Summer Reading: James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small
Welcome to Summer Reading 2017! This year we’re taking advantage of the long summer days to read our way through some of our favorite series for children and young people.
From the beginning, our homeschool has revolved around books. In preschool and kindergarten, that meant an after-breakfast readaloud (maybe My Father’s Dragon) followed by a little bit of phonics, handwriting, and math, topped off with a myths-and-legends readaloud, and then the day would end with a readaloud selection of favorite picture books. That schedule evolved with us through elementary school, as we moved up to Oz and The Odyssey, Harry Potter and Robin Hood. In middle school, we still kept the readalouds (in part because I was unwilling to give up my favorite part of the day), but we added another element: Each month or so, Mom would choose a book for the middle schooler to read and then write a mini-book report on. In general, the choosing part was fairly casual—I’d wander by the bookshelf and ask, “Have you read The Phantom Tollbooth yet, or was that your brother? Wait, you HAVEN’T read Tollbooth? Here, drop everything and read it IMMEDIATELY.” But in our family, one of the first middle-school books assigned has traditionally been James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small.
My love affair with these books—All Creatures and its sequels—goes back over 30 years. In them, Herriot tells stories of his days as a Yorkshire veterinarian working on both farm animals and pets, beginning when he is just out of school in the 1930s and has joined the practice run by eccentric Siegfried Farnon, assisted (more or less) by Siegfried’s hapless brother, Tristan. The tales are sometimes tragic, as when a farmer loses both his livestock and his livelihood, and sometimes hilarious (“Mrs. Pumphrey’s Tricki Woo has gone flop-bott again”), while always being warmly affectionate and self-deprecating. Supposedly these are Herriot’s real-life experiences—”James Herriot” is the pen name of Alf Wight—but over the years there have been different opinions on how much is real and how much is fiction, so that I’ve moved my own copies from the “memoir” shelf to “fiction” and back again, but when the writing is this enjoyable it doesn’t really matter where they end up.
I was 11 or 12 when my dad first handed me All Creatures Great and Small—though we weren’t homeschoolers he was not averse to giving me the occasional “assigned reading”—and I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve reread it since. The books are long (my edition of All Creatures comes in at over 400 pages) and aren’t typically marketed to younger readers (though specific stories have been pulled out and republished for the children’s section) but the chapters come in convenient bite-sized chunks and the original series is well within the range of confident middle school readers. They’re also a great option for YA readers who may be getting a bit tired of your everyday average apocalyptic dystopian future. (If any adults in the house haven’t read them you could consider doing them as readalouds to share the fun, though I confess I never gave that a try. I wasn’t sure I could handle the Yorkshire dialect, and I didn’t really want to read aloud all those sections where James has his arm up the back-end of a cow.) These are comfort books for me and one of the few series that has been given the universal thumbs-up by everyone who I’ve forced to read them. As a bonus, once the household has had a read-through you can enjoy the 70s-80s BBC series, which stars Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge as Siegfried Farnon and Doctor Who (number five) as Tristan.
In the first book we are introduced to newly-certified veterinarian James, learning on the job as stern Yorkshire farmers glare at him and express their preference for his more experienced boss, Siegfried Farnon. Siegfried, meanwhile, is generally unflappable except in matters involving his always-in-a-scrape younger brother, Tristan. SPOILER: James manages to survive his not always auspicious beginnings in Yorkshire and even falls in love with a local girl, Helen.
All Things Bright and Beautiful
Book two has more stories with familiar characters as James enjoys married life with his very patient wife and becomes experienced enough to take charge of the occasional vet student.
At the end of the 1930s James joins the R.A.F. and survives the daily life of a new recruit by reminiscing about the vet life.
World War Two is over and James is back home in the Yorkshire dales with Helen and their two children.
This last book was published several years after the first four and I’ll confess that I never loved it quite as much as the originals, perhaps because I haven’t reread it enough to know all the stories. Of course I would never pass up the chance to see everyone again—including Tricki Woo and Mrs. Pumphrey!
Find Your Next Podcast Obsession: The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel
Close your eyes—assuming you can read with your eyes closed. Now imagine if Stranger Things (the show) had a mixed-media baby with The Mysterious Benedict Society (the books) and that awesome little offspring was The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel (the podcast.) I know, right?!? And while you don’t have to be familiar with either to appreciate Mars Patel, or this review, you may end up wanting to check out both.
We were on our way to the farm from which we get our CSA. One of the privileges of membership is that we get to wake up crazy early, drive desperately far, and toil in the asparagus mines for hours under the blazing, hot sun. We needed a new podcast, and we needed one with plenty of episodes. Mars Patel had been on my list since last year, when it was voted one of the top 50 podcasts of 2016, but I’d been reluctant to listen with the kids since it’s described as a podcast for middle-schoolers (my youngest is a mature 7.5 year old) and I hadn’t had the time to audition it by myself.
The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel won a Peabody award last year, and it’s easy to see why. After the first episode, there was no need to discuss whether or not we liked it enough to give the second episode a chance—I couldn’t get the second episode on fast enough.
It was dramatic*, engaging, and suspenseful, tempered with just enough humor to assuage my youngest. The high production value makes it easy to follow along and the episodes are fast-paced, with enough plot-twists and cliff-hangers to make it binge-worthy. The actor’s voices are distinct and the rapport is authentic. The sound effects are like a tray of sometimes very loud watercolors and your imagination is the brush. Award-worthy for sure.
Episode 1 “Code Red” starts with Oliver Pruitt, the sponsor and billionaire inventor, speaking directly to the children listeners, which my kids ate up. “Mom, don’t listen!” Then you meet Mars, who my son quickly points out hasn’t disappeared...yet. Mars is clearly distressed about the disappearance of his friend, Aurora. His locker-side conversation with his friends is interrupted by a Code Red, and the school goes on lockdown. Mars goes looking for his friend, who needed to run to the bathroom during the code red (to avoid a code brown!) and discovers that his friend Jonas has also disappeared. Only four minutes in and a glance in my rearview mirror shows four wide eyes. My son catches me peeking and smiles, nodding. We are instant addicts.
The similarities to The Mysterious Benedict Society and Stranger Things run deep. These are all children living on the fringe of their social peer groups—questioning authority, speaking the truth, standing up to bullies, and defending their friends—not the kinds of kids that acquiesce to society. “Outcasts, misfits, freaks...losers, oddballs, weirdos…” They think for themselves and they think outside the box. In each series the characters have unique gifts and an element of other-worldliness is explored. Without the understanding and support of their parents, these kids brave out on their own, and it is their wit and ingenuity that save them. In all three, there is tension in aspects of the social dynamics, but ultimately the characters recognize that they have no choice but to trust and depend on each another, and friendships form despite the initial resistance. They persevere despite constant setbacks, and you quickly realize that these are the kids you would have wanted to be friends with in school and the kinds of kids you want your children to be friends with now. If these are the outcasts, I wouldn’t want to fit in. Plus, Oliver Pruitt is as creepy a bad guy as Mr. Curtain and Dr. Brenner.
Later that evening, I am standing at the kitchen counter trimming 15 pounds of asparagus stalks—asparagus for days!—and my daughter calls down, “I think JP stands for Jennifer Pruitt!” (it doesn’t) but I laugh out loud and tell her that it is a good theory. She’d been working on that for hours, and I am thrilled that we have found another podcast that keeps her thinking. “Can we go on PruittPrep.com? I want to see if it’s real!” We have fun answering riddles and exploring the prizes, and we lament the fact that her brother is gone for the weekend or we would drive somewhere just to listen to another episode.
The episodes are on average 15 or so minutes and you have to start at the beginning. Season 1 has ten episodes and so far Season 2 has six. New episodes post on Mondays, so be ready to solemnly promise on Sunday nights that yes, you will indeed wake up early to download the next episode.
* Not surprising, considering the head writer is David Kreizman, who has won an Emmy and multiple Writers’ Guild awards for his work on Guiding Light, All My Children, and As the World Turns.
The Unexplained Disappearance of Mars Patel is available for download on iTunes and for Android or you can listen to it at www.marspatel.com
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (6.20.17)
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 ELECTION DAY! Today is the runoff in the congressional election in Georgia’s 6th District. I care quite a bit about the election outcome, but no matter what happens I’m ready to celebrate two things: (1) no more political ads! (at least for a little while), and (2) I can park at my library again now that early voting is finished!
Version Control by Dexter Palmer
Palmer, author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion, is back with a novel, set in a not-so-great near-future, about a time travel machine, or as the physicists involved would put it, a ‘causality violation device.’ (Which still sounds pretty cool and/or terrifying, in my opinion.) It’s also about relationships and family and tragedy, and how we cope with all of the above. I don’t want to spill any spoilers because it’s good and you should go read it, but I will say that a major plot point involves an accident caused by self-driving cars and user error and now I’m totally freaked out about self-driving cars so thanks a lot, Mr. Palmer.
(LC Score: +1)
Roses and Rot by Kat Howard
In this retelling of Tam Lin, two sisters, a ballerina and a writer, attend a prestigious artists’ retreat (in part to escape their abusive mother) and soon discover that All Is Not As It Seems. They have to decide exactly what they are willing to give up for their art, or for each other. (As a bonus, this reminded me that it’s time for one of my periodic re-readings of Pamela Dean’s awesome Tam Lin, set on a college campus in the 1970’s.)
(LC Score: +1)
The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen, translated by Lola M. Rogers
Have you been thinking to yourself that you really don’t read enough Finnish novels? And that you’d especially like to read one about a mysterious writers’ group created by a world-renowned children’s author who may or may not be entirely human and who has definitely disappeared under bizarre circumstances? OF COURSE YOU WOULD. This novel, by an award-winning Finnish science fiction and fantasy author, has been described as Twin Peaks meets The Secret History meets the Moomins, and if you can resist that you’re made of stronger stuff than I. My only complaint is that this appears to be the only one of Jaaskelainen’s works available in English--and Duolingo doesn’t have a Finnish option.
(LC Score: +1)
Dial H Vol. 1: Into You written by China Mieville, art by Mateus Santolouco
Lumberjanes Vol. 4: Out of Time and Lumberjanes Vol. 5: Band Together written by Noelle Stevenson and Shannon Watters, art by Brooke Allen
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 5: Like I’m the Only Squirrel in the World written by Ryan North, art by Erica Henderson
This Week in Comics: One of the great things about modern comics is the crossover of authors from the literary world to the comics world and vice versa. In Dial H, weird and wonderful fantasy author China Mieville reboots an obscure DC title about a magical phone dial that can temporarily turn the user into a random superhero—sometimes not so “super” and not so much “hero”. The resulting book is definitely weird—perhaps not one of my favorites, but worth a read just to encounter “heroes” like Captain Lachrymose, Iron Snail, and Boy Chimney. Plus: the Lumberjanes learn more about their camp history and rock out with mermaids, and Squirrel Girl vacations in Canada!
(LC Score: +2, Lumberjanes borrowed from daughter)
Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity by James C. Cobb
Redefining Southern Culture: Mind and Identity in the Modern South by James C. Cobb
The Brown Decision, Jim Crow & Southern Identity by James C. Cobb
Even though I’ve lived in metro Atlanta since I was 17, I’m married to a (mostly) Southerner, and my children are all native Southerners, I’ve never felt much like a Southerner myself. What does being a Southerner even mean in the 21st century? Professor Cobb’s books and essays go a long way toward explaining what “being a Southerner” has meant over the years and how it’s changed now that the South is no longer defined only by white supremacy and opposing anything deemed “Yankee”. Away Down South (an expansion of the essays collected in Redefining Southern Culture) is a fascinating read that does a good job of walking the line between dense scholarly tome and pop-history for non-academics. The Brown Decision, a lecture published for the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, revisits the legacy of that decision, illuminating some of the arguments that have arisen in academia (that I was unaware of) over whether segregation would have ultimately faded away even without intervention and the possible negative effects of Brown. (Professor Cobb is definitely in the pro-Brown camp.)
(LC Score: +3)
Death’s End by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
Okay, so after reading The Three-Body Problem I put the second and third books in the trilogy on the hold list, but I didn’t know that the third book, Death’s End, was still a two-week no-renewals check-out and really there’s no way I could get to it in time so it’s totally not my fault. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
Library Chicken Score for 6/20/17: 7
Running Score: 57
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi (I LOVED Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching and Mr. Fox)
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (Amy says that if I’m going to read about Southern stuff I have to read some Faulkner so <sigh> okay here I go I guess)
Farthing by Jo Walton (post-WWII alternate history from the author of Among Others)
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott (why, yes, this is relevant to my interests)
52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 37: Eat Your Way Around the World
There are volumes of scientific research on how to increase your happiness, but one little thing can have a surprisingly positive impact on your life’s everyday joy factor: going out to eat. And—bonus!—that little joy booster also makes a great homeschool project.
Here’s one way it might work: Spend a little time researching international cuisine options in your part of the world. (You may be surprised to discover there are more of them than you thought!) Sit down with your kids and start a list of places you’d like to check out, then hit the library to find books set in the countries whose food you’ll be exploring. (For instance, you might read Anila’s Journey in the weeks leading up to a meal at an Indian restaurant, or check out What Elephants Know to get ready for a Nepalese feast.) At the restaurant, be brave and order a variety of dishes—ask your waiter for recommendations, and encourage everyone to try a little of everything. Follow up your dinner out with another trip to the library—this time to the cookbooks section, where you can check out a book to help you recreate some of your favorite flavors from your dinner out back at home. This combo gives you maximum joy: You get the fun of going out to dinner, plus the pleasure of anticipation and the opportunity to savor it when it’s over.
Your challenge this week: Do a little recon to find a restaurant near you that will allow you to sample an unfamiliar cuisine, and start getting everyone excited about planning a lunch or dinner excursion by finding a great readaloud set in the cuisine’s country.
Readaloud of the Week: The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom
In brief: Thanks to a not-fact-checking-savvy bard, Liam, Frederick, Duncan, and Gustave get written off as interchangeable Princes Charming in the stories of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel. But when these four princes find that “happily ever after” means getting kicked out of their castles by their respective damsels in distress, they team up to stop a nefarious plot that threatens their kingdoms—and to become the heroes they know they were meant to be.
What makes it a great readaloud? This book is SO funny that we frequently dissolved into giggles while reading it. The set-up is great: It manages to address the problem of generic “princes Charming” without sacrificing strong female characters, and it puts a new spin on several classic fairy tales.
But be aware: It definitely gets silly in places, which may annoy kids who don’t like that.
Quotable: “Duncan, what are you?”
“Human!” Duncan cried, trembling with excitement.
“More specific,” Liam said, still dramatically.
“A five-foot-two human!”
“I'm going for hero here," Liam hinted under his breath.”
Stuff We Like :: 6.16.17
How is already the middle of June?
around the web
If you are having a rough week, I promise that the Comedy Wildlife Photography awards will make you feel a little better.
Count Olaf: evil math teacher
I read this with my teenager, and it resulted in some great conversations: You Must Understand Why You Believe What You Believe—And How You Got There
My children would never forgive me if I did not share this.
I loved this: The internet is where we share and steal the best ideas.
at home/school/life
in the magazine: Early proofs for the summer issue are on my desk right now!
on the blog: Suzanne muses fondly on the Great Brain on the prairie
one year ago: How I balance homeschooling with a full-time job
two years ago: Mindful Homeschooling: Making Our Way Through Challenging Times
reading list
My Library Chicken log for this week: Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy (+0 because obviously I had to own a copy of this), Passion and Affect: Stories (+1, pretty much everything by Laurie Colwin hits my sweet spot), The Song From Somewhere Else (+0, advance copy), History of the Peloponnesian War (+1, work-related), An Imaginary Life (+1, work-related—it’s historical fiction about the poet Ovid), Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (+1, work-related), and The Murderer’s Ape (+1, delightful and surprising).
My son picked up a copy of the first book in the Bakuman series (a manga about making manga), and I was pretty thrilled when he wanted to go right back to the library to get the next installment in the series. Why is it always such a relief when he voluntarily reads something?
I’m late to the party “discovering” poet Adrian Mitchell, but we all loved Come On Everybody, a collection of his poetry. (Personally, I especially loved this one and have pinned it up by my desk.)
at home
My best friend and I are teaching an awesome Classical mash-up class this fall that combines Greek and Roman history, science, philosophy, and literature, so we’ve been having lots of gelato-fueled planning meetings to get our syllabus organized.
Mary Katrantzou’s pre-fall collection (1.) is gorgeous and (2.) has me busting out the sewing machine for a little at-home Project Runway-ing.
Summer Reading: John D. Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain
Welcome to Summer Reading 2017! This summer we’re taking advantage of the long summer days to read our way through some of our favorite series for children and young people.
If you happen to visit my hometown library this summer, you could go in the front door, pass the desk, take the first right into the children’s section and go all the way down past the right-hand shelves to the back wall. Third shelf up, about halfway in—that’s where you’ll find The Great Brain books. I checked them out so often that I’m fairly sure I could still find them blind-folded. These books, based loosely on Fitzgerald’s own childhood, chronicle life in the Mormon town of Adenville, Utah in the 1890s and—I’m not sure if I should admit this or not—I always loved them much more than those other more famous books involving little houses and prairies.
The books are narrated by J.D., the youngest boy in one of the few non-Mormon families in Adenville. J.D. tells us the adventures of his older brother, Tom (a.k.a. The Great Brain), an entrepreneur extraordinaire. In the opening chapter, we meet Tom charging the other kids in town a penny a head to view his family’s new water closet, the first indoor toilet in Adenville. That’s actually a fairly straight-forward money-making scheme for Tom—he’s always playing the angles and is not terribly concerned about ethics if there’s cash involved. Poor J.D. usually comes out of the deal with the short end of the stick.
In fact, it was an eye-opening experience to revisit these books as an adult when I started passing them along to my own kids. I had collected the first seven books for our home library and I was excited to read them again, but from my new perspective as a mom, I kept getting upset with Tom for swindling his little brother over and over again and with the parents for not handling it better. As an adult reader, though, I could appreciate even more how Fitzgerald draws a picture of his hometown, dealing with difficult issues of loss, prejudice, tragedy, and even suicide via the matter-of-fact narrative voice of young J.D. Despite the occasionally dark themes, the books are incredibly funny (with the added bonus of Mercer Mayer’s illustrations), and Tom’s adventures make for addictive reading.
(Also, I would really really like for someone to write a Ocean’s Eleven-type heist fanfic starring a crew including 20-something versions of Tom and J.D. along with their partners-in-crime Anne Shirley and Encyclopedia Brown. They should probably go up against a rival crew headed by Tom Sawyer. Make it happen, people.)
In which we meet Tom and J.D. and the rest of the family and are introduced to Tom’s materialism and flexible moral compass—balanced (at least at times) with the good things he can accomplish for his friends and his town when he puts his Great Brain to work.
More Adventures of the Great Brain
Tom “discovers” a prehistoric cave beast, goes up against the Silverlode ghost, and teaches the new girl in town to read in his second collection of adventures.
With Tom away at school, J.D. tries his hand at wheeling and dealing but nothing seems to work out the way he plans, at least not until the Fitzgeralds take in a little boy traumatized by the loss of his family. J.D. must now look after and protect his new adopted little brother, Frankie, even as the town is menaced by outlaws.
The Great Brain at the Academy
Meanwhile, the students and faculty of the Catholic Academy for Boys in Salt Lake City don’t know what’s hit them when Tom joins his older brother at boarding school.
Tom is back for summer vacation and ready to raid Adenville’s piggy-banks, but when his river raft excursion almost gets J.D.’s best friends killed, J.D. decides it’s time for the kids in town to put Tom on trial as a confidence man, swindler, blackmailer, and all-around crook.
Tom is living at home now that Adenville is building its own nondenominational academy, but after his “trial,” he claims to be a reformed character, only using his Great Brain for the public good (and perhaps some private reward) by solving a train robbery and murder.
Of course, J.D. knows that the Great Brain’s reformation will never stick—“Some day for sure our family will either be visiting Tom in the White House or in prison,” he tells us sagely—and so we get one last collection of Tom’s adventures before he turns 13 and (according to J.D.) is “hypnotized” by Polly Reagan. At least, I thought it was the final collection until...
WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT THERE WAS A NEW GREAT BRAIN BOOK?!? I SHOULD HAVE BEEN INFORMED!!! As I discovered when getting ready to write about the series, an 8th and final book was published in 1995 from notes left by the author (who died in 1988). It’s true that books published posthumously from “loose notes” often have little resemblance to the previous works that were finished and polished by the author, but it’s also true that I can’t possibly turn down the opportunity to read more about the Great Brain. Fortunately, my local library has a copy, so look for a mention in an upcoming Library Chicken!
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (6.13.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
It’s a short update this week. You’d think that would mean that I was super-productive and got a lot of other things done since I clearly wasn’t spending all my time reading, but nah, not really.
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
In this Booker-nominated novel, the Sisters brothers are sent to San Francisco during the Gold Rush era on a mission of murder. The younger brother, Eli Sisters, narrates their travels, during which they drink, learn about dental hygiene, and commit the occasional horrifically brutal act. Normally a book described as “startlingly violent” would not be my cup of tea, but I was completely captivated by Eli and the surprising sweetness glimpsed every so often in his musings and life story. I’m looking forward to reading more by DeWitt.
(LC Score: +1)
Everfair by Nisi Shawl
Steampunk in central Africa! During King Leopold’s brutal regime in Congo, a group of white Europeans, black Americans, and local Africans come together to oppose him and build a settlement. They get a technological boost from balloon-lifted “aircanoes” and prosthetic hands that can be switched out for weapons. Shawl tells the story in bite-sized chunks, rotating through a large cast of narrators and skipping around in location and time, which moves the pace along briskly and allows her to cover a lot of ground. An unfortunate side-effect (at least for me) in this otherwise enjoyable book was that I sometimes felt like I was reading edited excerpts of a novel instead of the novel itself.
(LC Score: +1)
Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories by China Mieville
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman
Story collections from two of my favorite modern sf/fantasy writers. Nice to dip in and out of while steampunking around Africa or murdering folks in the wild west. (LC Score: +2)
Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney
So here’s the thing: I love Brit Lit. I love Austen and all the Brontes (except for that ridiculous wuthering one) and Dickens and Trollope and Collins and Lady Audley’s Secret (have you guys read Lady Audley’s Secret? you totally should because it’s awesome) and the whole pack of ‘em. I was looking forward to Evelina, especially since it’s an epistolary novel and we have established that epistolary novels are Perfect and The Best and Give Them All to Me. I loaded it into my Kindle as my official “stuck waiting somewhere and forgot to bring a book” book, and then, at 38% in, I came to an important realization: life is short. And if I have to read one more page about the horrible Captain Mirvan playing “pranks” on the horrible Madame Duval while everyone else sits around and shrugs genteelly I will poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick. So I’m closing the Kindle and crossing this one off the TBR list and I don’t even feel badly about it. (Still going to read that Burney bio, though.)
(LC Score: 0, read on Kindle)
Library Chicken Score for 6/13/17: 4
Running Score: 50
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (magic via mixtape in 1980’s Mexico City)
Version Control by Dexter Palmer (time machines from the author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion)
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World by Shannon Hale & Dean Hale (middle grade Squirrel Girl novel co-written by Newbery Honor winner Shannon Hale)
The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley (epic fantasy from the author of The Geek Feminist Revolution)
52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 36: Look Back to Your Childhood
You know how your children can get totally absorbed in what they’re doing so that the hours pass like minutes? Whether it’s making complex Lego creations or writing fan fiction or putting together cosplay ensembles or drawing pictures, they’re purely—and happily absorbed—in their work. You can borrow a little of that happiness-boosting power for yourself by remembering the obsessive activities of your own childhood.
Did you spend hours writing stories? Or exploring the woods? Or taking photographs? It’s probably not hard to think of the things that fueled your passions during childhood—you know, the things that you put aside for a sensible, career-focused college major or the more practical work of adulthood? So often, we lose track of the things we really love because the rest of life gets in the way, but going back to those joyful basics can be a key to opening up a happier now.
Take some time this week to think about what you really loved as a kid, whether it was designing fabulous fashion doll outfits, or reading every mythology book on your library’s shelves, or stargazing at night—focus on the thing that you could do for hours without even noticing the time passing, and start looking for ways to get that back in your life. My friend Liz loved photography and reignited her passion by committing to posting one photo on Instagram every day for a year. If you loved writing, start a blog or write down the bedtime stories your kids are always asking you to make up. If you loved fashion, take a sewing class or learn how to knit. If you loved building, buy your own set of Legos. Don’t worry about how these things will translate into anything else—avoid worrying about what’s useful or practical or a priority in your homeschool life, and just concentrate on how to do what you really love a couple of times a week. Chances are, your newfound passion will inspire your homeschool in ways you couldn’t have imagined, but whether it affects your homeschool or not, it will boost your personal happiness to make something you love part of your life. And trust me, a happier you means a happier homeschool for all.
Your challenge this week: Revisit your childhood to explore the things you loved to do as a kid. You may know instantly, or you may need to spend some time thumbing through old pictures and journals to remember what inspired your childhood. Once you’ve identified a childhood passion, look for ways to add it to your weekly routine—ideally, you’ll find an hour once or twice a week to focus entirely on your passion project as well as small ways to add it to your daily routine.
Readaloud of the Week: The Map to Everywhere
In brief: Master Thief is the obvious career for a boy who no one can ever remember, but Fin dreams of finding the one person he knows will remember him—his lost mother. Instead, he meets Marrill, a school girl from our own world, who can somehow remember Fin—but who desperately needs to find her way back to her family. The Map to Everywhere holds the answer for both of them, but they’ll have to navigate the worlds of the Pirate Stream to find the missing pieces and put them back together.
What makes it a great readaloud? Fin and Marrill are smart, believable characters who forge a strong, believable friendship within their crazy circumstances. Their bond is the heart of this book—but there’s also plenty of adventure and humor to keep you reading.
But be aware: It’s not exactly a cliff-hanger, but the ending does set up the next book.
Quotable: “Magic is just the potential for creation. It follows no rules and breaks them all.”
Bespoke Book List: Books Set in Ancient Rome
My kids are obsessed with ancient Rome, and I’d love to find a few fun readalouds set in classical Roman times. Any suggestions?
Happily, the Roman Empire has been just as fascinating for authors as it has been for your children, and your big challenge will be choosing which of these books set in ancient Rome to start with.
Detectives in Togas
Take seven Roman schoolboys, add a slur scrawled on the Temple of Minerva, a burgled tutor, and a mysterious astrologer, and you’ve got a mystery that’s full of twists and turns and Roman history. (The sequel, Mystery of the Roman Ransom, features the same cast of mystery-solving characters.)
Tiger, Tiger
The author of The Indian in the Cupboard tackles the class structures of the Roman Empire in this story of two tiger cubs: one given to the emperor’s daughter, where he lives a pampered, luxurious life; the other sent to live in a cold, dark cage as one of the kill-or-be-killed stars at the Caesar’s Colosseum.
The Thieves of Ostia
In the second mystery on our list, sea captain’s daughter Flavia Gemina and her friends set out to discover why the dogs on her street in the Roman city of Ostia are dying. The series (now up to 17 books) is a favorite of historian Mary Beard’s.
The Eagle of the Ninth
Historical fiction writer extraordinaire Rosemary Sutcliffe heads to Roman Britain with the story of a boy named Marcus determined to discover the truth of what happened to his soldier father and the rest of the Ninth legion (and their Eagle standard), who set off north of Hadrian’s wall and never returned.
Escape from Pompeii
If you’re looking for a picture book, this deliberately illustrated story of everyday life in a Roman city (and a harrowing escape from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) set in C.E. 79 is an excellent choice.
A Roman Death
Older students will get caught up in the tour de force mystery starring Cicero the lawyer as he defends a Roman matriarch accused of murdering her future son-in-law. The story, based on a historical incident briefly mentioned in Cicero’s writings, features a fictional-but-totally-believable speech by the great orator.
This book list is reprinted from the summer 2016 issue of HSL.
Stuff We Like :: 6.9.17
The summer issue is coming together, and—as usual!—I think it's kind of awesome.
around the web
Love this: How historians can become activists
A really excellent guide to what makes a great children’s science book
Relevant to my interests: Behind the scenes at the National Spelling Bee
I bet anyone who read this piece about spies and knitting could have guessed that it would end up in my favorite links
at home/school/life
on the blog: I’m talking about our (mostly successful) first year homeschooling high school
also on the blog: We tried doing the Book Deal of the Day on the blog, but people seemed pretty split on whether they liked it, so we are keeping all the book deals on the book deal page.
one year ago: The Life-Changing Magic of Embracing My Kids’ Reading Choices
two years ago: Growing Through Traveling: Independence, Confidence, and What We Become Away from Home
reading list
Suzanne is giving me a major inferiority complex with her Library Chicken success lately. I have been making a dent in my graphic novel/comics reading list because I’m working on a round-up for the summer issue. Highlights so far: Berlin (about the politics and problems of Weimar Berlin in the years leading up to the Nazis), Hark a Vagrant (thank you, Suzanne, for introducing me to the ultimate book nerd comic), Zita the Space Girl (feminist-y sci-fi!), and The Last Unicorn (which may be partly because of the sheer nostalgia factor). Do you have a fave graphic novel I should be sure to check out?
In my continuing effort to pick up books outside my comfort zone, I’m reading In the Garden of Iden, which I apparently put on my holds list at some point. (I sometimes log into my library account after a couple of glasses of wine, which is probably not a good idea but which has brought some interesting books into my life.) This book is technically sci-fi, about a cyborg botanist who travels to Elizabethan England to rescue specific plants from extinction, but it’s really gorgeous historical fiction plus star-crossed love story, and I’m totally okay with that.
My son and I are diving into biographies this summer, starting with Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix, which is one of the coolest picture book biographies I’ve discovered. This one corresponds nicely with our cooking shows obsession. (Next up: Creekfinding: A True Story, which is a biography of an ecosystem rather than a person.)
at home
We’ve been cooped up for a couple of weeks with some yucky health stuff, so we’ve been binging obscene amounts of television. The kids discovered Malcolm in the Middle, which I missed when it was actually on but which is pretty fun to watch on Netflix.
I’m knitting up a few shawl-y things to keep me warm in the classroom this fall, and I think I’m going to start with this super-snuggly one.
Everyone is talking about Wonder Woman (and fair enough—it’s about time!), but I’m already counting down to the new Murder on the Orient Express. (You should watch the trailer just for Kenneth Branagh’s spectacular mustache.)
At Home with the Editors: Inside Amy’s 9th Grade
Every year, Shelli and Amy open the door and invite you to step inside their homeschool lives. (Please ignore the mess!) We talk about the resources we're using in our own homeschools and how we structure our days. There are lots of ways to homeschool, and we don't think our way is the best—just the one that happens to be working best for our particular families at this particular time. If nothing else, you will get a behind-the-scenes look in the homes of the editors of home / school / life, but if something here helps you, all the better! Today, Amy's talking about how she homeschooled 9th grade this year.
Because there’s a pretty significant age gap between my kids (six years), I decided to do two separate posts to make things easy for myself. Today, I’m sharing some of the resources I use with my 9th grader. (You can see what 7th grade and 8th grade looked like for us in the archives, and you can see my high school planning post here.)
So first things first: We survived our first year homeschooling high school! In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s been one of our most enjoyable homeschool years to date. I felt like we were trying to strike a difficult balance—I wanted to make things academic enough to prepare her for a competitive college (in case that’s what she decides to do) without giving up the fun parts of homeschooling that make the experience worthwhile. Overall, I think we succeeded reasonably well.
U.S. History and Literature
We did this as a sort of combination class, but I did go through the steps (they’re not difficult) to get my syllabus approved by the College Board so that we could call the history part AP U.S. History on her syllabus. For our spine, we used a pretty traditional textbook, The American Pageant. I am not a fan of textbooks generally speaking, but it helped to have the whole class outlined in one book. We supplemented with tons of books (if people are interested, I can do a 9th grade book list in a future post—Edited: I wrote one!), some of which we read together and some of which we read separately.
The big challenge with history — for us, anyway — was following such a specific timeline. We are year-round, as-we-go homeschoolers, so we’re used to taking our time with things. Having to cover a set amount of material within a set timeframe was a new thing for us and not always easy — we’d sometimes have to keep moving, even though we wanted to spend more time on something. (We kept a list of things we want to return to this summer, but it’s not the same.) We also did several practice tests and essays to prepare for the AP test this spring, something else we wouldn’t usually do. My daughter did well on her practice tests and said she felt good about the exam, but whatever score she ends up with, I think working toward a focused goal on a focused timeline was a good experience for her — but I definitely wouldn’t want every class to feel this narrow!
For literature, we worked our way through the Norton Anthology of American Literature (the condensed, two-volume 8th edition) and read a range of novels, from Hawthorne to Faulkner. (Favorite: The Great Gatsby. Least favorite: The Red Badge of Courage.) Our interest here was in what, specifically, made this literature American, and reading it as we studied U.S. History really helped with that, I think. Literature is always one of our favorite classes, and we did most of the readings together as readalouds. (We love readalouds.) We did read a lot of novels by white men this year, but I’m actually proud of that fact: We’ve done such a good job keeping a diverse reading list that we had to catch up on some classics this year.
We’d typically work on history three-ish days a week, reading a chapter in The American Pageant and working up a list of short-answer questions as we read. There are lots of online resources for this book, so we’d usually check our list of questions against one online to see how they compared. We do annotated reading, so we mark the text as we go, making notes, highlighting important terms, dates, and people, and summarizing key points as we’re reading. Each night, my daughter would use her annotated book to copy notes down into her history notebook — she enjoyed this part because she got to make her notebook pages aesthetically pleasing, and writing things down is almost always helpful for remembering them. We also made notecards for important people, terms, and events so that we could review them — we’d pull them out after dinner or when we were waiting at the doctor’s office or something, and flip through them together. And we’d do a three-question quiz for each other each week and grade it according to the AP test rubric— I feel like grading my answers was as helpful for her as writing her own. We’d read related books — sometimes together, sometimes separately — to broaden and deepen our understanding of different topics and to make sure our class included women and people of color in a meaningful way.
We read together every day, so literature is part of our daily routine. I have never found a literature curriculum that I really like, so I didn’t even try with high school — I knew I would be making it up myself. We read aloud together every day, but with the amount of reading we did, we also had to read on our own to keep up. Again, we do annotated reading, so we mark up our books for discussion as we go. (This does mean that we’re often reading books or parts of books twice—once together out loud and again to annotate. I’m a big believer in rereading, so this is fine with me.) We had a particular theme this year — what makes something American literature? — so that was the thread running through all our conversations. As usual, we wrote several short essays throughout the class and one large (25-page) research paper at the end of the class. We also continued our family poetry tradition by memorizing a poem every week or so — we focused on works by poets from the United States.
As far as the AP test goes, whatever her score ends up being, I think it was a good experience for us. We did have to call around to find a spot for her to take the test, which got a little stressful (though now I have a great place for future AP test-taking!), and we took two full practice tests before the actual test, which felt very school-y. She said she felt pretty confident coming out of the test, and she scored well on the practice tests, so at least I can feel like she was well-prepared. This is probably the first of a few AP classes that we’ll do for high school, so we can apply all the practical things we learned this year to future classes.
Comparative Literature
If you read the spring issue, you know all about how we put together our Studio Ghibli-themed comparative literature class, in which we watched Studio Ghibli’s adaptations of books, including The Secret World of Arrietty (an adapatation of The Borrowers), Tales from Earthsea (an adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea), Howl's Moving Castle (an adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle), and When Marnie Was There (an adaptation of When Marnie Was There), and compared them to the books. This was probably our favorite class.
Japanese
I’ve mentioned how sad I was when my daughter decided to trade Latin (which we’d done together since 3rd grade) for Japanese, but it’s awesome that she was so excited about something none of us really knew anything about. At first I thought we might be able to piece it together with an online program and a good textbook, but that did not prove successful, so we ended up hiring a native Japanese speaker for twice-a-week one-on-one lessons. This was not cheap, but it has been totally worth it — my daughter has learned a lot, and I have someone I can ask when a question comes up. (That was the hardest part of introducing something I really don’t know to our homeschool — not having someone to ask my stupid questions!) The books we ended up using were Japanese From Zero and the Genki textbook. My daughter’s not fluent or anything, but it’s helping her make sense of anime and manga in their original forms, which was one of her big goals, so I say it’s a win. We’ll be sticking to this plan for next year.
Schedule-wise, we used a similar pattern to the one we used when we were studying Latin: We make vocabulary flashcards and review them about three times a week. (My daughter loved making these because she got to write Japanese characters.) She’d study a chapter in the book with her tutor, then work on the exercises between sessions and go over her work with her tutor at their second session. About once a month, we’d all watch a Japanese movie with subtitles together — I am not sure this actually helped with her Japanese study, but it was a fun way to connect the rest of the family to her studies.
Math
I did nothing for math this year, and it was wonderful — Jason did it all, and he did it brilliantly. (If you are in Atlanta, he teaches a few classes, and I am not the only person who raves about his high school math teaching ability!) He has his own curriculum that he uses, but it’s basically a spiral approach that reinforces middle school concepts that kids might not have totally grasped while moving kids into high school math. He mixes up algebra, geometry, and trig, so that you’re always working on something new and on something that feels familiar, so he builds his student’s math confidence and skills at the same time. I was worried that it might not work for our daughter, but it’s been terrific. (And not that we are obsessed with test scores, but her math SAT score took a huge jump this spring.)
Science
High school science is really hard to homeschool — there’s just not a lot of good stuff out there. I wanted something that’s more rigorous than “oh, hey, here are these fun experiments,” but also something that still had lots of hands-on experiments (that I could swing in a reasonably equipped home laboratory) and that really explained scientific ideas. This year, we used Holt’s Physical Science, and while it was fine, it wasn’t earthshakingly great, and I ended up doing a ridiculous amount of supplemental book and lab hunting. Physical science covers a wide range of topics (from the laws of motion to geology), so tracking down good books and labs took a ton of research. It was worth the effort, though.
We did roughly a lesson a week, usually reading the text as a kind of orientation and then following up with a more engaging book about the topic at hand. We did an experiment for each topic, keeping a lab notebook for lab reports. (We’ve progressed beyond worksheets, so we just broke down the sections in her notebook so that she could give each section as much space as she wanted.) We usually did our experiments during the weekend, which was a time when I knew we could set up, perform, and clean up a lab without anyone having to get stressed out. (My daughter didn’t love this, so we’ll try something different in the fall.) As with history, she did annotated readings and transferred notes to her science notebook every day.
She also did a science fair project — none of our groups does a science fair, so it was really just her doing a project, but it sounds more fun to call it a science fair project. She had to come up with a question and a hypothesis, figure out a way to test it, and present her results. She really enjoyed this — I definitely want to incorporate more projects like this into her high school experience. (Maybe I can get a proper fair going at Jason’s school this year—it would be more fun to do this as a group, I think.)
Other Stuff
What I think of as “actual hands-on class time” took up more time this year, which I guess isn’t really surprising. My daughter found time to take a couple of Craftsy drawing classes (one was great and one was so-so — read the reviews before you sign up!), and she continued with her guitar lessons and worked on several crochet projects. She joined me and her 3rd grade brother for nature journaling occasionally, but it was definitely not a frequent occurrence this year. (That was a little sad for me, but she really did have a lot going on.)
As far as scheduling goes, we stuck (mostly) to our regular routine, which means my daughter started schoolwork whenever she woke up and felt ready—usually around 11 a.m. We’d work together for a few hours (usually about three), and she’d also do a couple of hours of work on her own, usually after the rest of us went to bed, which is when she likes to work. She did go to Jason’s math lab on Tuesdays and Fridays, so she had to wake up early on those days, and we did set the alarm for the one SAT practice test she took this year so that we could more accurately reflect the test conditions. Because our schedule is loose, there’s no compelling reason to implement an early morning start time, and my daughter really likes sleeping in. We’d sit down on Sunday evening and talk through the week ahead — what our schedule looked like, what we wanted to accomplish, any looming deadlines, etc. — and review the previous week together. My daughter kept up with her own schedule and deadlines — last year, there was a big learning curve with that, but this year, all went smoothly. Her transcript came together pretty easily, probably because we did so much big picture planning up front.
“The work we did last year to prep for high school—working on papers, practicing taking notes, setting concrete goals for classes, adding more to our to-do list—definitely helped make the transition easier. I highly recommend building some of those skills before you get to the classes that require you to use them on a regular basis.”
I think it helped that we’ve been homeschooling for several years now, so we know what works for us. It’s not as hard to plan out the year or figure out the right resources because we have a clear idea of what we want: We’re very bookish, and my daughter learns best through reading and writing, so we tend to build our year around those things. (That also happens to be how I learn best, so I got lucky there.) We like to go for depth rather than breadth, so we’re likely to build a framework that allows us to focus on a few specific areas instead of trying to recreate a survey class. I feel like we tried a lot of different things over the years to figure out what worked best for us, and now we kind of get to reap the rewards of those efforts, which is kind of nice.
I was nervous about homeschooling high school, but this ended up being such a great year — I think we both really enjoyed it once we figured out how to make it work. (The Japanese thing was hard to get sorted!) One of my big goals was not to lose the fun, relaxed spirit that I think is one of the best parts of homeschooling for us, and I think we managed that, even though the workload for both of us definitely increased. The work we did last year to prep for high school — working on papers, practicing taking notes, setting concrete goals for classes, adding more to our to-do list — definitely helped make the transition easier. I highly recommend building some of those skills before you get to the classes that require you to use them on a regular basis. I would say my two big lessons from this year were 1.) get help if you need it — you probably can’t teach everything, and 2.) don’t get so bogged down by details that you lose sight of what you want the big picture for your homeschool to be. Wrapping my head around homeschooling high school was a little scary, but I’m so glad we took the plunge. It’s so much fun.
Related Posts
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (6.6.17)
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!
Early voting has begun in the runoff being held in Georgia’s 6th congressional district! How is this pertinent to Library Chicken? Well, one of the early voting locations is very conveniently set in my Friendly Neighborhood Library. I’m thrilled to see the turnout—even in the first couple of days voting lines have occasionally been out the door. I’m less thrilled that my early-voting patriotic countrymen and women have been filling up the parking lot so that I have to park down the street if I want to actually use the library for its intended purpose. Also, the voting line blocks my hold shelf. BUT being that I am also a patriotic American and support the whole democratic process and all that I guess I can put up with it for a couple of weeks. (Seriously, I’m shocked by the lines. We never get lines for early voting—that’s the point. And everyone seems fairly patient and cheerful, which is nice.)
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 4: I Kissed a Squirrel and I Liked It
written by Ryan North, art by Erica Henderson
This Week in Comics: It is so much more difficult than it ought to be to read comics. Not actually the reading part—the figuring out what to read part. By now, I think I’ve got the hang of the fact that 1) the individual issues come out, 2) the issues are collected into a trade paperbacks, 3) which may then be further collected into a hardback. So when I started reading the current run of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, I read the hardback Vol. 1, collecting issues #1-8 (not to be confused with the paperback Vol. 1, collecting issues #1-4), and then jumped to the paperback Vol. 3, which collects issues #1-6 but that’s a completely different #1-6 because Marvel started the run over with another #1 issue so that Squirrel Girl had two #1’s in 2015 AND HOW IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO FIGURE THIS OUT. It feels like I spend more time researching a particular run to figure out what to check out at the library (Wikipedia is usually helpful, though not always up to date; Amazon sometimes tells you what a collection collects, but not always) than I do actually reading the thing. Squirrel Girl continues to be awesome, so I guess there’s that at least.
(LC Score: +2)
The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville
I love China Mieville. For me he’s in the same category as Neil Gaiman with brilliantly original horror-tinged fantasy. This slim novel is an alternate history (another favorite genre of mine) exploring the Surrealist political movement, about which I know virtually nothing (but conveniently for me, my daughter came home from her AP World History class earlier in the year talking about it, so I wasn’t as utterly lost as I might have been). In an alternate version of Nazi-occupied Paris, an explosion composed of Surrealism and occult energy has rearranged the city, so that Nazis and resistance fighters fight each other in a bizarre and unpredictable landscape while giant figures from various works of art, brought to life by the blast, stalk the streets. Plus, there are Nazi-summoned demons, just to make it interesting. A large chunk of the novel is populated entirely by actual historical figures, including Jack Parsons and Varian Fry (both of whom you should immediately Google if they are unfamiliar to you) and a whole bunch of Surrealist artists who I know nothing about but whose works I spent most of the novel looking up on the internet. Aside from being an all-around great book, this would be an amazing side read for a teen studying either art history (you could base an entire Surrealism curriculum on the references here) or resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris.
(LC Score: +1)
Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine
More alternate history! Here, Regency Britain has (as it was wont to do) colonized Mars and its inhabitants. (As it turns out, there is plenty of breathable atmosphere between the planets, which, yeah, seems fine to me. Carry on.) Arabella was born and raised on Mars, but her English mother, worried about her going native, has dragged her back to Earth, where Arabella learns of an assassination scheme against her brother back on Mars. There’s nothing for her to do but disguise herself as a cabin boy and take passage on one of the Marsmen clipper ships, hoping to get back there in time. This is a fun Regency steampunk adventure, and I’m looking forward to Arabella’s next outing.
(LC Score: +1)
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
This novel has been compared to Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, in part because it too was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and there are definitely some interesting parallels between the galactic empires portrayed in both books. Unlike Leckie, though, Lee concentrates almost completely on the military side, so if you’re in the mood for a hardcore space opera shoot-’em-up, this is the book for you. I got a bit lost in the all the world-building (which was well done, but left an awful lot unexplained) but I’ll be back for the sequel, which (conveniently) is coming out in just a week or two.
(LC Score: +1)
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race edited by Jesmyn Ward
Excellent collection of essays (plus a couple of poems) in many different styles from writers of color about their personal experiences with American racism past and present. Belongs on the shelf next to Coates’s Between the World and Me.
(LC Score: +1)
Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising by Jean Kilbourne
(Also published as Can’t Buy Me Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel.) In this 1999 book, Kilbourne, who’s spent decades studying how advertising depicts women, explores the effect advertising has on American culture, particularly its role in supporting addiction by pushing alcohol and tobacco while cynically devaluing the importance of human relationships. I read this as research for a class on Critical Thinking and the Media that I’ll be teaching in the fall and although I think Kilbourne occasionally overreaches (and of course the material is out of date) many of her points still stand.
(LC Score: +1)
The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
This glorious 650-page collection brings together every single Jeeves and Wooster short story ever written (with ONE exception, according to Wikipedia, but we’re ignoring that because otherwise it would bug me until I embarked on an obsessive quest to find that one last story, and frankly I’ve learned from experience that that sort of thing never turns out well). Anyway, as I said, it’s got all the Jeeves and Wooster stories and it’s been the reason I survived this homeschool year. I’ve used it as a read-aloud with my older kids in past years (because Wodehouse should be an important part of every homeschool curriculum) but we quit after a half-dozen stories or so. By then, you’ve seen just about every combination of Bertie’s-school-friend-in-crisis plus Jeeves-saves-the-day (and gets Bertie to stop wearing that horrible pair of trousers/vest/moustache/etc.) that you’re going to get. (I adore these stories, but originality is not their strong suit.) This year, however, with my younger kids, we just kept right on going. And the way 2017 has been, sometimes the only thing that got me up in the morning was knowing that we were going to start the day with Jeeves and Wooster. We didn’t make it all the way through—only to page 500 or so—but I polished off the last few stories myself and am now starting to reread all the novels in chronological order, beginning with Thank You, Jeeves, which under the circs (as Bertie would say) seems incredibly appropriate. I can’t wait to sneer at a cow creamer or two. HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED.
(LC Score: 0, off our homeschool shelf)
Library Chicken Score for 6/6/17: 7 Running Score: 46
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (a “cowboy noir” that’s been on my list for years)
Ink and Bone (The Great Library) by Rachel Caine (because you know me and books with “library” in the title)
Mister Monday by Garth Nix (reread for a Summer Reading write-up)
Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville (short story collection because I’m in the mood for more Mieville)
Hey, Homeschool Parents: Recognize Your Value
Without you, your family’s homeschool wouldn’t exist, so start giving yourself some credit for everything you do.
Without you, your family’s homeschool wouldn’t exist, so start giving yourself some credit for everything you do.
One of the biggest indicators of professional happiness may be how important your position really is, according to the Harvard Business Review. Lynchpin employees — employees whose work is essential to their organization’s success — felt their work was more meaningful, felt more committed to their work, and were less likely to experience burnout than their peers in less essential jobs. Even with the downsides that come with being essential — a heavy workload and tough decision making — lynchpin employees are just plain happier.
So what does this have to do with homeschooling? Well, homeschool parents are lynchpins, though we often fail to recognize that fact. Not convinced? Here are three criteria for determining whether your work is “lynchpin work:”
The work produced by lynchpin workers is essential to the organizational mission. (Whatever your reasons for homeschooling, you became a lynchpin worker the minute you opted into homeschooling.)
Lynchpin workers cannot be replaced or substituted easily. (Any homeschool mom who’s ever tried to take a day off can attest to how hard it can be to find someone else to cover your homeschool to-do list.)
The work of an organization would pretty much cease immediately if a lynchpin worker stops working. (Even classes that you outsource might slow down or stop if you weren’t around to run car service and homework support.)
I think most of us would have a hard time trying to argue that we don’t fit that criteria—so why is it so hard for homeschool parents to recognize how important we really are? It’s so much easier to hone in on the things we’re not doing well, the places where we miss the mark, our weaknesses, than to accept our basic essential-ness. And the more we fail to acknowledge how important we really are, the more we miss out on a major opportunity to be really happy in our homeschool lives.
Your challenge this week: Don’t be modest! Grab a journal, and jot down a list of all the things you do for your homeschool that no one else could do. Read through it slowly, pausing to remind yourself “yes, I do this, and it matters” for every item on your list.
Readaloud of the Week: The Eyes of the Amaryllis
In brief: Geneva Reade has waited thirty years for a message from her husband, whose ship the Amaryllis sank to its doom while she and her son watched from a cliff. Now that son has a family of his own, and when Geneva breaks her ankle combing the beach for a message she still believes will come from her lost husband, George’s daughter Jenny comes to help her grandmother. Geneva is less concerned with housework than with continuing her search for that long-awaited message, so Jenny takes her grandmother’s place on the shore, continuing her search and meeting another mysterious searcher with an agenda of his own.
What makes it a great readaloud? Babbitt’s novel is just spooky enough to keep you on the edge of your seat (but not spooky enough to keep you up at night), and its ragged edges leave plenty of fodder for conversation. It’s a lingering, atmospheric middle grades novel that gives readers credit for being able to draw their own conclusions. And its lyrical celebration of the sea’s lure is particularly lovely.
Be be aware: The resolution doesn't tie the story up in a neat bow.
Quotable: "Gran was not like other grandmothers, smelling of starch or mothballs, depending on the time of the year, and spending their time watering their plants. Gran stood straight and proud. Her face and arms were sunburned. And though she talked and listened, there always seemed to be something else on her mind, something far more absorbing than Christmas conversation."
Resource Review: News-O-Matic Is a Kid-Friendly Introduction to Current Events
Want to add more current events to your homeschool? The News-O-Matic app is an easy way to help your kids plug into what's happening in the world.
Several years ago I was searching for a way to share current events with my son, and I stumbled upon News-O-Matic in the app store. I am so glad I found it because my son loves it and learns so much from this award-winning newspaper for kids. Most importantly, I know he’ll learn about the big stories in kid-appropriate ways.
Every weekday, there are five, new stories written by real journalists, and it covers U.S., international news, sports, arts, science and more. Kids can interact with the app by writing to the editor, drawing pictures and even voting on their favorite stories. My son doesn’t do any of that, but he always loves it when I include News-O-Matic in his daily lessons.
He will curl up into a corner and pick the stories he wants to hear. He can read the stories himself, or he can play the audio and listen to someone read the story to him. There are often photos, maps and videos clips accompanying the stories. The app also provides Spanish translations, and there is definition and pronunciation support for hard words. There are some games on the app too, but my son rarely plays those.
My husband and I often whisper to each other, “News-O-Matic is so great!” because a week doesn’t go by when our son doesn’t tell us something he’s learned or seen on the app. Sometimes it’s a news story we’ve already read about on our regular media sites, or sometimes it’s something we know nothing about. My son is particularly interested in the stories about science or new inventions, so he keeps us up to date on that. I am also pleased with the history and geography lessons he has gotten just by reading stories on News-O-Matic. He was even able to follow the Presidential election through this app, and he received history lessons on past presidents during that time.
This app requires a subscription fee ($4.99/month or $49.99/year), but it’s been the best subscription I’ve ever committed to. You can try it for free for a month.
There is also a school version for $19.99 per year. Homeschoolers may be able to purchase this, but I don’t have experience with it.
- Learn more about News-O-Matic at http://press4kids.com/info/
- Read it online at https://www.newsomatic.org/
- Find it on iTunes or Google Play.
More from Shelli
Stuff We Like :: 6.2.17
So bummed to be missing the fun at the SEA conference this week, but I am getting to binge Phineas and Ferb with cuddles, so I am making out okay.
around the web
I’m such a deviant: The dangers of reading in bed
I’m avoiding the new Anne of Green Gables (a.k.a. That Series Which Must Not Be Named) by reading all the reasons we should love the 1980s classic version: “I think of Anne every time a strange man on the street tells me to smile. Young women are so often taught to make boys feel comfortable, even when they’re being total assholes, and Anne just . . . doesn’t do that.” Anne Shirley, feminist icon.
And speaking of Netflix television series, it looks like The Dark Crystal is getting the series treatment.
at home/school/life
on the blog: We’re kicking off our 2017 summer reading blog series with what to read next if you loved Swallows and Amazons
one year ago: How we plan to homeschool high school (hey, this actually turned out to be a pretty good plan!)
two years ago: Jackaby is a supernatural Sherlock Holmes—kinda sorta
reading list
Someone who knows me well sent me a copy of Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America's Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, which I devoured this week. If you are a nerdy book person who digs literary name dropping and behind-the-covers scoop on publishing, I can highly recommend this.
I’ve had A Most Magical Girl on my list, but now that it’s won the Readings Children's Book Prize, it’s also on my night table. Hoping this one will be a good readaloud.
With all the talk about “fake news,” I’m looking at putting together a history of journalism class (maybe for Jason’s school, maybe for my rising 10th grader, maybe just for me!). First on my reading list: Mightier Than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History.
at home
At our house, the real start of summer is when the pool opens! This is also the time of year when my children start to get really annoyed with having to answer “We don’t take summer breaks” when people ask them if they are excited about their summer breaks.
I bought new flip flops, and I kind of love them.
Cookie of the week: almond blueberry cookies
HSL Book Deal of the Day 6.1.17: The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family
It's no secret that we at HSL totally buy into Brontes mania, but the three sisters of literary legend make a great high school lit study, especially if you add this academic biography to your reading list. Even if you think you know all about Charlotte, Emily, and Anne (and Branwell—don't forget Branwell!), you'll discover new details in this deeply researched study. One of the best ways to learn how to write intelligently about literature is to read intelligent writing about literature—this book definitely fits the bill.
(Hey, are you a fan of the daily book deal? Leave a comment—we've been doing them for a couple of weeks and want to be sure we're not cluttering up the blog with stuff you don't want to see!)
We're highlighting our picks for best book deal of the day on the blog, but you can always find our favorite Kindle book deals here.
HSL Book Deal of the Day 5.31.17: Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution
The understanding of evolution didn't spring fully formed from the head of Darwin—though even in Darwin's own time, scientific thinkers who'd advanced pieces of theory were already being forgotten. Stott does a great job in this book of illuminating evolution's controversial intellectual history, from ancient Greece to Victorian England, pointing out that long before the Scopes trial, evolutionary ideas were shaking things up. A really fascinating read about a piece of science history that doesn't pop up in many places. I think we're going to do this as a readaloud this summer.
(Hey, are you a fan of the daily book deal? Leave a comment—we've been doing them for a couple of weeks and want to be sure we're not cluttering up the blog with stuff you don't want to see!)
We're highlighting our picks for best book deal of the day on the blog, but you can always find our favorite Kindle book deals here.
SUZANNE REZELMAN is home | school | life magazine’s Book Nerd. Subscribe to home/school/life to read her brilliant book recommendations and literary musings every issue. Your library list will thank you.