How Can I Find Friends for My Middle Grades Homeschooler?

My middle schooler’s homeschool community is shrinking right as friends are more important to her than ever, and it’s taking a toll on our homeschool happiness. What can we do?

Q: Homeschooling has been a great fit for us for a few years now, but this year, I feel like I’m failing. My daughter is in 6th grade this year, and a lot of our regular homeschool friends have gone back to more traditional schools. Park days are all younger kids, and lots of classes at our co-op that she’s interested in don’t get enough students to meet their minimums. At the same time, her old friends are busy with school and hard to connect with — when I’m actively planning, we can sometimes get a sleepover together, but they rarely think to invite my daughter to anything. She’s lonely and sad and talking about going to school be- cause she misses her friends. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

A: We homeschoolers roll our eyes when people talk about socialization, but we don’t always talk about the other side of that. Sure, our kids are not unsocialized freaks because they’re out in the world, chatting with other human beings and doing normal human things, but it can be hard to make friends as a homeschooler. Some of us luck into great homeschool groups with a lot of locals in easy driving distance, but most of us find the whole friend thing challenging, especially as kids get older. Ironically, that’s also when having friends — not just friendly acquaintances — become especially important for our kids.

Knowing that you’re not alone in this may help a little, but what you really want are solutions. One might be to extend your net: It is common to age out of homeschool groups as time passes. Statistically, more people homeschool elementary school than middle school, and the numbers drop even more as you get to high school. Other people are probably in the same boat you are — they just may not be people in your usual circle. Remember how when you started homeschooling you reached out on social media to find other homeschoolers and went to every homeschool day you could? Do that again. Take a class at that group for older kids, even though you don’t know anyone there and you're not sold on the curriculum. Take all those chances you took at the beginning, when you were committed to building a community.

If you have space — or can make space — it might also be worth trying to organize some events for older homeschoolers yourself. This is usually a high-effort, low-reward project, but you don’t need a big reward for it to be successful — you’re just looking for a handful of kids to hang out with. If one or two people show up, you’re doing well.

This is also a good time to expand your community beyond the homeschool world. If you have a tween who loves animals, volunteer at a pet shelter. If you’re interested in costumes or drama, get involved with a community theater group. Love math? Lots of universities host weekend math circles. If you live in an area where homeschoolers can take public school classes or activities, this might be a good time to try those out. The idea is to connect your child with opportunities to meet like-minded kids, whatever they do for school. Friends your child makes through shared interests are more likely to survive the challenge of different schedules than more casual social connections.

If your daughter’s lack of a social life is really frustrating her and none of these solutions yields results after several months, it’s worth considering whether homeschooling is still the right fit for your family. There are lots of reasons we choose to homeschool, but one of them is to deepen and strengthen family relationships — and if your daughter’s unhappiness at missing her friends is wearing on your relationship, consider other academic options. Hybrid schools, charter schools, online classes, or even public school may be the better fit right now if homeschool social opportunities are limited. The best homeschooling is the kind that constantly reevaluates itself to make sure it’s giving kids what they need. In the middle grades, some kids need a lot of social time, and if homeschooling isn’t providing that, it’s okay to look elsewhere for a year or longer. As long as you’re doing what’s in the best interest of you and your student, you’re homeschooling right.

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How I Talk to My Friends about COVID Homeschooling

My friends are all excited about homeschooling right now, but their definition of homeschooling turns out to be pretty different from mine.

“Homeschooling is booming now,” says my old friend Charice. “You guys were trendsetters.”

“Yep,” I say.

A few months ago, I would have launched into a big explanation of how doing school at home online isn’t really homeschooling — or at least, it’s not really how Malcolm and I do homeschooling. It was important to me to clarify the differences: For me, homeschooling was a big choice. It had been challenging sometimes and lonely sometimes and rewarding almost all of the time, but it was very different from following along with an online curriculum that our school district published online every week. And I found myself frustrated that people couldn’t understand that difference. I wasn't magically prepared for the world to shut down either — homeschooling was harder in a socially quarantined world, too.

And at first, I tried really hard to help the loose acquaintances with a million questions about homeschooling. I talked to them about how we developed our schedule through months of living, how we chose the subjects we would work on, how we found the resources to help us explore those subjects. But the more I talked, the more I realized that I was wasting a lot of energy — homeschooling wasn’t what these people wanted. What they wanted was the same thing I wanted: A way to get through an impossible situation with our families’ hearts and health intact. Most of the people asking me about homeschooling were really asking how to manage their school’s online curriculum at home, which is certainly a reasonable thing to ask about, but not really one of my areas of expertise. I was wasting my time and their time because we weren’t talking about the same thing. Many of them never even responded to my lengthy text messages, full of information and support, even with a casual “thanks.”

I found myself falling down a hole of irritated self-righteousness. These people didn't understand what homeschooling was — and they didn’t really want to. They had no interest in homeschooling their kids. It took me a little while to realize that that was totally fair. I was getting upset over the way they used a word and because it felt like their questions negated my own hard-earned experiences. I realized we were all exhausted and worried trying to pretend that this was a “new normal” and not a complete and total abnormal. It wasn’t my job to teach these newly at-sea people how to learn in this weird new space any more than it was their job to teach me how to learn in it. What we could do was be kind and help each other when we could, without letting that help become a burden that we would start to resent.

So here’s what I do now when one of my in-school acquaintances comes to me to ask about homeschooling through quarantine. I don’t try to explain how my homeschool is different from what they mean, I don’t walk them through my philosophy and plans, and I don’t point them toward the curriculum I love. Instead, I remind them that we’re all doing the best we can. I talk to them about establishing a rhythm that gets everybody out of bed and fed and moving around during the day because that’s something I do think COVID homeschoolers can benefit from, too. I shrug when they ask where they can find a free online program that will cover every subject and grade every assignment, and I recommend that if their goal is to return to public school, they stick with the public school’s online program. “Getting your homeschool up and running, figuring all of that out, is probably the hardest, most labor-intensive part,” I say. “If you don’t want to homeschool beyond the present crisis, it’s probably not worth it.”

I remind myself — and Charice — that we are not alone in all this. However our kids learn, this new challenge is our shared reality, and we can help each other, even if it’s not in the ways we might think. Charice introduced me and Malcolm to an online jazz class that has had us rocking out together on the couch every Sunday night, and I lent Charice a box of Malcom’s math manipulatives that have made a big difference in her daughter’s online math classes. I still think it’s a stretch for her to call herself a homeschooler, but that doesn’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that I have a chance to make my world a kinder, more supportive place, and I’d be crazy not to seize that opportunity.

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12 Life Mantras Every Homeschool Mom Should Know

Believe it or not, a well-chosen mantra can help you turn around a bad day—or at least your perception of it. And while it’s not a cure-all for challenges in your homeschool, a mantra can be just the perspective shift you need when your homeschool hits a bumpy patch.

Okay, science suggests that we may have overestimated the whole “power of positive thinking” thing. But that doesn’t mean a good mantra can’t help you over a tough spot. The trick, says Joanne Wood, a researcher at the University of Waterloo, is to be specific and focus on the future instead of expecting something in the present to magically change for you.

“The smaller and more believable your self-talk statements are, the more likely you are to believe them — and the more likely they are to have a positive impact,” says Wood.

That’s because self-affirmation does have neurologically measurable benefits when we focus on the right things. Christopher Cascio, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered that a mantra can help with three issues homeschool moms run into more often than we’d like: they push us to remember and focus on the things we enjoy and the good parts of our homeschool; they remind us that the value of what we’re doing goes beyond a particular criticism or failure; and they help us not take it personally and blame ourselves when things go counter to our expectations. 

When we talk about mantras, we’re talking about mindfulness — and at its core, mindfulness is just accepting what’s happening right now, in this moment, whether it’s what we planned, wanted, or hoped for or not.

“People have a tendency to want to evaluate our experiences and react as though we’re being graded based on them,” says Wood. This may seem like no big deal when you’re having a great homeschool day because your reaction is a positive one — everything is going great, and you’re doing well. It becomes a problem, though, on the more-frequent days that aren’t great, the days that are just okay or even kind of crummy. Because we’re judging ourselves, we end up getting detoured by negativity: We may think things like “Why is this happening to me?,” “What am I doing wrong?,” “This is a terrible day,” or “Is it always going to be so bad?” But if you can pause, take a breath, and acknowledge the reality of the moment — right now, homechooling is hard, my kids are annoying , and I wish I were doing anything else — you take the pressure off yourself to be something more or better. You’re in the moment — and being in the moment almost always makes you feel a little better about the state of your world.

The more specific your mantras are, the more effective they are—so think of these mantras as a starter set. We think you’ll find at least one that resonates with your homeschool life, but don’t stop with our suggestions. Write the ones you know you need in your particular homeschool. I may be the only mom who needs to focus on a mantra like “Right now, my son needs to do anything but read, and I’m not going to spend my energy arguing,” but that’s definitely a mantra that has gotten me through some challenging  moments in our homeschool.

I am allowed to hit pause.

Sometimes in hard moments we forget that we don’t have to keep doing something that isn’t working. Whether it’s math practice or nature walks, it’s okay to stop when something is frustrating or upsetting.

I’m going to listen to my child right now.

There are times when your best-laid homeschool plans go awry because your plans and your child’s don’t match up in a moment. In those moments, try letting go of your agenda and listening to your child.

We have plenty of time.

This is the mantra you need on the days (or weeks) where you feel like nothing’s getting done. Homeschooling isn’t a short-term game, and when you get stuck in short-term-thinking, it’s easy to feel like a failure.

I know my child.

When you’re torn between choices or faced with a tough decision, remind yourself that no one knows your child better than you — whatever decision you make will honor your child in the best way you know how.

I can ask for help if I need it.

Homeschooling is a big job, but you don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes just reminding yourself that you don’t have to do everything all by yourself can help you through a challenging situation.

This is not personal.

Remind yourself of this when your child lashes out at you, complains, argues, or otherwise acts out. It’s okay for your child to have negative feelings — it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.

I’m expecting myself to be perfect, but I shouldn’t.

Sometimes, the biggest challenges we face as homeschoolers come when we have to face our own insecurities. If you’re feeling less-than, remind yourself that you’re the only person expecting you to be perfect.

I can take a break when I need one.

Similar to hitting pause, but this one is all about you: If you’re frustrated, upset, angry, bored, or otherwise not in a good headspace, take a break. The world will not stop turning because you do.

I am learning and growing too.

Sometimes you won’t know everything you need to know in a given moment. That’s okay—just as your child is learning and growing, so are you.

This was originally published in the fall 2018 issue of HSL.

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Real Steps You Can Take to Make Your Homeschool More Intersectionally Aware

Don’t let the fact that intersectional homeschooling is a work in progress deter you from making it part of your own homeschool.

Intersectionality seems theoretical, but it’s meant to be a practical, ongoing project — and it’s easier to bring it into your everyday homeschool than you might think. When we think about learning, we tend to think about it in terms of finding answers, but intersectional homeschooling often starts with asking better questions.

Recognize different experiences. This can be as simple as remembering that, for example, not all women had the same experience with winning the vote in the United States — Black women who joined in protest marches were asked to move to the back. It can also be as difficult as asking someone you’ve only recently met what pronouns they prefer, but in order to be genuinely open to acknowledging differences, you have to be aware of them. This can be hard because we’ve been taught that it’s rude to formally recognize these kinds of differences, but if we’re not willing to be brave enough to face differences when we find them, we’re likely to get stuck in our assumptions.

Get familiar with what your learning leaves out. Any curriculum can become an intersectional-friendly curriculum because intersectionalism is about looking for who or what has been excluded from the central narrative. Take time to probe the resources you’re using to look for the stories, people, and experiences who are left out — you may start by asking “What were the poorest people doing?” or “Where were the Native Americans while this was happening?” Seek out other points of view. Because resources tend to reflect the strongest power structure, it can be difficult to find sources from other perspectives. It’s challenging sometimes even when you do because work outside the central narrative rarely comes from the same educational background or has the same associated resources and commentary that you find inside the canon. It’s worth finding and using these resources anyway, even if it feels like you are having to start from scratch.

Don’t be afraid to be complicated. Sure, it’s easier to say “Women’s experiences during the Gold Rush were very different from men’s experiences,” but the default for these kinds of generalizations tends to be cis white heterosexual people. Those stories matter, too, but we should be very careful not to pretend those stories are somehow representative experiences. Any time a resource highlights people who match your experiences as a baseline, be ready to seek out other points of view.

Ask questions about your curriculum. Just asking these kinds of questions is a step toward more intentional homeschooling.

• WHO CREATED IT? Homeschool curricula can be hard to pin down in this arena, but it’s worth hunting down the academic credentials of its creators as well as whatever you can find out about their place in the power matrix. You definitely don’t have to forego otherwise great curriculum because it’s created by a person in a dominant power structure, but you want to be aware of what might be missed or left out because of it. (That’s true for this article, too!)

• WHO IS THIS CURRICULUM ABOUT? It’s a common joke that sex-ed books seem to be written exclusively for cis heterosexual white people because that’s what all the pictures in the books seem to show, but every curriculum comes with built-in biases. That’s okay — what’s important is recognizing those biases when you see them and putting together a curriculum that includes more people than it leaves out.

• WHO BENEFITS? This isn’t necessarily about dollars and cents, though financial aspects can certainly come into it. More, it’s about considering what the bigger influence of a particular program might be — if everyone used this program, what would everyone know because of that? And what — or who — would be left out?

• ARE THE MESSAGES HELPFUL OR HARMFUL? Often, the answer to this question is complicated. You may want to go through a series of questions about common intersections (gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, class, race, etc.) and ask “How does this curriculum support this experience? How does it marginalize it?” Often a lack of intersectionalism is inadvertent — part of the challenge is that people inside a dominant power structure tend to be oblivious to that fact — so identifying potentially harmful messages isn’t about trashing a curriculum but about adjusting it to make your homeschool more inclusive while you are using it.

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What I Read in June

It’s been a June full of light and fluffy reading fun.

Here we go! As always, I’m saving most of my middle grades and YA reads for Instagram, and we’re still moseying through The Ancestor’s Tale and The Canterbury Tales for our family readalouds.

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

I mean, I love a fluffy romance novel, and this one is SO GOOD: Like everybody else, grad student Naledi gets the occasional spam email from an African prince, but unlike everybody else, the African prince in question is her real-life betrothed. She just doesn’t know. There are two parts to this book: In the first, Thabiso comes to New York to find Naledi and ends up falling for her because she’s cool and smart and independent — and he doesn’t tell her he’s a prince (much less her betrothed). In the second part, Naledi agrees to come to Thesolo and pretend to be the princess bride so that she can participate in a big epidemiological case that’s happening there. OF COURSE they fall for each other — it’s a romance novel, so you know where it’s headed, but it’s smart and funny and charming. I dug it. 

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Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

I grabbed this to read with the kids as part of our evolutionary biology unit, but I’d forgotten how WEIRD it is. Basically, humanity is wiped out in a global apocalypse — except for a hardy group of good swimmers, who manage to escape to the Galapagos Islands, where they evolve into a new species over the next million years, overseen by a reluctant spirit. Is it about the way that human intelligence and happiness are inversely related? Or about the link between evolution and theism? Or just an excuse to revisit Kilgore Trout? Who knows. I crossed it off our readaloud list, but I am glad I reread it myself.

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The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

If you listen to the Library Chicken podcast (on Patreon), you know I fell hard for the first book in this series, and I’m only allowing myself one new book a month because I don’t want to just race through it. I don’t know how this is possible, but The Queen of Attolia is even better than The Thief. I know! But it’s true. The Thief was mostly about a particular quest, but The Queen of Attolia brings us into the broader world of the tension between the three kingdoms — two of which are actually queendoms, y’all! — of Eddis, Attolia, and Sounis. It’s darker and more complicated than The Thief, with layers of relationships and implications, and I loved it, and you should go read it because if I try to say anything else about it, I might spoil it for you. I can’t believe I have to wait for August (according to my own arbitrary rules) to read the next one!

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The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

This one was a low-key charmer: Linus Baker finds himself completely out of his corporate comfort zone when he’s sent to investigate an island orphanage for magical children — partly because the children there are particularly peculiar, partly because the children’s caretaker is totally crush-worthy, and partly because — for the first time in his life — Linus feels weirdly at home. It’s a love story and a family story and a story about finding yourself and a story about being brave enough to change your life, and it’ s just really lovely.

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The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Ugh, I want so much to love Neil Gaiman, but every time I read something that pulls me in (Stardust! Neverwhere!), I seem to follow it up with something that’s painfully meh. This is clearly a me-problem — lots of people loved this fairy tale for grown-ups, but I did not. I think for me the problem was the narrator — the books was peopled with fascinating characters, but the narrator wasn’t one of them, and ultimately he wasn’t even shaped by anything that happened to him in the story because he didn’t remember any of it. Maybe that would be fine if the magical world he visits for a little while were better established, but we only see it through his eyes, so it remains shadowy and elusive. Maybe that’s part of the point, that all these big mysteries are out there, and we just don’t understand enough to even see them? I don’t know — I wanted to love it, but it just fell flat for me.

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Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella

I love a fluffy romance novel (see above) and Kinsella usually does it for me, but this one was a big miss. Most of the characters were kind of terrible, and when they weren’t being terrible, they were kind of stupid. I don’t mind a predictable ending when it’s fun getting there, but this one was hard work.

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Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

What fun! In this alternate history, the Civil War ends because the dead start rising, and the Confederacy has to surrender to get some help putting down the zombie hordes that are overtaking the country. Happily for racists (and there are a lot of them in the post-Civil War world), recently freed Black people make a great army against the undead. Kids like Jane are snatched up and sent to special military training schools where they learn how to protect white families from the zombie threat — but Jane is a born maker of good trouble, and she finds herself offloaded to a faux utopian community on the western frontier, where the mess really hits the fan. I’m totally adding this to my U.S. history reading list — it’s smart, funny, and does a great job playing with the already fascinating “what if?” that’s its premise.

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Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Two westerns in one month! And I really liked them both. Suzanne recommended this one to me because it was about bad-ass librarians, and I’m recommending it to you for the same reason. Runaway Esther stows away in the librarians’ wagon after her best friend is hanged in the town square, thinking anything’s better than the arranged marriage her family has planned for her. Turns out, she’s found something even better than an escape: The Library gives her a family, a mission, and the chance to accept who she really is.

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Stuff I’m Reading for Work

(And again, I’m lumping all of my work-related reading here because it feels different from my fun reading. I don’t know — I am weird.)

I’ve managed to pin down my Japanese literature reading list to a reasonable number, but it took a lot of reading to get there: My Brother’s Husband, Kafka on the Shore, The Tale of Gengi, Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s short stories, Kokoro, and Snow Country all made it to the short list, so I had to reread them to get to the Shorter List. (My life is so hard.) On to Africa! I just started rereading Purple Hibiscus, which my daughter will probably never forgive me if I leave off the syllabus.

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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What I Read in May

I stopped tracking my Library Chicken on the blog because I was getting terrible about buying books for my Kindle and not going to the library and looking at the points made me feel guilty — but I miss chronicling my book lists, so I thought once a month or so, I would round up what I’ve been reading with no points attached!

Mary-’Gusta by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

I really enjoy rifling through the many terrible vintage books in search of treasures, which is how I discovered some of my favorite comfort reads, including The Rose Garden Husband, Penny Plain, and Strawberry Acres, none of which is perfect but all of which scratch a very particular reading itch for me. Mary-’Gusta isn’t going to make the highlights reel, but I enjoyed it all the same: Two confirmed New England bachelors are surprised to inherit their old crony’s little stepdaughter, and they do their best to bring her up — though, of course, as is always the case in these sorts of stories, little Mary-’Gusta ends up raising them as much as they raise her. There’s a little drama with family secrets and expected inheritances that don’t really exist, but mostly, it’s a series of gentle domestic vignettes, culminating in a teary-glad happy ending for everyone. Sometimes that’s just what you want in a book.

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The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett

On the other hand, this old-fashioned book did NOT do it for me. I love Burnett’s The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, and I expected to love this one, which is basically about a wealthy American woman restoring a British manor house — if I have a wheelhouse, we all know that is solidly in it. BUT. Burnett’s insistence on the greatness of rich Americans, who can appreciate the British countryside more than the Brits who live there, who are a new breed of awesome, who are just charging around making the world a better place — all of that feels terribly out-of-tune with the state of the world right now. I’d have enjoyed more sourcing of antique bricks and rug buying and less celebrating the unlimited options that come with being obscenely rich. (And beautiful. And well educated. And … well, you get the idea.)

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The Way Life Works by Mahlon Hoagland

This isn’t a new book, but it’s still one of my favorite biology spines for the middle grades because of its emphasis on understanding systems and processes. I’m trying to gussy up our high school biology curriculum to make it less textbook-focused and more critical-reading focused, and reading this book reminds me why it’s so important to do that: Because science is legitimately interesting, and there’s something wrong with books that don’t communicate that fact.

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The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

We’ve been alternating these as our family readaloud lately — even though the kids are older, we still do a big “bedtime story” together every night. (It used to mark their bedtime; now it marks mine!) My daughter wanted to do some work with evolutionary biology this summer, so The Ancestor’s Tale (which I love) was an obvious choice, and then I realized that my son had no idea about The Canterbury Tales (which I also love), and I’ve never read them together, so that’s what we’re doing. I was a little worried it would be too pedantic in combination, but we’ve been really enjoying them, possibly partly because my Middle English is as apparently as hilarious as my attempts to get the accent right in The Wee Free Men and partly because, as my son points out, Chaucer would have been a great Dungeon Master.

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The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

I read this again with my junior high book club and was delighted that they loved it (and Turtle!) as much as I do. (Wouldn’t this make a great limited television series?)

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The Eight by Katherine Neville

I expected to like this historical thriller more than I did, which is probably my fault: I expected it to be like Foucault’s Pendulum, but it was more like a French Revolution version of The Da Vinci Code. The story has two timelines: The more interesting follows the members of a dissolved convent in 1790s France as they hide powerful chess pieces around the world; the other follows a 1970s computer expert who’s being sent to work in Algeria. There’s chess and Charlemagne and OPEC and Napoleon, and all of that should add up to a fun read, but somehow it just kept missing the mark for me. At one point, the stories kind of converge with the main characters from both timelines arriving in Algeria to be rescued by dashing, dangerous men, and frankly, it’s just a bit much. I do think if I hadn’t read Umberto Eco’s roller coaster rewriting of history, I might have liked The Eight (and The Da Vinci Code!) more, but he has spoiled me for Big Historical Conspiracies.

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The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson

I did vow when I “finished” Truly Devious that I would not be reading the rest of the series — I put finished in quotation marks because the book did NOT finish, and I’m still mad about it — but I did break down and read the last book in the series to find out what happened. I didn’t read the second book, but apparently nothing happened in it because I didn’t feel like I’d really missed anything. Both mysteries end up solved by intrepid would-be detective Stevie Bell, who discovers both the fate of Alice Ellingham (and the events that led up to it) and the villain behind the present-day murders of Ellingham students while she’s snowed in at the abandoned school with a group of friends and faculty. Neither resolution feels particularly satisfying, and you could make a coat warm enough to survive being snowbound with all the loose threads, but I have a Bad Attitude about this book, so if you want to read it, ignore my grousing and pick it up anyway.

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Stuff I’m Reading for Work

(I’m making this its own section because I tend to read these kinds of books in clumps, but I won’t include review copies of elementary, middle grades, and YA books here because I share all those on Instagram!)

I’m also (as I mentioned in the podcast) reading lots of Asian history and literature right now. I talked about Kyoto: A Cultural History (a kind of travel guide that focuses on one Japanese city) and My Brother’s Husband (a graphic novel) in the podcast, so I’ll just drop them here because I really did love both of them, for different reasons and for different ways. I also read The Silk Road: A New History (not to be confused with The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, which I also read but which is not about Asian history so much as U.S. policy). The Silk Road focuses on archaeological discoveries along the “silk road,” that legendary and lucrative path connecting China to the western world, and I really enjoyed its emphasis on primary sources. I also enjoyed The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan, which is a great (if sometimes a little dense) history of feudal Japan. I’m also rereading lots of Japanese fiction, especially short stories, to try to winnow down a list of books and movies for lit class — I decided it makes sense to focus on one country’s literature in depth and picked Japan because its literature is kind of a melting pot of Asian culture and ideas. 

I’m also on the hunt for good literature readings for my physics class, so I’ve been collecting essays from Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, Six Easy Pieces, A Short History of Nearly Everything, and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. I also looked at Alice in Quantumland (which I’d never read before — it was really fascinating!) and The Algebraist, which was recommended to me as a good living book for physics. I see why my friend recommended it: It’s a mash-up of big philosophical and scientific ideas around human-ness, human rights, religion, and reality. I’m definitely looking for a way to slip it into the reading list.

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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When You’re the Only Homeschooler in Your Friend Circle

Choosing homeschooling when your friends are on a different path can mean part of the path is a little lonely — and that’s okay. Finding your community takes time.

A few months after Malcolm was born, I saw a flyer for a new moms group in our natural foods co-op. Malcolm and I attended the next session and every single session for the next five and a half years, with the exception of one session we missed because Malcolm had a cold and one session we missed because I was on a work trip.

These were our people: thoughtful, committed new moms who craved community as much as I did. We joined mommy and baby yoga classes together, signed up for the same preschool art classes, visited the same library story times, and watched our children grow up together. We shared parenting values: We cared about compassionate parenting and organic food, child-led activities and balancing parenting with our careers.

Preschool had meant different paths for some of us: Alex and Polly had gone to a Montessori preschool, Lane was part of a charter preschool, Laurel attended a preschool co-op her mother helped create. I was committed to homeschooling. Still, we continued to meet up once a week and to build intersecting lives outside our moms group. My best friend, Tomika, lived in New York City, and our phone calls were often interrupted or frazzled as I adjusted to motherhood and her work life got busier. I still thought of Tomika as my Best Friend, but the women in our group — Allison, the scientist; Lou, the engineer; Charice, the dancer; and all the rest — they were the people I could count on in a pinch, the people who helped me through potty training and late-night fevers. I believed that we would be friends forever, and I think they believed that I — Aminata, the business consultant — would be their friend forever, too.

Then came kindergarten.

I knew I wanted to homeschool Malcolm before he was even born. A few of the other mothers in our group toyed with the idea of homeschooling, but in the end, they all made the decision to enroll their children in the same Montessori school. It’s a wonderful, nurturing small school. If we weren’t homeschooling, I could imagine sending Malcolm there, too. And when I realized that everyone we knew was going to the same school, I have to admit that I was tempted to change my plans… but homeschooling was something I felt strongly about, and now, I can’t imagine that I ever hesitated since homeschooling is so clearly the right decision for our little family.

Everything changed immediately when school started. First our regular weekly meet-up was rescheduled to after-school hours, then postponed indefinitely as everyone adjusted to their new routines. When I checked in with Charice about scheduling something, she told me that they saw each other every day at school pick-up and had snacks and playtime together on the school’s playground.

“Maybe you could join us sometime,” she said, but when I followed up, she said, apologetically, that the playground was for students only.

Meanwhile, Malcolm and I were falling in love with homeschooling. Slowly, we were finding our routine and finding our rhythm of learning together. We took nature hikes and made art and read our way through the library’s picture book collection. Our lives were full of joy. But we missed our friends.

Slowly, we’re building our community back up. We joined a children’s nature group that meets twice a week and we're now regulars at the library’s kindergarten activities, and we're meeting other families who homeschool, too. There hasn’t been that magical connection I felt at the first meeting of our old moms group, but we have started to find our circle.

A few weeks ago, we ran into Lou and Alex at the food co-op. “It’s so good to see you,” Lou said, after we traded stories about our now-first-graders. “We should get together.”

“I’d love that,” I said. And I meant it. But I have no expectations. We’ve chosen our own path, and it’s a good path, even if we’re still finding the people we want to share it with.

This column was originally published in the winter 2019 issue of HSL. Aminata is the author of HSL’s It’s Elementary column, focused on homeschooling the early years.

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How to Make Volunteering Part of Your Family’s Homeschool Life

Changing the world is no easy task, even if you didn’t also have to get dinner on the table, make it to co-op classes on time, and occasionally do a little math, too. But it may not be as hard to make a difference as you might think—even when your days are already packed full. 

In fact, volunteering is a lot like homeschooling when you do it right. You start with tons of options and a to-do list that could bury you, and gradually whittle down to what works best for your family and ignites a spark of interest in your child. And like a passion for good books and a non-fear of math, volunteering is something your child will benefit from now and for the rest of her life. Researchers have found that childhood volunteer service is the number-one predictor of adult volunteer service, and kids who did community service were twice as likely to continue volunteering as adults. In other words, the key to raising the kind of caring, committed kids who can change the world is to let them get an early taste of community service.

So let go of the notion that there’s a “right” way to volunteer, and open your family up to a surprisingly wide world of service opportunities. (Some of them don’t even require you to leave the house.) We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to bring service into your homeschool life, offering hands-on suggestions for incorporating service into your routine, and helping you work through snags that can make volunteering seem a little too challenging.

Choose Your Own Adventure

“When people ask me how to get started volunteering, I always say ‘Start with something fun, and go from there,’” says Jenny Friedman, the author of The Busy Family’s Guide to Volunteering. Donating your time should be an enjoyable experience, not something that your family dreads waking up early for. Volunteer work is the most successful when it’s not a to-do but a want-to-do—and the key to achieving that is finding service that your family looks forward to. It’s okay to insist that your children try something new and important to encourage them to maintain a positive attitude whether they’re having fun or not, but pushing them to stick with community service that isn’t clicking is recipe for bad feelings. Lots of organizations need help, and it’s perfectly acceptable to try something once and move on.

“The key to raising the kind of caring, committed kids who can change the world is to let them get an early taste of community service.”

When your child is young, you’ll be the one choosing volunteer projects and bringing your child along for the ride. Take advantage of this time to show him a broad spectrum of volunteer opportunities: Push his stroller at the Women’s March on Washington, let him decorate your family’s collection box for the National Immigration Law Center and raise money to help immigrants currently in the United States, and ask him to carry a trash bag for your park’s annual clean-up day. Talk about what you’re doing and why: “Isn’t it great to clean up the park? It’s a lot of work for one person, but it’s much easier when we all work together. We’re so lucky to have this park to play in. I’m glad we can help take care of it.” By the time your child is around 10 years old, she’ll start looking at things with a critical eye. Take advantage of her increasing interest in the larger world around her to help her recognize service opportunities that she really cares about. If she asks questions about where homeless people get their food, talk to her about soup kitchens and food banks, then visit one. If she’s worried by tearjerker commercial about abandoned pets, take her to an animal shelter so she can see firsthand how abandoned animals are cared for. If she’s heartbroken studying slavery in the United States, find a Showing Up For Racial Justice meeting near you. Your child’s natural empathy starts to really kick in around this age, and she’ll get positive reinforcement through activities that let her see her impact on her community.

When your child hits his teen years, volunteer work can provide a social outlet and a skill building opportunity as well as community service. If you haven’t already made community service a habit, it’s not too late to start. Get your teen on board by making him the expert: Let him to research different volunteer opportunities for your family to try, and encourage him to think about how his skills could benefit the community. Consider joining a service organization at your church, synagogue, or community center or starting a volunteer co-op, making service into a social activity.

Every person has a cause that inspires her, says Bill Hoogterp, senior adviser to HandsOn Network, a national organization that mobilizes volunteers. Help your child find her cause, and you’ll inspire a lifelong volunteer.

Making it work

Of course, finding your child’s passion is only the first piece of the puzzle. The rest of the puzzle—finding time, energy, and an outlet for that passion—may be a little trickier. 

“Finding your child’s passion is only the first piece of the puzzle. The rest of the puzzle—finding time, energy, and an outlet for that passion—may be a little trickier. ”

One of the most practical ways to make community service part of your family’s life is to put it on your calendar. Block off a section of your calendar, whether it’s one hour or a whole day, as “Make a Difference” time, and commit to sticking with it. You can set aside an hour a week, an hour a month, or an hour a year; the key is to make your volunteer time a part of your schedule, just like your next dentist appointment or your child’s piano recital. This can be a little intimidating—how do you know that you’ll have any energy to spare the last Saturday in September?—unless you shake up your notion of what service is. 

It’s true that there are plenty of organizations that would be glad to get a little physical help, but think outside the warehouse when it comes to scheduling your volunteer time. Helping with feeding and cleanup at an animal shelter and sorting cans at a food bank are volunteer work, sure, but so is decorating a paper lunch bag for Meals on Wheels, cleaning up litter in your neighborhood park, or decorating a collection box for a community book drive. Once you dispel the idea that community service has to fit into a neat little box, you’ll find that filling your community service time is easy, whether you plan ahead by scheduling a delivery shift at Meals on Wheels or just break out the crayons at home to draw pictures for Color A Smile. Schedule the time, and when it rolls around, your family will have no trouble finding the best way to fill it.

Of course, service is about more than making time, and you can run into challenges that have nothing to do with programming the calendar on your iPhone. Most of these problems are rooted in our idea of what community service should be, and overcoming them is as simple (and as difficult) as adjusting our perspectives to embrace what community service can be. Consider these common roadblocks and the surprisingly simple ways to bypass them.

• Service Snag: Your kids are too young to volunteer.

• Solution: Look a little harder.

While plenty of organizations have age limits that make it tough for families with kids younger than sixteen to get involved, a surprising number of volunteer opportunities are family friendly, as long as you’re willing to stick by your kid’s side during volunteer time.

• Service Snag: You’re a one-car family with limited mobility.

• Solution: Lose the idea that you have to do volunteer work somewhere else.

You might be surprised by how many volunteer projects you can do at your own kitchen table.

• Service Snag: Your schedule is all over the place, and it’s hard to do anything on a consistent basis.

• Solution: Shake the notion that volunteer work has to be a major commitment or a regular gig.

“You can do a month-long volunteer vacation or an hour at your kitchen table, and either way you’re making community service a part of your life,” says Friedman. 

• Service Snag: Your introverted child is easily overwhelmed in crowds.

• Solution: Skip the crowds.

Look for service opportunities that allow your child to do one-on-one work, like reading aloud to seniors or taking a quieter after-lunch shift at a shelter like FurKids. Your child might also bloom with service projects he can work on in his own room, like making a birthday comic for a hospital patient or making recycling posters for your co-op.

• Service Snag: You tried volunteering, but it turned into a hectic, whiny mess you’re not looking forward to repeating.

• Solution: Try something different.

Start with a one-time activity, like a fundraising walk or participating in a community bake sale, and keep your workload small: Volunteer to make signs or man the sign-in booth. Or focus on activities you can do at home so you can give your kids (and yourself) a break if you need one.

• Service Snag: Really, even with the calendar thing, you just don’t have time to block off for volunteering right now.

• Solution: Join an organization like Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, or 4-H that does the service planning for you.

Your child gets an opportunity to explore different kinds of volunteer projects; you get the space to deal with the rest of your life since someone else is doing the heavy lifting.

Once you’ve gotten over the hurdles, make time to regularly evaluate your family’s service work. Is it still enjoyable? Are you still as excited about making a difference as you were when you first started? Does your work still fit with your lifestyle? Just as your child can go from obsessing about ancient Egypt to being completely absorbed in science fiction, her volunteer interests can change. Maybe your pint-size social butterfly has blossomed into a quiet young woman, or your son’s passion for art has morphed into an interest in medicine. Just like your science curriculum, your volunteer routine can benefit from regular evaluation.

You’ll also want to make a point of following the news about organizations you support to make sure your ideals are still on the same page. Check back with charities regularly about their mission statement, funding, and volunteer needs, all of which can change over time. Encourage your kids to talk with you about their positive and negative experiences doing volunteer work, and use tough situations as a springboard for conversations about the work you’re doing and why it matters. And make a point to praise your kids for their hard work and point out tangible ways they are making a difference: “Wow, this bag you decorated looks beautiful. I bet the person who gets it will smile really big when he sees this great picture you drew,” or “Did you know five cats got adopted at today’s adoption? That’s five cats who have a home now because of your help!” Doing good is its own reward, but a little acknowledgement goes a long way, too. 

Reaping the benefits

Volunteering makes the world a better place, but it can also help make you—and your child—better people, too. The benefits of community service last a lifetime. 

““One is not born into the world to do everything but do something.””

— Henry David Thoreau

Researchers looking into the role of community service in kids’ lives found that children who spent an hour or more a month volunteering were way ahead of their peers when it came to social, psychological, and intellectual development, gaining self confidence, teamwork skills, and new knowledge from their service activities. At the same time, kids who engaged in regular volunteer work were less likely to participate in dangerous activities, including early sexual experimentation and drug and alcohol use. Whether your child is walking dogs or writing birthday cards for senior citizens, he’s learning to value himself and his community.

Volunteering as a family also helps strengthen your family connections. Kids learn compassion, empathy, appreciation, and community responsibility through service, all qualities that can make your home a happier place. Your homeschool community expands to include more people and new ideas, always a benefit for personal and family enrichment. And volunteer work opens the door for important conversations about social issues, beliefs, and attitudes. It’s just what everyone is always saying: Volunteer work benefits the doer as much as it does the recipient.

So let go of the notion that volunteering has to take a certain form, and embrace the possibilities to make service part of your everyday life. When faced with the almost insurmountable challenges of life in mid-nineteenth century America, the philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote “One is not born into the world to do everything but do something.” Heed his advice, and don’t try to do everything. Just do something. Chances are good you’ll be glad you did.   

This article was originally published in the winter 2017 issue of HSL.

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Library Chicken Best Books of 2019: Horror

Hello everyone and welcome to another wrap-up of what the BookNerd has been reading!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: end-of-the-year booklist time! This week I’ll be sharing some of my favorite horror novels that I read in 2019. I’m fairly new to the horror genre, in that I actively avoided it for decades. That’s maybe because I grew up in the 80s, so I thought horror was Stephen King and teen slasher movies, and those aren’t really my thing. (Also I’m a squeamish wimp who gets scared and grossed out easily.) But horror is an extension or a sibling or at least a cousin of my best-beloved genre, science fiction/fantasy, and a lot of my favorite novels by authors like Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, and Jeff VanderMeer could be described as horror-adjacent at the very least, so a few years ago (starting around 2016, though I can’t imagine what could have triggered my interest) I dipped a toe into the zombie-infested waters and am having a great (and terrifying!) time exploring the genre. If you’re not typically a horror reader, I recommend giving it a try—there are books all up and down the scariness/goriness scale, and everyone can find something to suit their sensibilities.

• Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Speaking of dipping toes into infested waters—Grant’s novel asks the question, “What if mermaids were real? And what if they WANTED TO EAT YOUR FACE?!?” A few years ago, an entertainment conglomerate known for producing “documentaries” about mythical creatures (e.g., Bigfoot) sent a ship full of scientists, actors, and various television producers to the empty waters over the Mariana Trench in search of mermaids. After contact was lost, the ship was discovered adrift and abandoned, with only bloodstains and a few very disturbing film clips left to tell the tale. The younger sister of one of the people lost on that voyage is now an undersea researcher in her own right, and when she is approached to go on a follow-up trip to the same location she is eager for answers. SPOILER: Things do not go as planned. After I’d read and enjoyed this novel (no snorkeling in my immediate future, thank you very much) I realized that Grant’s novella “Rolling in the Deep” tells the story of the first doomed voyage, and though I generally am not a fan of reading things out of order I think you could go either way with this pair. NOTE: “Mira Grant” is the pen name of urban fantasy author Seanan McGuire, so if you enjoy McGuire’s other books as much as I do, consider giving her horror a try!

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• The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike, translated by Deborah Boehm

From the uncharted ocean depths to the horrors of suburban Tokyo! Housing is always a problem, so when the Kanos find a lovely new apartment for a very reasonable price, they can’t believe their good luck. The mom, Misao, has only one concern: her new home overlooks a graveyard, which seems a bit inauspicious. Koike’s novel, originally published in 1986, is a popular classic of modern Japanese horror that English readers can now enjoy in a translation by Deborah Boehm. This is one of those books where I found myself yelling at the characters, “What are you doing?!? GET OUT ALREADY!” but I enjoyed the slow-building suspense along with the subtle surprises and differences that reading in translation can bring. Not gory but verrrrry creepy.

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• The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

Many of the reader reviews for this one contain some variation on the line: “You’ll never look at rocks the same again,” and they don’t mean that in a “Wow, geology is cool!” sort of way. After her grandmother’s death, our protagonist, Mouse, is tasked with cleaning out her house, which is made more difficult by the fact that (1) her grandmother was a terrible person and was estranged from the rest of the family, and (2) she was a hardcore hoarder. Also, there may be Things Lurking in the Woods outside. (SPOILER: There absolutely are.) Fortunately, Mouse has her dog Bongo to keep her company and—this is not a spoiler because the author gives us this incredible gift up front—we know that Bongo comes out okay at the end, so we don’t have to spend the whole book worrying about what happens to the dog! HURRAY! This is an original and very creepy take on the ‘haunted woods’ idea and I’ve been seeing this book on various best-of-the-year lists, so congratulations to T. Kingfisher, who you may already know as Ursula Vernon, author of (among many other wonderful works) the delightfully Eva Ibbotson-esque Castle Hangnail. 

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• A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill

This is another 2019 book that has been showing up on various best-of lists, which is impressive as it’s also Hamill’s debut novel. The Turner family has been seeing monsters for a while, and in response, the father became obsessed with building a massive haunted-house attraction, which ultimately becomes an important business for their town and the Turner family’s livelihood. But the monsters don’t go away, and son Noah, like the rest of the family, has to decide how he’s going to deal with that. Does he ignore them and hope they go away, or does he invite them in? This novel has been described as a literary fiction-horror hybrid (and indeed focuses as much on family relationships as it does on the horror aspects) so it’s a good choice for people who are looking to broaden their reading. But mostly I want people to read it so I can talk to them about the ending and figure out what I think. Do I like it? Do I hate it? I’m not entirely sure, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. 

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• The Grip of It by Jac Jemc

Another litfic/horror mash-up: this book follows a young couple with a troubled marriage as they move into a house with a troubled past. I’m a sucker for a haunted house story and this one is very unsettling. One thing I enjoy about horror is seeing what’s happening through the character’s eyes, and realizing (as a reader) that reality is coming apart around them even as the character seems oblivious. It’s a tricky thing to pull off, but Jemc does it well. Also a great entry point to the genre.

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• Kill Creek by Scott Thomas

So you’ve got a haunted house. Everyone in town knows the stories. Everyone knows it’s totally legit do-NOT-go-in-there haunted. What do you do? Clearly, you invite the country’s most famous writers of horror and ghost stories to spend the night and then see what happens. Best. Publicity. Stunt. Ever. That’s the premise of Thomas’s haunted house story and I am most definitely in. (Also, is anyone making a movie of this book? It should totally be a movie.) I don’t think the later portions of the book hold up quite as well as the beginning (horror as a genre often has a difficult time sticking the landing) but this is a fun, scary, Halloweeny read. This was another debut novel and I’m looking forward to what Thomas does next. 

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• Salvation Day by Kali Wallace

I feel like I’m cheating a bit with this one, because it’s not straight horror—I’d describe it as a science fiction thriller with horror elements—but it does have zombies in space, so that’s got to count, right? In a future of space exploration and ecological disaster, a terrorist group hijacks a transport ship in order to take over the derelict exploration ship House of Wisdom, left abandoned in orbit after a virus killed everyone aboard. Clearly this is a TERRIBLE idea and once again I am here for it. The narration flips back and forth between one of the terrorists (though really, “terrorism” is in the eye of the beholder, right?) and one of the hostages as they explore the ship and discover that the authorities have not been completely honest about what happened to the crew. This is a page-turner with so many great elements (cults! conspiracies! diversity! romance!) that also has something very relevant to say about our present of anti-immigration, anti-refugee rhetoric and us vs. them thinking. A great read and I highly recommend it. This is Wallace’s first novel for adults; I haven’t read her YA novels yet but they’re on hold for me at the library.

Happy Reading and Happy Holidays! Now GO GET SCARED.

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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Library Chicken: Some Great Graphic Novels

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve been having a good 2019 so far! As you may have noticed, my Library Chicken updates this year have been happening less on a weekly schedule and more on a <ahem> somewhat quarterly schedule. It turns out that I’m not all that great at juggling the needs of two college kids, two high school kids, a houseful of obnoxious but cute animals, and a new year at the Academy. But I’m back with some of my personal favorites from this year—I can’t resist a good end-of-the-year wrap-up!

You may notice something different this time around: I have stopped posting my Library Chicken points and score. Not because I care that people know how badly I’m losing (I’m definitely losing this year), but because it’s kind of a hassle to keep track of everything and if I just make up the numbers I feel guilty. (Who needs more guilt?) And although the ostensible point of this occasional blog is to share my Library Chicken score, we all know it’s really just an excuse for me to babble on about books, right? So, onward!

This time I’ll be sharing some of my favorite graphic novels that I read in 2019—in part because I always think that graphic novels make really lovely holiday gifts. While you’re doing your shopping this holiday season, keep these in mind for your favorite readers…

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Locke & Key Vol. 1: Welcome To Lovecraft (Locke & Key Volume)

By Joe Hill

• Locke & Key written by Joe Hill, artwork by Gabriel Rodriguez

This series began publication in 2008 but is already considered a classic of modern horror. After a tragedy, a mother and her three children move into the old family home (located in Lovecraft, Massachusetts, so you know that’s not good), where strange keys can be found hidden away in various cracks and crevices. The kids soon discover that if they find the lock that matches a particular key, something magic will happen—a key may make you giant-sized, or turn you into an animal, or allow others to see your thoughts. Unbeknownst to the new occupants of the Keyhouse, however, a demon is stalking their family, trying to gather keys for its own dark purposes. The story is compelling and the artwork is gorgeous (and includes a very unexpected but lovely Calvin & Hobbes tribute), and I highly recommend it to all horror fans. Warning: this is not a series for younger readers as it does contain some intense violence. As a bonus: it looks like we’re finally going to get the long-awaited television adaptation on Netflix! Locke & Key, Vol 1: Welcome to Lovecraft is a great place to start, or you could spring for the entire six-volume set as a gift for yourself or, say, your favorite Library Chicken blogger.

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The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins

By Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Carey Pietsch

• The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins

• The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited!

written by Clint, Griffin, Travis, and Justin McElroy; artwork by Carey Pietsch

The Adventure Zone (for those unfamiliar) is a long-running Dungeons & Dragons podcast hosted by the McElroy brothers (of “My Brother, My Brother and Me” fame) together with their father, Clint McElroy. In the first series, known as “Balance”, the four of them play a campaign that spans several years, based in the D&D universe but soon becoming something wholly their creation. Full disclosure: I got into The Adventure Zone (often abbreviated as TAZ) because my teenagers would spend hours discussing the various characters and plot twists and I finally had to start listening to the podcast so I could understand what the heck they were talking about. The story starts out goofy, kinda juvenile, and often a teensy bit crass, but as they go along they create something that is remarkably heartfelt, along with being diverse and progressive in many wonderful ways. It’s hard to describe, especially for people unfamiliar with D&D and/or the McElroys and/or podcasting, but I’ve really enjoyed taking the journey. And now the various arcs of the Balance series are being published as graphic novels! The first two volumes are out, and they do a great job capturing the spirit — both the intense silliness and the emotion—of the series. (I should note that while this series has many young fans, it was originally intended for an adult audience, so there is some “adult language.” As always, it’s best to check it out yourself before gifting it to a young person.) Once you’re hooked, we can all listen together to the current season of The Adventure Zone, “Graduation” (set in a magical school for sidekicks and henchmen! it just started and it’s awesome!), while we wait for volume three of the graphic novel series, a road-race arc called Petals to the Metal.

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Amphigorey: Fifteen Books

G.P. Putnam's Sons

• Amphigorey, Amphigorey Too, Amphigorey Also, and Amphigorey Again by Edward Gorey

I’m cheating a little bit by including Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey collections in this list because they’re not exactly graphic novels. They’re also not exactly picture books, not exactly prose, and not exactly poetry, but some disturbing and delightful combination. If you haven’t had an opportunity to appreciate Edward Gorey’s writing and artwork (think Charles Addams but less cutesy) you should remedy that immediately, and one of these collections is a great place to start. I had to update our home library (our copy of Amphigorey Too had been appreciated to death by my kids — helping to develop their sense of the macabre along the way — and I hadn’t even realized that Amphigorey Again had come out in 2007) for a full reread because I was excited about the new biography, Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery (which I also recommend). The Amphigoreys are lovely volumes and make great coffee-table books for people with slightly goth sensibilities.

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French Milk

By Lucy Knisley

• French Milk

• An Age of License

• Something New: Tales from a Makeshift Bride

• Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos

by Lucy Knisley

I first found Lucy Knisley through the wonderful comics she posted about her cat, Linney. (If you are at all a cat-lover, google “Lucy Knisley Linney” for a treat.) Once I started following her, I realized I’d heard of her before as a prolific author of graphic memoirs, so I immediately put a stack of her books on hold at the library. They are as delightful as I’d expected, and some even have bonus Linney appearances! French Milk and An Age of License are memoirs of young womanhood growing into adulthood, and the changing relationships and goals along the way. But I have to talk about my absolute favorites (so far): Something New and Kid Gloves. Something New is much more than a story of wedding planning—it’s about figuring out your place in the world and what being in a marriage means, especially to modern women who may not be all that excited about the institution’s patriarchal past. Plus it’s really funny! I immediately put it on my “good gifts for brides-to-be” list. Kid Gloves, about the birth of Knisley’s first child, is funny and moving and powerful. I am in awe of the way that Knisley shares herself emotionally with her readers. Reading her books feels like a private, personal experience that you get to have with her, as if we were connecting one-on-one. I don’t know that I would recommend Kid Gloves as a baby-shower gift, since Knisley has some tragic experiences with a lost pregnancy and then some very scary medical complications during birth, but it’s a lovely lovely book, and a great read. Those of you who are already Knisley fans have probably noticed that I haven’t yet read all of her books—when I discover an author I enjoy, I’m not always too quick to read everything, since I like knowing that there’s a book or two out there that I still get to experience for the first time. (I’m very much looking forward to reading Relish: My Life in the Kitchen PLUS I need to read her picture books and her new middle-grade graphic novel, Stepping Stones.) Knisley fans may also be aware that she shared a sad milestone with her readers recently when the much beloved Linney passed away. Nothing’s good about that, but I was so happy to see Knisley’s announcement that a book entirely about Linney will be coming out in 2021—I’ll be pre-ordering as soon as they put a link up! 

Happy Reading!

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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What’s the point of a secular homeschool magazine?

What’s the point of a secular homeschool magazine? Maybe it’s okay that I don’t know — maybe it’s enough to believe that is has a point, to believe that the work we do at home/school/life matters.

This is the question I spent most of last summer asking myself.

The truth is: Publishing a quarterly magazine is hard work. It takes a lot of time — the time you’d expect coming up with story ideas and conducting interviews (so many interviews) and finessing stories, but also time you don’t expect: hunting for the right photos, tweaking layouts, adjusting the page count, uploading everything. It’s never been a lucrative business, which is fine with me, but this summer, I spent a lot of time wondering if it’s even a project that anyone who isn’t me cares about.

After all, the publishing world has changed. Magazines are closing down left and right, everyone’s going digital, and there is so much free information online — in Facebook groups, on blogs, in forums. Does anybody actually want a magazine about secular homeschooling? 

Even the platform we used for our subscriptions started second-guessing me: We’re no longer going to support subscriptions for publications that fall in your profit bracket, they said. Maybe you should think about charging more? Or publishing less? Or getting into another kind of writing game?

This summer, I conducted a little experiment — I moved the summer issue entirely online. Instead of publishing a magazine, I published a webpage — and I’m not going to lie: It was SO MUCH EASIER on my end. I knocked the whole thing out in six weeks, which is a record for me. All those little details that take so much time — should I add an extra sidebar here? Is it better to add something or cut something to deal with this overflow? What could I do make this page more visually interesting? — vanished. 

And people had been pushing for an all-digital version of the magazine for a while — I’d envisioned HSL as a print magazine from the beginning, even though most people opt for the more affordable digital version, and it reads like a print magazine. Magazines, you know, have a flow — they have a beginning and an end, a rich meaty middle full of features. I’ve always loved that — they feel like theatrical productions when they’re done well — but you don’t get the same thing online, where you can instead click to whatever interests you. Lots of people have complained that our digital version should be more, well, digital, and that doesn’t seem crazy or unreasonable to me.

Only, as it turns out, no one really loved the digital edition. They missed the magazine. And frankly, I did, too.

What’s the point of a secular homeschool magazine? Maybe it’s okay that I don’t know — maybe it’s enough to believe that is has a point, to believe that the work we do at home/school/life matters. I feel like our mission statement might seem a little out-of-step with the world today, but in many ways, that’s how our entire homeschooling life has felt: out-of-step. And I’ve loved that out-of-step-ness, I’ve loved finding the beats of our own drums and dancing to them outside the lines. Maybe, more than anything else, that decision to homeschool has felt like The Right Thing for our family. And this magazine, I realize, still feels like The Right Thing for me.

Which is a very long-winded way of saying that you won’t see more digital editions of home/school/life magazine, but you will see more issues — which you can definitely download but which are going to be old-fashioned print magazines, built on original reporting and good writing, and created with the idea that a magazine is a delightful indulgence, a luxurious and encouraging companion that inspires you both practically and philosophically.

I’m glad I took the time to think through whether home/school/life is a project I want to keep doing. I always try to sit down with my kids every summer and make sure we’re homeschooling because we want to — because it’s the best thing, not because it’s the default thing. It would be kind of silly of me if I didn’t give my work life the same kind of respect. We’ve had to make a few changes — our subscriptions run through Patreon now (you can support the magazine and subscribe to the digital edition for as little as $2/month) — but these changes feel like they make sense for our mission. It sounds hokey, but this is work I believe in. It’s work I want to do. And I am so, so thankful that you are a part of it.

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Library Chicken Update: 4/5/19

Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!

It’s that time of year again — the time when I finally give up on reading the entire stack of library books on whatever-flavor-of-history-we’re-doing-in-class that I’ve collected all semester. Around the time I’m starting to think about final projects it dawns on me that I’m probably not going to get to them all before we’ve actually wrapped up the class, which means that I have to return all those books (though not before making sure they’re on the to-read list for the next time we visit this era) and start collecting books for next year’s class. (It’s the American Revolution and the Civil War in 2019-2020!) It also means that my Library Chicken score is going to go negative, so I should definitely schedule more reading time next week. (Sorry fam, I know it’s my turn to make dinner, but you’re on your own tonight — Mom has to get her Library Chicken score into the positive digits!)

Stalin: A Biography by Robert Service

My last WWII book ends up being a biography of Joseph Stalin. For a child of the Cold War, I’m realizing how little I actually know about Soviet Russia. This bio was a good place to start with Stalin, if a bit dry. And depressing. Though I guess that comes along with the topic. (Okay, I lied: this isn’t my last WWII book because I’ve kept back a stash of Eleanor Roosevelt books. And I’m definitely going to get to them Real Soon Now. I’d much rather finish up with the awesome Eleanor than with this guy.)

(LC Score: +1)

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• Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer

• Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer

• Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer

If you’re going to be reading about one of the great mass murderers of history, it helps to have some Heyer on the side! These three were all new to me, and they were all quick, fun reads.

(LC Score: +3)

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The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark by Muriel Spark

I like ghost stories and I like Muriel Spark, so this seemed like an obvious choice. The longest and most well-known story here is “The Portobello Road,” which I’ve encountered in other collections. It’s a very slim anthology and some of the stories here are only vaguely ghost-related, but it was a nice little break from All the War Stuff.

(LC Score: +1)

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The Time Traveler’s Almanac edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Whew. At nearly 1000 pages this collection is NOT slim. But I’m always happy to dive into another VanderMeer compilation! Amy and I talked about this one on the podcast, even though I was only about 80 percent through at the time. I did eventually finish it and some of my favorite stories were towards the end: I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more by Bob Leman, Tamsyn Muir, and Carrie Vaughn.

(LC Score: +1)

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The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

This mystery, the first in the Ruth Galloway series, has been on my to-read list for a while, and now that I have finally read it, I have mixed feelings. I was unprepared for the brutality of the murder plot, which involves kidnapping and child murder (and even the killing of a pet animal, which SHOULD COME WITH A WARNING LABEL ON THE COVER, PEOPLE). I enjoyed getting to know Ruth, who is an archaeologist and professor, and I appreciated that she was not a stereotypical protagonist, but I thought that there were some unfortunate cliches in the way Griffiths handled gender issues and Ruth’s concerns about her weight. That said, it was a fast, entertaining read, and I have a feeling that Griffiths was just beginning to hit her stride when she wrote it. I’m looking forward to the next one in the series!

(LC Score: +1)

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The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

Amy and I both enjoyed Anders’s first novel, All the Birds in the Sky (which we also talked about on the podcast), so I was very excited to read her second novel. This one is an ambitious science fiction adventure set on a tidally locked planet, meaning that the planet keeps one side facing the sun and one side facing out to the stars. Humans can only live in the small band where day meets night, and have to learn to deal with never-ending twilight. I loved the world-building here, and the way that Anders thought about all of the different ways that her characters would be impacted by this sort of life. I also loved the diverse relationships. Unfortunately, though, I thought that the plot lost some of its narrative drive and focus at a certain point, so even as we’re building to the climax things just sort of happen. Which was a bit disappointing, if only because I had such high expectations. I’m still thinking about the world that Anders created, however, and I’ll be first on the hold list for her next novel.

(LC Score: +1)

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• Books Returned Unread: -14

• Library Chicken Score for 4/5/19: -6

• Running Score: - ½

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

• The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths (Ruth Galloway mysteries #2)

• Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan (reread after finally seeing the FABULOUS movie adaptation)

• The War Before Independence: 1775-1776 by Derek W. Beck (time to start reading for next fall!)

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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Library Chicken: Books You Can Be Seen Reading in Public

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!

This school year I’ve been doing a lot of World War II reading for the middle school history class, which means (among other things) a lot of very thick biographies about very terrible people. (I’ve discovered that I’m really not comfortable carrying a Hitler biography around to read in public). I’ll do a round-up post of my nonfiction WWII reading later in the year, but as we’re getting back into the swing of things, I thought I’d focus on my recent non-Hitler-related reading:

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Turton’s debut novel is a Groundhog-Day style murder mystery where the detective relives the same day over and over again, each time inhabiting a different guest at a house party, while trying to solve the murder that will happen at the end of the night. I am definitely up for this level of weirdness, but I was a little disappointed: it felt like the author worked so hard to get all the puzzle pieces to fit together that he forgot to create interesting characters for me to root for. (LC Score: +1)

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City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende

We’ve reached South America in World Lit, which means I get to make my middle schoolers read one of my very favorite authors! City of the Beasts is Allende’s first children’s/YA novel and the first in a trilogy. In it we follow our 15-year-old protagonist up the Amazon river in search of a mysterious yeti-like creature. It’s a little slow to get started and occasionally the prose (translated from the Spanish) can be a bit clunky, but I love the descriptions once the adventure really starts and things get exciting. (LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)

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The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Horowitz is hit or miss for me. I really enjoyed Magpie Murders, but haven’t fallen in love with any of his other books. This one (coming after Horowitz’s popular Sherlock novels The House of Silk and Moriarty) casts an obnoxious ex-cop as a “consulting investigator” and stand-in for Holmes, with Horowitz himself as first-person narrator and Watson. I have mixed feelings about authors who insert themselves as characters in their own books; I think it creeps me out a bit, not knowing where the reality ends and fiction begins. There are some good plot twists, but I really didn’t enjoy the Holmes character and I don’t think I’ll be picking up the forthcoming sequel.  (LC Score: +1)

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The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

A high school English teacher is horrified when her best friend is murdered--and is even more upset when the murder seems to be connected to a famous Victorian ghost story written by an author that she has studied for years — and THEN mysterious messages start to appear in HER OWN DIARY!! So creepy I get chills thinking about it! This one is hard to put down and I’ve got my fingers crossed that Griffiths will write a follow-up with the same investigating officer, a not-quite-out lesbian Sikh who still lives with her parents. (LC Score: +1)

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Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory

I already know I love Gregory’s books and this one, his first, was no exception. Since 1950, the United States and the rest of the world has been living through an epidemic of demonic possession, though no one can quite figure out what the “demons” actually are. Are they aliens? Telepaths? Jungian archetypes? Gregory’s worlds are always bizarre and fascinating, and I thoroughly enjoyed this story of one man desperately trying to solve his own demonic possession problem. Plus lots of cameos by celebrities both fictional and non! (Let me know when you read it so we can have a conversation about the true identity of Siobhan O’Connell.)  (LC Score: +½, returned overdue)

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See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

I’m always up for a good Lizzie Borden book. (Most recent favorite: Maplecroft by Cherie Priest, which is Lizzie Borden plus Cthulhu.) Schmidt’s book is a retelling of the Lizzie Borden murders, showing us the inside of a deeply dysfunctional family. (Slight SPOILER: I was concerned that it was all going to be about sexual abuse, which I do NOT enjoy reading, but it turns out that there are many ways of being dysfunctional! Hurray!) I maybe wanted to go a teensy bit deeper, but it’s incredibly compelling and I read it in one sitting.  (LC Score: +1)

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My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Aw, man, I really wanted to like this one. I love the cover and I’m definitely intrigued by the idea of taking a year off to “hibernate,” but I found the protagonist--who is miserable but always (as she keeps reminding us) beautiful--completely unrelatable and borderline unrecognizable as an actual human, capable of actual human relationships. It’s an example of what I think of as a very New York City novel about very New York City people, who are apparently completely unlike the rest of us in the rest of the world? This one, unfortunately, didn’t work for me.  (LC Score: +1)

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The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault

Adventures in lexicography! While researching etymologies for a new edition of the dictionary, editorial assistant Billy discovers pieces of a story told via the citations collected in their catalog. As he looks for more pieces of the puzzle, he discovers the outline of a mystery, perhaps even involving murder! I found the ending slightly anti-climatic, but it was a very fun read.  (LC Score: +1)

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Books Returned Unread: -1

Library Chicken Score for 3/22/19: 6 ½

Running Score: 5 ½

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

• The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths (loved The Stranger Diaries and can’t wait to read this one!)

• Stalin: A Biography by Robert Service (I mentioned all the terrible people, right?)

• Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer (as an antidote for all that WWII stuff)

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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Library Chicken: We're Back! And the Best Books of 2019 So Far

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!

HEY GUYS, I’M BACK! Did you miss me? I missed you! I thought about asking Amy to commission a zombified back-from-the-grave version of the Library Chicken logo (which would be AWESOME, am I right?) but then I thought maybe not. Also — and I blame this entirely on the current political situation — I think about a zombie apocalypse waaaay too much.

I hope that your 2019 has been wonderful so far and you have been busily checking books off your to-read list. To get us back in the groove, I thought I’d start out with my own ​Best of 2019 So Far​ list.

• Howl’s Moving Castle​ by Diana Wynne Jones

• The Haunting of Hill House​ by Shirley Jackson

• The Grand Sophy​ by Georgette Heyer

Part of self-care for me is comfort reading: re-reading old favorites. If you do a lot of comfort reading (ahem), you may find that you need to at least temporarily retire some of those favorites that you nearly know by heart (Jane Austen, ​The Blue Sword​ by Robin McKinley, ​Sorcery and Cecelia b​y Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy Sayers) in favor of relative newbies. These are all on my nextgen comfort reading shelf.

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• London Falling​ by Paul Cornell

• The Severed Streets ​by Paul Cornell

• Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? ​by Paul Cornell

Paul Cornell is a talented author and screenwriter (he wrote the Doctor Who episodes “Father’s Day” and — one of my personal favorites — the two-parter “Human Nature/The Family of Blood”). In this series (​The Shadow Police​) we follow a modern day London detective squad that acquires special powers during a very strange case, allowing them to see the “shadow” London of magic and mystery that exists side-by-side with the everyday world. It’s a great combination of police procedural and urban fantasy, occasionally hard-boiled and dark (the first book, ​London Falling​, involves child-murder) with a dash of weird humor (a witch who kills soccer players who score goals against her favorite team). Very much UNfortunately, according to Cornell, this supposed-to-be-five-books series has been dropped by the publisher, so it’s possible we will never get to see the very end of the story arc. That said, if book three,​ Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?,​ does end up being the last one, it is not a bad wrap-up for the series (most of the urgent plot points are dealt with), which is still very much worth reading.

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• A Cure for Suicide​ by Jesse Ball

• Census​ by Jesse Ball

• How to Set a Fire and Why​ by Jesse Ball

Jesse Ball is weird and wonderful and I don’t know what he’s doing half the time but I’m totally fine with it. In ​A Cure for Suicide​, we’re transported to a carefully constructed village where people who want to leave their lives behind are taught to live again after having their memories wiped. ​Census​ follows a father, recently diagnosed with a terminal disease, and his young son on a journey as census-takers through a world that is not quite our own. ​How to Set a Fire and Why​, a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl with a tragic past (and, almost certainly, a tragic future) is the most mainstream (and perhaps the saddest) work of his that I’ve read.

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Wolf in White Van ​by John Darnielle

I read this immediately following ​How to Set a Fire and Why​, which turned out to be one of those happenstance pairings that works really well. Our narrator, Sean, has severe physical handicaps as the result of an “accident” when he was in high school. He now runs a by-mail adventure game, which has unexpectedly led to tragedy for some of his players. It’s a short novel, but there’s so much good stuff going on here that I look forward to revisiting it some time in the future.

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Confessions of the Fox: A Novel ​by Jordy Rosenberg

This is the bizarre and wonderful story of notorious 18th-century London thief Jack Sheppard, told in parallel via footnotes (I LOVE STORY-TELLING IN FOOTNOTES GIVE THEM ALL TO ME) with the story of the professor who found the mysterious manuscript detailing Jack’s true history (turns out he’s transgender, among other things). It’s weird and compelling and (SPOILER) there is a LOT of explicit sex, which can sometimes turn me off a book (that’s just me) but didn’t bother me here.

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Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith ​by Deborah Heiligman

We’re doing biology in the high school and middle school this year, which means I’ve been reading up on Darwin. This nonfiction biography of the Darwins’ marriage (aimed at the YA audience, I believe, but certainly enjoyable for adult readers) shows the challenges and complexities of their relationship, which was long-lasting and, by all accounts, incredibly successful. I love reading about all the Victorians, but Darwin — who was apparently a quite decent and loving human being! — is one of my very favorites.

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Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife​ by Francine Prose

I believe that everyone should read ​The Diary of a Young Girl​ by Anne Frank at some point (I prefer The Definitive Edition, ​edited by Mirjam Pressler and published 1991), and this is the year for my middle school students, since we’re covering the 1930s and World War II in history class. Francine Prose (​Reading Like a Writer)​ explores the diary as a piece of serious literature, along with the history of its publication and popularity, and the (surprisingly!) scandalous production of the play and movie adaptations. This is a great companion to the diary for students and teachers, and a fascinating read in its own right.

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The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl​ by Timothy Egan

More 1930s reading: companion book to the excellent American Experience documentary episode, Surviving the Dust Bowl.​ It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to live through this ecological disaster, but Egan does a great job bringing it to life with first-hand accounts.

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• Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt ​by H.W. Brands

• No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Home Front in World War II ​by Doris Kearns Goodwin

• Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume One: 1894-1933​ by Blanche Wiesen Cook

I may be a teensy bit obsessed with the Roosevelts, and this year I’m getting to indulge my obsession. These are all great accounts of Franklin and Eleanor and their complex relationship. I’ve got another stack of Roosevelt-reading next to the night stand; we’ll see how much I can get through before I have to start studying up for next year’s history class.

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• We Are Never Meeting in Real Life ​by Samantha Irby

• Meaty ​by Samantha Irby

These two funny, compelling, and occasionally heart-breaking essay collections (by the author of the blog “bitches gotta eat”) cover a wide range of topics including dating, chronic illness, and tyrannical cats. Irby is currently working on the Hulu adaptation of Lindy West’s ​Shrill​ (another great book!) starring Aidy Bryant (so many talented women!).

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...AND I’m starting fresh for the new year, even though the new year was some time ago, so:

Library Chicken Score for 3/15/19: 0

Running Score: 0

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

Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Defining Years 1933-1938 b​y Blanche Wiesen Cook (I want to be Eleanor when I grow up)

All the Light We Cannot See ​by Anthony Doerr (everyone in the world has read this already, including my daughter who is very upset that it is taking me so long)

The Stranger Diaries b​y Elly Griffiths (don’t know much about it other than that it’s supposed to be a “gripping gothic thriller,” so yes, I’m in)

Pandemonium b​y Daryl Gregory (​Spoonbenders w​as great, and this looks good too!)

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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Library Chicken Special Edition: Novellas!

I will admit that the concept of novellas — too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel — has always gotten on my nerves a little bit. PICK A SIDE, NOVELLAS. But I am here to tell y’all that we are living in a Golden Age of Novellas and if you haven’t yet discovered the awesomeness of these short-but-still-substantial reads you are in for a treat. We can thank the proliferation of e-readers and self-publishing for all this goodness: though novellas are tough to publish and sell at a reasonable price as traditional paper books, they’re a great size for reading on your Kindle/cell phone/tablet and are often very inexpensive (and so a great way to check out new authors). Without further ado, and in no particular order, I present 

TEN NOVELLAS YOU SHOULD READ IMMEDIATELY IF NOT SOONER

All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells 

I <heart> Murderbot! This wildly enjoyable novella is about a security cyborg who has hacked its governor module but would much rather spend the day watching soap operas than killing all humans. As a bonus, it’s first in a series! Murderbot 4-EVA! 

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The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard 

You may not have realized that you are dying to read this Sherlock Holmes homage set in space where Holmes is a brilliant drugged-up Asian detective and her Watson is a traumatized mindship, but TRUST ME YOU ARE. And then we can all go read de Bodard’s Dominion of the Fallen series (first book: The House of Shattered Wings) about a dystopian Paris populated by literal fallen angels while we simultaneously compose emails to de Bodard lobbying her for another ‘Tea Master’ story NOW PLEASE. 

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River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey 

Did you know that an American politician once proposed importing hippos to (1) eat invasive plants choking the Mississippi Delta and (2) help with a meat shortage? Aren’t you so very glad that Sarah Gailey used that true-life fact to inspire her tale of HIPPO COWBOYS who both wrangle and ride these dangerous beasts? Have you already clicked the ‘buy’ button for this first-in-an-amazing-series featuring a diverse cast with a non-binary lead? If not, WHY NOT? Did you not hear about the HIPPO COWBOYS?!? 

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Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson 

Climate change has forced people to live underground, but one ecologist (with a prosthetic set of octopus legs) is ready to time travel with her team back to ancient settlements on the Tigris and the Euphrates to research ways of bringing the ecosystem back to life. This one feels like the start of a great novel/series; fingers crossed that Robson writes it for us. 

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Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell 

A small English town is divided over the proposed building of a big-box superstore, but since this particular town is in a very special spot on the border between our world and Faerie, the stakes are higher than usual: if the store is allowed to open it may well bring about the end of the world! The main characters here are all women and I especially enjoy Cornell’s depiction of female friendships. The sequels (in which our witches tackle other issues, including Brexit) in this ongoing series are also great. 

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The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle 

Victor LaValle, a black American author, takes one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most notoriously racist stories (“The Horror at Red Hook”) and turns it on its head in this fabulous and award-winning (many awards! all the awards!) rewrite. Come for the disturbing spookiness, stay for the non-racist characterization! (See, H.P., it isn’t that hard after all!) 

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Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw 

Lovecraft was not only spectacularly racist, he was super sexist too! So I enjoy imagining him spinning in his grave as talented contemporary non-white and/or non-male authors claim his legacy for themselves. Khaw’s mash-up of cosmic horror and film-noir private-eye detection (such a great pairing that I’m surprised I haven’t run across it before) is a great read and (hurray!) first in a series. 

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Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand 

Hippie folk rock band + the spooky old English estate they decide to spend the summer at + SOMETHING BAD HAPPENING = yes, please! This novella features multiple narrators which I always enjoy, but I do think someone might have had the good sense to avoid the Very Clearly Haunted Manor. 

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The Curfew by Jesse Ball 

A surreal tale of a father and daughter living in a vaguely described police state. With Ball I’m often not quite sure exactly what’s happening, but it turns out I don’t mind. (See also his short novels Census, A Cure for Suicide, and Silence Once Begun.) 

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Speak Easy by Catherynne M. Valente 

I’ll finish things off with My Favorite Contemporary Fantasy Writer For Both Children and Adults (Seriously She’s Awesome Read Everything), Catherynne Valente! (If you’ve listened to the podcast, you’ve heard Amy and I geek out over one of her most recent novels, Space Opera.) This Jazz Age fairy tale (a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”) is gorgeous in all the ways and will most likely lead you to a debilitating addiction to Valente’s prose. YAY, NOVELLAS! 

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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What I’m Reading: 3.12.19

Apparently it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these roundups, so it’s nice for me because I have a lot to write about!

• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

• The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

• The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin

I know I went on and on about Jemisin on the podcast, so I won’t go on and on here — but these are easily the most interesting books I’ve read in recent years. I am not a huge sci-fi fan, as you know, but what Jemisin does with language and big ideas like the epistemology and colonialism blows me away. I can’t recommend her enough — but you can listen to this episode of the podcast if you want to hear me try.

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Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Many years ago, this was the first book by Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett that I ever read, and as it turns out, my favorite: I definitely liked this collaboration better than any of their individual books. Maybe that’s partly because it’s just so much fun — that’s certainly why I assigned it for my spring book club selection for high school. (Well, that, and I want to reread it myself before the series comes out.) The End Days are here, but Aziraphale (an angel) and Crowley (a demon) have decided that Earth is too much fun to destroy. I actually listened to the audiobook this time around, which I can recommend highly.

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The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier

Since I’ve tentatively decided that I want to write my own chemistry textbook for next year, I’ve been trying to read more books about science. I quite enjoyed this one — well, I enjoyed the information. It was well-researched and nicely constructed and full of interesting facts, but oh my gosh, Angier’s editor needed to jump in and let her know that there is a point where the punning is just too much. So lesson learned: Fewer puns, but lots of input from real scientists because that was the best part of the book.

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Snobbery with Violence by Marion Chesney

Someone recommended this to me after I read an Agatha Raisin mystery — it’s by the same author (writing under a different name), but it’s set in Edwardian London and stars a returned-from-the-Boer-Wars younger son who discovers he has a knack for solving society problems and a would-be suffragette/socialite whose season is ruined (and family furious) when she tries to publicly take down her would-be seducer. So, yeah, right up my alley. In this set-up, there’s a murder at a house party in a faux-Arthurian castle, and the two reluctantly team up to find the murderer.

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Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

I always buy these when they are on sale for the Kindle since my paperbacks are still in a box from our last move. (More than a decade ago, so …) This one is pretty standard: A former actress/evil stepmother is murdered at a holiday resort, and the suspects include her husband, her stepdaughter, her lover, his wife, and more. Luckily Poirot is there to unravel all the tangled motives and opportunities to reveal the real killer.

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Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

I reread this for my Victorian gender and sexuality seminar. It’s such a fun story: A multilayered, incredibly complex, Dickensian story of double crosses, switched identities, and the Victorian underworld — plus Victorian lesbian grifters, which, let’s face it, was the description that inspired me to read the book the first time.

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The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry

I read this with my son, and we laughed so hard. I feel like this book (which came out in 2008) was overshadowed by A Series of Unfortunate Events, which had just recently wrapped up — there was a whole little spurt of forgettable Gothic-ish children’s literature. This one is quite fun, though: The Willoughby parents are absolutely terrible, but honestly their four children aren’t much better. So when the Willoughby parents take off on a dangerous trip around the world (an idea planted by their children, who are hoping their parents will leave them old-fashioned orphans), they’re hoping that they can sell the house out from under their annoying kids and escape them forever. Happily, they’ve accidentally hired a very good nanny, who helps the Willoughby children learn to channel their better selves and ends up rescuing the local millionaire down the road, too, who has unexpectedly found himself the guardian of an abandoned baby. 

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A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman  

I will pretty much always read a book of medieval history! I especially like how Tuchman has centered her story around the life of one person, a French noble named Enguerrand de Coucy VII. The 14th century is surprisingly thrilling (especially in the wake of Good Omens, when it’s the century that Crowley specifically dismisses as spectacularly boring — his fault for sleeping through most of it!): You get the black death, of course, but also a little ice age, the Hundred Years’ War, the papal schism, and Wat Tyler's Rebellion. Even if you’re fairly up on your medieval history, you’ll find this book full of new and delightful details.

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A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro 

Charlotte Holmes is Sherlock’s great-great-great-granddaughter; Jamie Watson is John Watson’s great-great-great-grandson. They end up at the same New England boarding school, where they team up Holmes-and-Watson style after a murderer starts targeting students — all of whom have a connection to Charlotte, who has inherited some of her ancestor’s bad habits as well as his keen analytical mind. I was pretty willing to love this, but sadly, I didn’t. The problem I ran into is that it’s basically a Sherlock reshuffle — the idea of Holmes being a teenage girl might be new, but there’s nothing new about Charlotte in the book. She’s standard-issue Holmes, and Watson is pretty standard Watson of the Martin Freeman school. (It’s a good school, but most of us have already graduated from it.) Maybe the sequels hit their stride a little better?

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The Time Traveler’s Almanac edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer

This is our next podcast read, so I won’t spoil it by talking about it here. Overall, it was a nice collection of time travel stories, including the usual suspects (“A Sound of Thunder,” “Death Ship”) as well as some stuff I hadn’t run into before.

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A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa Sheinmel

Hannah can’t believe she’s been institutionalized because of her roommate’s accident, but she knows the truth will come out: Agnes was her best friend, and Hannah would never have hurt her on purpose. As the days turn into weeks and she’s still under constant watch, Hannah’s confidence begins to crack, and so does her story about her relationship with Agnes. I think I’ve read too many stories of this sort — I knew almost immediately what was happening, and there was nothing that actually surprised me.

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The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane by Julia Nobel

This one, though, I really loved! Emmy’s dad is MIA, and her mom is so busy explaining how other people can be great parents that she never has time to just be Emmy’s parent. Emmy is crushed when her mom ships her off to a fancy British boarding school — until she gets pulled into a mystery involving a super-secret order that may involve her long-missing father. It’s true that I’m a sucker for a boarding school book, but this is the kind of middle grades book I like best: It assumes a smart reader who can connect the pieces, and there’s plenty of action to keep the plot moving and mostly likable, individual characters who make you care about what’s happening. I recommend this one!

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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Monday Meditations: What You Do Is Important

““If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” ”

— Rachel Carson

I suppose we can blame the Victorians, who created the idea that there are two spheres in the world: the public sphere, out in the world, where everything happens and the private sphere, which is just home. Somehow in that division — and we all know that these kinds of divisions are inherently problematic, of course — the idea came that “home stuff” was less important than “world stuff,” and we still carry that distinction around with us. Even if we don’t believe it — and most of us probably don’t — we’re still influenced by it. In order for the work we do at home to be important, it has to be perfect — in a way we’d never expect ourselves to be perfect out in the public sphere.

But we know, deep down, that the work we do at home is important. Homeschooling isn’t something we’re doing to avoid “getting a real job.” Homeschooling is a real job — and lots of us have those “real jobs,” too, which we manage to mold around the rest of our homeschool lives. (Talk about challenges!) Whether we are hands-on parents who structure learning every single day for our families or relaxed parents who trust kids to find their own way through their interests, we are doing every day the most important work there is: preparing our children to blossom in the future that matters to them. We don’t have to agree about ideologies or worksheets or tests to agree that we are doing the best we know how to do to give our children the tools they need to build the future they want. (And, indeed, even if we agreed, our children would probably end up doing something completely different anyway.)

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the hugeness of this project sometimes, but it is also surprisingly easy to take it for granted and to value this work less than it deserves. After all, this is not work that comes with easy-to-share metrics. It’s not even work where you’ll end up with a promotion: Do your job as a homeschool parent really well, and you’ll get fired at some point because your kids are ready for a different kind of learning. It’s a job that allows you to squeeze in a load of laundry or a little meal prep on the side — domestic tasks that seem to push homeschooling into the realm of the domestic. The world that’s lovely and warm and welcoming and supportive but that’s also somehow less important.

But that’s a fallacy, and we know it when we force ourselves to confront it head-on. Homeschooling is important work. It’s the work that shapes our children’s educations, of course, but through that, it also shapes their futures, their perception of the world, their ideas of success. It’s a project that requires the organization skills of a CEO’s secretary, the creativity of a budget-filmmaker, the curiosity of a science historian, and the listening and attention-paying abilities of a great therapist. We’re growing so much as individuals in this endeavor that we can forget to see how much our children are growing, too. When we pause and step out of ourselves for a moment to look into our lives from the outside, the magnitude of our importance may shock us. We matter so much. And what we do, even on a sleepy Monday morning, matters. 

Food for thought

• Do you value your work as homeschool parent?

• How can you recognize and honor the importance of what you do?

• Are there people in your life who make you feel less important? How can you manage those relationships without minimizing yourself?

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Monday Meditations: You Can Start Right Now

“We have a hunch that it is possible to live a better, more balanced, and less stressful life, but many of us firmly believe that we don’t have the time or energy to make the necessary changes, even though perhaps just one small change could significantly reduce our stress levels. Instead of striving for attainable incremental changes, we sometimes complain as if our lives are completely out of our hands.”

— Gary Egebert

I’d like to redo our homeschool space. The walls are smudgy from years of tiny fingerprints and little artists switching out their favorite paintings and quotes and drawings. The bookcases slump in the middle. The table is splattered with permanent paint and unexpectedly bumpy from years of craft projects. It’s a big project, though, and I’ve been waiting for a big chunk of time to tackle it.

I’d like to write my son a curriculum around Minecraft. I have great ideas — a multi-layered, interdisciplinary curriculum that incorporates math and programming, history and creative writing, literature and science. To do it right, though, I’d need a big chunk of uninterrupted working time, and I’m unlikely to get that soon.

I’d like to plant a garden. I think about it a lot — we have a big sunny spot in the back yard that would be perfect for a raised bed. I’ve never been a gardener, but I’d like to be. I’d need to learn more about gardening though — I’d probably need to take some classes at least — and there’s no space for that right now.

I’d love to make an evening every week just for me — space for me to do whatever I want. I’m feeling on the verge of burnout — but there’s not time for me to figure out how to make more time.

I don’t do these things — even though I want to. I don’t do them because I don’t want to start them without being prepared, without having everything I need organized and ready to go. There’s not time, not yet.

Waiting for the right moment can be wonderful, but when you’re busy with your life and your homeschool and your family, it can feel like there’s no right moment ever. It’s like the old joke about having kids — if everybody waited until they felt ready to have children, the human race would probably die out because we’re never ready. Because that’s almost always true for whatever it is we want to do: We’re not ready. The secret is to do it anyway.

Do something. Clear off the middle shelf of the saggy bookshelf. Make one Minecraft lesson plan. Plant one blueberry bush. Take one hour off. It’s so easy to get stuck in the trap of thinking that if I want to do something, I have to do it all — but that’s so silly! We are the dictators of our schedule, we are the owners of our lives, we are (to borrow a phrase) the masters of our fate. And if we want something in our lives to change, we are absolutely, positively the only ones who have the power to make it change.

The change we make with our loose ends and scattered moments may not be the picture-perfect before-and-afters we’ve gotten hooked on through media and social media. It will be better. It will be the real thing, made by us, in ways that don’t require a different kind of life, a different budget, or different kids. We will have to go slowly and appreciate the small impacts of our small changes. We will have to recognize, in months or years, when we are in the middle of our busy lives, that our work has done what we wanted it to — whether we’ve exactly met the picture in our minds or not, we are living the life we wanted to live. And all we had to do was just get started.

Food for thought

• What is it that you want to change in your homeschool life?

• What one change could you make today — with the time and resources you have right now — to get closer to that vision?

• Why aren’t you doing it? What is in your way?

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At Home with the Editors: What We Believe

I wrote this for one of my early editor’s letters, and when I reread it recently, I was struck by how true it still rings for me and for the work we do here at home/school/life. It’s scary to stand up and say, “This is what I believe.” There’s a vulnerability and a risk of rejection in it. But this is what we believe, and I’m okay standing up and saying it.

One of the things you have to do when you have a magazine is to get the word out that your magazine exists. So in between deciding on what topics we should cover in the magazine, reading columns, and editing pages, we’ve been reaching out to homeschool groups, going to conferences, and generally trying to tap fellow homeschoolers on the shoulder to say, “Pardon me, I think you might be interested in this cool homeschooling magazine.”

People have a lot of questions about the magazine — how much does it cost? What do we cover? Why don’t we have a print edition? But one question we seem to run into over and over again is “What’s your magazine’s mission? What do you believe?” That’s a big question, but here are some of our answers.

We believe that homeschooling is a grand adventure that we get to take together as a family.

We believe that you know your kid better than anybody and that you should trust your gut, no matter how many people are offering helpful advice to steer you in a different direction.

We believe that kids are naturally curious and the key to successful homeschooling is helping them discover the things that they are curious about.

We believe that homeschoolers can change the world.

We believe that, sure, scientific knowledge can always change, but that accepted current scientific theories — like the theory of evolution or the big bang theory — reflect our most accurate understanding of the world around us.

We believe that homeschoolers can go to Ivy League colleges or start their own businesses or design Minecraft mods all day—and all those things are equally cool.

We believe that trying to shove your beliefs and ideas down other people’s throats is never okay. Judge-y pants are itchy pants.

We believe that it’s totally normal to feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.

We believe that there’s a real need for a homeschool magazine that focuses on, well, actual homeschooling.

We believe that at the end of the day — and at the end of the year and at the end of high school — most of us just want to feel like we’ve given our kids the tools they need to do what they feel passionate about pursuing.

We believe it’s never too late to learn something new.

We believe you can homeschool just fine with or without a curriculum. (But isn’t it great that there are so many terrific options for secular homeschool curricula now?)

We believe that some days are better than others, and you should never make any drastic changes on a bad day.

We believe that asking good questions can be just as important as finding answers.

We believe that Joss Whedon is a genius and that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical is probably the single greatest episode of television ever produced. (OK, that last one may be just me.)

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Monday Meditations: The Soul-Expanding Power of Quitting

“To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.”

— Pearl S. Buck

One thing I’m slowly learning is that a lot of the expectations in my life come from me, not from anybody else.

Take lunch. There was a stage early in our homeschool life where lunch exhausted me. Everyone wanted something different to eat, at different times, and then everything had to be cleaned up — just in time to start thinking about dinner. Housework, housekeeping, has never been the thing I’m best at, and lunch made me feel like I never got a break from housekeeping.

And then I saw how my husband did it — or rather, how he didn’t do it. He didn’t special order cook anybody’s lunch. He didn’t cut people’s sandwiches into shapes with cookie cutters. When one of the kids came to him, saying, “What’s for lunch?,” he said, “There’s sandwich stuff if you want to make a sandwich, or you can heat up some leftover soup.” And they made sandwiches or heated up soup cheerfully. I was the one who had been making a big deal about lunch.

So I quit lunch several years ago, and it’s been wonderful. It revolutionized our homeschool days — not fretting about and fussing with lunch meant I had the space to prep science experiments and squeeze in more reading and give my energy to figuring out our morning routine. It made me happy — and, importantly, it didn’t make anybody else sad. No one but me thought I needed to be making A Thing out of lunchtime.

It’s not always that easy. Sometimes there are things we can’t quit, obligations we can’t just cross off our to-do list. But sometimes there are things we can just let go of — and we often don’t see them because we’re so caught up in the idea that we Have To: We Have To do those co-op classes even though they’ve become inconvenient and no one really enjoys them that much; we Have To do math every single morning, even though there’s no reason we couldn't experiment to see if doing it three or four times a week would work just as well; we Have To do super special hands-on craft projects for every single class even though we hate super special hands-on craft projects. 

When there’s something getting between me and homeschool happiness, I want to do a better job of looking closely at that roadblock to see if it’s not actually something I could just walk around. I want to let go of my expectations and ask myself, “What would happen if I just let that go?” And I want to let myself really play out that answer, past the immediate panicked response and into the implications of letting go (my kids aren’t going to starve to death if I don’t get their lunch one day — they’ll probably eat goldfish crackers and cookies, but they won’t starve) and the assumptions behind my expectations (good moms make lunch, so if I don’t make lunch, I’m not a good mom). I want to make letting go an option rather than a last resort. I want to embrace the soul-expanding power of quitting.

Food for thought

• What do you do in your homeschool life because you “have to?” Do you really have to?

• What expectations about yourself or your homeschool do you struggle to live up to? Do those expectations really make sense? How could you change them?

• What if you quit one thing? What space would that free up? How would you fill that new space?

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