dean Sanders at the very beginning of the civil rights movement that would define so much of the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Shabazz gently fictionalizes her mother’s story to create a cohesive narrative, so this book might not line up point for point with a more mature biography of Shabazz — what it does, and does particularly well, is capture the spirit of a girl who grew up feeling less-than and not-quite-good-enough who realizes that no one should ever have to feel that way because of the color of her skin.
It’s especially interesting to read about the Housewives’ League, a civil rights organization created by a woman to boycott businesses that didn’t hire Black people. People may not respond to arguments about right and wrong, but they pay attention when you “hurt them in their pocket,” the organizer Mrs. Malloy explains to young Betty. When we’re studying civil rights, it’s easy to get swept up in the big national moments (the Montgomery bus boycotts, the march on Washington), but small, unsung communities of people were fighting the same fight in cities and towns across the United States. It’s also nice that Shabazz paints a nuanced picture of what Black Americans wanted civil rights to look like — they didn’t all have the same vision, and as Betty listens to arguments and discussions she’s a little too young to completely understand yet, we can appreciate how complicated confronting systemic racism can be. It’s not hard to make connections between those conversations and some of the discussions happening on Facebook and Twitter today.
(And don’t be fooled by the cover: This book tackles some of the really tough parts of the civil rights movement, including an incident around a lynching. It’s definitely most appropriate for middle grades and up.)
Ultimately, this is a lovely coming of age story about a girl who would become a key player in the civil rights movement, both before and after her husband Malcolm X was assassinated.
You may also enjoy: X: A Novel (also by Shabazz), a biography of Betty’s husband Malcolm X
Stuff We Like :: 2.16.17
Killer fashion (literally), how to do a better job navigating the situation if you find yourself in a Broadway musical, a little love for the world's rule followers, and more stuff we like.
There are a lot of reasons that I love homeschooling, but not having to be afraid that my kids will get shot by a crazed gunman at their school should not be one of them. I don’t understand how this keeps happening, and nothing changes.
What’s happening at home/school/life?
Suzanne has some reading suggestions for those midwinter days when you just want to wallow in the cold, dreary, grayness of it all.
Plan a Black History Month field trip — or an anytime field trip! — to one of these great museums.
Our readaloud of the week may clue you in to our weekend plans.
One year ago: We tracked down biographies of some awesome women for Black History Month. (Also: tips for grading essays in your homeschool and how an earlier bedtime can boost your homeschool happiness.)
Two years ago: Rebecca reviewed a critical thinking curriculum that’s great for improving family dinner conversation.
Three years ago: Why boredom is an important part of learning
Four years ago: This magazine would not even exist without the wonderful Shelli.
The links I liked
Teaching kids about slavery is the worst. It’s horrible. It’s sad. It’s the end of a certain kind of innocence that it hurts to destroy. But not teaching kids about slavery is even worse.
I am a little late with this one, but these suggestions for intelligently navigating Christine’s situation in Phantom are too funny not to share.
Death by underwire, or all the ways clothes have killed women through history. (I am never not going to read a piece about killer fashion.)
This one’s for all my fellow rule followers! “The little worriers of the world need heroes, too.”
Why is pop culture obsessed with the battle between good and evil?
What I’m reading and watching
I am reading Oliver Twist with my AP Lit students and East of Eden with my Honors Lit students, and the result is happy reading but a very heavy bag.
I also read this weird little novella by Seanan McGuire (she writes the Wayward Children series, which I thoroughly enjoyed) called Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day. It’s a ghost story, and I loved the way it managed to be both prosaic and dreamy at the same time. Ultimately, it felt more like a short story than a novel (or even a novella), but I liked this particular take on the classic ghost story.
We are having so much fun watching the Olympics! My son and I have also been doing some loosely related reading, including Olympig (which is fun and funny — and, I just realized, by the author of Roller Girl!), Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics, and The Magic Treehouse Hour of the Olympics (with the companion nonfiction book), and I read The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games, which I can highly recommend if you are interested in the Greek roots of the modern games.
What’s happening in our homeschool
We usually take a break during the Olympics, so we have been enjoying watching the action and playing a lot of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games in between events. (We were also inspired to break out our Flag Frenzy! game, which we haven’t played in ages.)
Book Nerd: Delightfully Doleful Books for Dark and Dreary Winter Days
When the weather outside is frightful, Suzanne embraces the dark side with a gloomy, Gothic reading list that makes a bleak winter day seem positively cheerful by comparison.
Suzanne is on Library Chicken break this week because she is recovering from the flu. (She is fine! But we are exercising all possible caution!) While she is drinking plenty of fluids and getting lots of rest, we are republishing one of her winter book columns.
After a (too) long, (too) hot summer, winter has finally arrived in Georgia and the weather people on the news are saying things like “prepare for ARCTIC BLAST 2017.” It’s gloomy and grey outside and pitch black by 6 p.m., meaning that I’m ready to get PJ-ed and hop into bed by 6:30. Some people like to read about the beach and happier tropical climes when the weather outside is frightful, but I prefer to hibernate with a stack of library books by my side featuring frost-bitten protagonists trying to survive the elements, so I can revel in my warm, afghan-covered indoor-ness while they’re being chased by wolves. It’s time to build a fire and read To Build a Fire.
For many in my generation, Joan Aiken is the queen of this sort of middle grade gothic, with her loosely connected alternate history series beginning with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. In Wolves, two young girls fight back against an evil governess (and an assortment of wolves) with the help of hermit-boy Simon, who lives in the woods and raises geese and bees. Simon moves to London and becomes the protagonist in my favorite book of the original trilogy, Black Hearts in Battersea, where he thwarts a Hanoverian plot to assassinate the king. Simon’s friend, Dido Twite, takes up the narrative (and visits America) with her adventures in Nightbirds on Nantucket. I didn’t realize at the time that Dido went on to star in several more books written by Aiken, but I’ve been catching up with the series and all the treacherous Hanoverian plots, my favorite of which involves sliding St. Paul’s Cathedral into the Thames during the coronation of King Richard IV.
If you prefer your wolves and evil plots a big closer to home, Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty is the start of another great middle school series, set in the Biltmore Estate and the surrounding forests and mountains of Asheville, Tenn. I’ve visited Biltmore several times, and it’s a treat to see the rooms I’ve toured come alive in Beatty’s version of life at Biltmore in 1899. Serafina, daughter of one of the house employees, prowls the house at night and designates herself Chief Rat Catcher, but children both upstairs and downstairs are going missing and Serafina soon realizes that there are evil forces at work, discovering her own magical heritage in the meantime. The second book in the series, Serafina and the Twisted Staff, picks up where the first book leaves off, continuing the fight against evil and Serafina’s journey of self-discovery.
This past year, my favorite example of Dickensian dreariness was in the three volumes of the Iremonger trilogy by Edward Carey. Carey, an Englishman, has said that he was inspired to write the series after moving to Austin, Texas, and missing the grey gloominess of London. Beginning with the first novel, Heap House, he creates a complete world around the Iremonger family, who live in the midst of the vast rubbish dump produced by Victorian-era London. The enormous heaps are a dangerous ecosystem of their own, but also the source of the Iremonger wealth, and each member of the family is assigned a “birth object,” a particular item that they must carry with them for their entire lives. I loved everything about these books: the detailed (and very gloomy) illustrations, the always-not-quite-right Iremonger names, and the story, which ultimately spills out of the heaps to infect all of London. The books are aimed at middle school readers and teens, but I think they’d be great fun as readalouds, as long as the listeners are okay with the occasional (very) unfortunate event.
Let me know if you have any grey and gloomy favorites that keep you warm over the winter, and Happy Reading!
This was originally published in the winter 2017 issue of HSL.
AMY SHARONY is the founder and editor-in-chief of home | school | life magazine. She's a pretty nice person until someone starts pluralizing things with apostrophes, but then all bets are off.