Library Chicken Update :: 12.5.17

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!

I’m back from Thanksgiving break with an extra-long list of books (read while digesting and/or having just a smidge more pumpkin pie). And if Thanksgiving’s over, that means it’s time to make up my holiday reading wishlist! (As in: I sure wish I had time to read all these books stacked all over my floor.)

The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

My Girl-Who-Reads-Woolf project continues with a reread of her first novel, where Europeans travel to the wilds of South America for rest and recuperation, desperate (and doomed) love affairs, and many intense discussions on Life, Truth, and Connection (and the impossibility of same in today’s bourgeois world). Plus: a guest appearance by Mrs. Dalloway!

(LC Score: +1)

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Landscape With Invisible Hand by M.T. Anderson

I’m a big fan of Anderson (especially his Pals in Peril series) and was excited to read this new YA novella about life on Earth after the arrival of the vuvv, an alien race that promises to deliver magical alien tech and a wonderful life for all. Not everything works out as planned, however, and it’s possible that Anderson is using this tale of alien invasion to comment on the dangers of imperialism and cultural appropriation. (SPOILER: That is DEFINITELY what he’s doing.) In fact, this would be a great conversation-starter (along with being a fun read) for middle and high schoolers as they are introduced to the (not so fun) idea of colonialism.

(LC Score: +1)

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Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A.S. King

And this was another great YA read with something to say about today’s world. Glory has just graduated from high school and is trying to figure out her future and deal with the long-delayed fallout of her mother’s suicide. Plus, the other day she and her best friend decided to drink a petrified bat (that is not a typo) and now Glory is having visions of a near-future Second American Civil War, which starts as a backlash to the feminist movement. King explores loss and friendship (and the loss of friendship) in original and memorable ways.

(LC Score: +1)

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This House is Haunted by John Boyne

“I blame Charles Dickens for the death of my father,” our Victorian narrator tells us in the opening sentence of this ghost story, as she explains how, after being orphaned, she was forced to become a governess and ended up in a strange empty mansion with her odd young charges and no other adults in sight. And YES, I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS, LET’S GO. Unfortunately, if you’re going to write about an isolated governess in a possibly haunted house, The Turn of the Screw sets a very high bar, and this story has too few surprises and drags on a bit too long to fulfill my initial excitement. (Also, when the governess tries to get help from the townsfolk because she’s living in a CLEARLY HAUNTED HOUSE THAT HAS ALREADY KILLED HER THREE PREDECESSORS they all treat her like she’s crazy, and I found that very annoying. IT’S SUPER OBVIOUSLY HAUNTED, PEOPLE.)

(LC Score: +1)

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Slade House by David Mitchell

Haunted houses everywhere! This novella, a companion to Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks (and the extended universe he’s apparently creating across all of his novels), tells the story of Slade House, occupied by “soul carnivores” who must feed every nine years. We learn its secrets from a series of doomed narrators (the first one, an autistic boy, is especially compelling) as the house reappears briefly and then vanishes on its nine-year cycle, leading to mysterious disappearances among the locals. I enjoyed this, but it did feel more like a DVD-extra or bonus track (is there a term for the literary version of that?) than a strong, stand-alone story.

(LC Score: +1)

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House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

And while I’m reading about haunted houses, it must be finally time to tackle this massive piece of metafiction. I love this kind of epistolary-plus storytelling, where we have different narrators telling different sections of the story that may themselves take the form of letters, transcripts, diagrams, and everything else, so it’s no surprise that I was completely caught up in this tale of a not-so-ordinary suburban house with corridors that appear and disappear and change shape in very disturbing fashion. It wasn’t quite as scary as I was expecting — perhaps because I’ve heard so much about it and have read other works that were obviously inspired by it — although Chapter Nine did give me a headache. Still totally worth it.

(LC Score: +1)

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The Whalestoe Letters by Mark Z. Danielewski

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about me, but I’m something of a completist (see: my Alcott-adjacent reading project, my Georgia history reading project, my Bronte sister reading project, my Girl-Who-Reads-Woolf project, etc. etc.) so once I learned that Danielewski had published this addition to House of Leaves, containing material that was mostly already published in that book as an appendix but WITH SEVERAL ADDITIONAL PAGES I of course had to check it out. As it turns out, I couldn’t really tell the new stuff from the old. Probably not worth it (unless you’re a fellow obsessive), though it only took an hour or so to read so no big deal.

(LC Score: +1)

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I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas

From the dismayingly Lovecraftian hallways of the House of Leaves we go to a murder mystery set at a Lovecraft convention in Providence, RI. It begins promisingly (and appropriately) with first-person narration from the corpse, who is inexplicably missing his face. As a long-term attendee of various science fiction conventions (only 269 days until DragonCon 2018, y’all!) I am always up for a literary glimpse of fandom, but Mamatas lost me when he depicted pretty much all of Lovecraft fandom as a sad, pathetic group of racist, sexist losers. Granted, Lovecraft himself was something of a racist, sexist loser, but that view ignores all of the recent amazing writing from diverse authors bringing Lovecraftian horrors to the modern world in creative and continually surprising ways. (See Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country and Ellen Datlow’s two anthologies, Lovecraft Unbound and Lovecraft’s Monsters, to name just a few.) When depicting fandom, the line between affectionate mockery and vicious satire can be hard to define (and varies with the eye of the beholder), but if you’re in the mood for a murder at a con, may I suggest Sharyn McCrumb’s Bimbos of the Death Sun — though I should warn you that younger readers may need to google ‘floppy disc’ and other 80s relics to understand certain plot points.

(LC Score: +1)

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Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls

So basically at this point I’m reading big thick biographies of Thoreau so I can put off finally reading Walden, which I’m not looking forward to but should really read because I’m doing this whole Transcendentalist thing right now and it’s an American masterpiece and I think of myself as a well-read person and all that. (I had to have read excerpts in high school, right? If so, I have completely blocked it out, which doesn’t make me eager to give it another go.) Whatever my motivations, though, I enjoyed this biography of the (often annoying) Thoreau. Walls is clearly a Big Fan, but she tells an engaging story and I appreciated her often insightful commentary on the Transcendentalist movement in general.

(LC Score: +1)

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The Modern Tradition: An Anthology of Short Stories edited by Daniel F. Howard

The Short Story: Fifty Masterpieces edited by Ellen C. Wynn

I’m teaching a short story course next semester, which means I get to pick a bunch of stories for the syllabus! And I probably should have started figuring the list out earlier! Especially as it’s been a long long time since I’ve read most of these! That said, I’m enjoying my trip down short-story lane — I’ve read novels almost exclusively for the past couple of decades, but I think that’s going to change. These collections contain stories and authors that have stood the test of time, so I was rereading old standbys (“Young Goodman Brown”) and finally reading classics that I’ve never quite gotten around to (“The Metamorphosis”) and discovering authors that I’ve heard of but never read and it turns out they’re awesome and I should read more of their stuff immediately (Doris Lessing). Also it turns out that I’ve been confusing Flannery O’Connor with Carson McCullers and I actually kind of like O’Connor? (Another blow to my long-standing prejudice against Southern Gothic fiction.) Anyway, it’s possible that I’ve picked up another dozen or so anthologies (i.e., more books that I can possibly read before the start of next semester) to keep me busy over the holidays. (I appear to be in an even more obsessive mood than usual these days.)

[Editor's note: Ahem.]

(LC Score: +2)

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Sadly, even with Thanksgiving break I was unable to keep up with all those due dates and my RETURNED UNREAD score for this week stands at a very disappointing -8. I feel like I owe my library branch an apology. (LC Score: -8)

Library Chicken Score for 12/5/17: 3
Running Score: 118 ½

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

• The Evolution Man, Or How I Ate My Father by Roy Lewis (my dad has been bugging me to read this)
• Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin (because my middle schoolers are reading Oliver Twist)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life by Joan D. Hendrick (because I’m gradually moving from the Transcendentalists to the abolitionists)
• The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (over 1000 pages of spooky and upsetting stories that almost certainly will not make it onto next semester’s syllabus!)

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Stuff We Like :: 12.1.17

It’s December!

Around the web

Ooh, I love this list of alternatives to books by Dead White Men.

A great (and upsetting) breakdown of why net neutrality matters to your everyday Netflix habit

I loved this: The beginning of silent reading changed Westerners’ interior life

This essay asks some good questions: Have white women colonized children’s literature? And if so, what can we do to change things?

At home/school/life

on the blog: You don’t have to teach geography to have kids who know geography

also on the blog: The Greenglass House is the perfect early winter readaloud

one year ago: An Ellis Island unit study

two years ago: Rebecca reviewed a curriculum designed to put the fun back in the holidays

three years ago: Mindful homeschool: I am thankful for my homeschool life

Reading List

After many, many recommendations, I am finally getting around to The Fifth Season, the first book in N.K. Jemison’s Broken Earth series, and I am already so hooked that I am hiding in the bathroom to finish a chapter. Please let it keep being this good.

I’m reading Othello with my AP English class, and I am completely obsessed this read-around with the idea that Iago is a stand-in for Shakespeare — he’s totally stage-managing the entire play, right down to creating the dialogue for people to say. This is weirdly fascinating to me — what could it mean if Shakespeare sees himself in Iago’s “motiveless malignancy?” One of my students really needs to write a paper about this.

Also in work-related reading: Plato’s Symposium, which is so much easier going than the Republic, especially when reading them back-to-back.

I have already bought two copies of this book to give as holiday presents. 

At home

We’re moving on to Project Runway Junior season two! I’m also looking forward to getting through season 2 of Stranger Things, season 2 of Agent Carter, and season 3 of Broadchurch over the break, even though that seems pretty ambitious.

I am sort of hooked on this Civil War podcast. I have added another loop to my morning dog walk to fit in more listening time.

I do not feel ready for the holidays, but I am hoping making some tiny sufganiyot this weekend will help get me in the spirit.

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A Start-Here Plan for New Homeschoolers

We just started homeschooling, and honestly, I’m feeling overwhelmed. I don’t know where to start. Is there some kind of start-here strategy for new homeschoolers?

Well, a lot of people will tell you to research, research, research to find the curriculum that’s right for you — and you can find discussions all over the internet with people doing just that, obsessing over the details in this program versus that program and discussing how they’ve adapted or used a particular curriculum. There’s a lot of good information out there when you’re ready to start shopping, but I think it can feel intimidating to someone who’s just getting started homeschooling. 

That’s why I’d actually recommend avoiding the whole curriculum buying process for at least the first six months of your homeschool life. It’s so easy to get bogged down in curriculum and methods and to miss out on one of the most important pieces of getting your homeschool up and running: the process of figuring out how your particular homeschool works best. Honestly, I think most people shouldn’t buy any curriculum that costs more than $50 during their first year of homeschooling. Really — how are you going to know what curriculum is right for your homeschool when you haven’t even had a chance to see your homeschool in action yet? It takes a few months just to find your homeschool’s rhythm and get comfortable with your new routine. It takes a few months to get to know your child as your student and yourself as your child’s learning facilitator. So instead of committing to a curriculum plan right away, I suggest skipping the big decisions and making it simple for yourself by opting to get your homeschool started with a unit study.

A unit study, you probably know, is basically just picking a topic that interests you and focusing on it. (When we started homeschooling back when my daughter was in 2nd grade, we started with a unit study on the constellations.) Depending on your child’s age and interests, you might choose any number of topics to explore: Minecraft, Jane Austen, evolution, bugs, westward expansion in the United States, baking, and art history are among the wild mishmash of possibilities we’ve explored through unit studies, but the possibilities really are endless. Start with one book, and see where it takes you — a unit study can be as big or as brief as your interest and can scale up or down to meet your child at her interest and ability level. (You can check out some unit study inspiration from the HSL archives here.)

There are a few advantages to the unit study approach for new homeschoolers. For starters, you can do it for free — or mostly free — with a little help from online resources and your library. For another, you can choose any topic that you and your child are both interested in, which will make the project more pleasant for both of you. With a unit study, you’ve got a narrow, clear focus that’s easy to build around, so you won’t have the burden of that “How will I ever learn everything I need to teach her?” stress. And best of all, a unit study gives you the opportunity to see how your child learns and works. Maybe she’s a terrific writer. Maybe she learns best when she’s making charts and graphs. Maybe she likes to take notes. You’ll also see where you’re a good facilitator: Maybe you’ll find that you’re looking forward to reading aloud, or you can’t wait for nature study every day. It’s fun to do something you’re both interested in every day, which will help both of you feel like your homeschool is off to a great start.

If you’re just starting homeschooling for the first time, the information you gain from engaging in this first unit study will be invaluable when you decide you’re ready to move on to curriculum shopping: If your daughter hates working on the computer, you’re not going to want to buy an online math curriculum. If she’s passionate about reading, you may want to look for a history plan that focuses on living books. Those are things you might not know if you jumped right into experimenting with curricula. Giving yourself a little breathing space before you dive in full-force can help you avoid making the kinds of mistakes that frustrate you, your student, and your homeschooling budget.

This Q&A was originally published in the fall 2015 issue of HSL.

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Need help getting started? You can download our free New Homeschooler Cheat Sheet for a step-by-step guide to figuring out your happiest homeschool.

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I Don’t Teach Geography

You don't have to use a curriculum to learn a lot about geography. Here's how Shell's family does it.

Someone who was worried about our decision to homeschool asked, “Do you teach geography?” Considering how much the person asking knew about geography, I have no idea where that came from. The problem with these kinds of questions is that the questioner does not realize that homeschooled kids can learn quite differently than their public school peers. So on one hand, I could answer truthfully, “No, I don’t teach geography.” But on the other hand, I could also answer, “My kids know a lot about geography.” My 11-year-old, especially, knows much more about geography than I did at his age. (And I went to public school!)

The question made me start thinking about how we have learned about geography because I have never bought a formal geography curriculum. I have never checked out a book from the library that would teach my kids map skills. But my son knows how to read a map, he knows all the continents and several of the country names in our world, and he even knows what kind of terrain exists in most places of the world. He even knows what the people and cultures of some other countries are like. How does he know all this, if I didn’t plan any lessons?

Well, when you are a curious, love-to-explore, documentary-watching, globe-and-map-using kind of family, you’re going to learn elementary geography and then some.

Here are just a few ways my kids have learned about geography without any formal lessons:

First of all, we own a globe. When we watch documentaries, we pull it out because we’re curious to know exactly where the place is that we’re seeing on the T.V. My eight-year-old, especially, loves to get the globe and find places on it.

We also own a lot of maps. We own a map of our state, and we’ve pulled it out when we’re traveling somewhere. We also own maps of all the states we’ve traveled to. During our trip out west, my eleven-year-old kept our Rand McNally Atlas by his side most of the way, often looking at it to see where we were. His younger brother looked over his shoulder.

Also, puzzles! We have a United States puzzle with the names and capitals of each state on it. We have a world map puzzle, and we also have a book of puzzles for each continent in the world. The boys love working on puzzles again and again, so these map puzzles are popular in our house. 

I also snatched up a box of National Geographic U.S.A. ©1978 maps at a library book sale for $5. These were the same maps my dad owned when I was a girl, and I longed to look at them. I pestered him about them, but he would never let me touch them. Well, guess what? My boys and I pull them out whenever we want. They may be a little outdated, but they have gorgeous illustrations and details about each state’s history and recreational sites. 

At some point while looking at our maps, I’ve briefly talked to the boys about the compass, legend and scale on the map. I’ve also told them about latitude and longitude. (This has also come up in discussions about how ships navigate the oceans.) I’m sure over the next few years, we’ll have plenty of other reasons to look at maps, so this will come up again. How can they not learn about it?

While we’re speaking about maps, I shouldn’t fail to mention Google Earth. My boys love exploring Google Earth. They have zoomed down to Mt. Everest and even found the beach we visited once in Florida. Also, they are constantly looking over my shoulder as I use Google Maps on my phone to navigate our way through unfamiliar places.

Learning about maps is just a small part of geography, though. Geography also has to do with the terrain and how humans interact with the landscape around them. I can’t think of a better way to learn about this (besides traveling) than through our daily dose of documentaries. Everyday at lunchtime, my husband, two boys and I watch part of a documentary. Most of what we watch are nature documentaries, but we also watch science and history documentaries. We occasionally watch travel shows or cooking shows that take us to other parts of the world too. (See below for a few recommendations.)

It would take a book-length blog post to describe what we’ve seen and learned through these documentaries. My boys have watched people in the Arctic ice fishing, native tribes in the Amazon hunt for food, and they’ve seen the ancient practice of fishing with cormorants in Asia. They know where the taiga, tundra, and the rain forests are located. They also know about the efforts of the North American Prairie Reserve, which we try to support when we can.

When I think about how I learned about geography in schools – through a textbook and drawing a map of my neighborhood – it’s no wonder that I didn’t truly appreciate this subject until I began to explore it in a different way with my kids. While I do plan lessons for reading, writing, math and history, geography – at least elementary geography – is easily learned by owning a few maps, being curious, watching documentaries, and reading interesting books about the world. I guess the one thing I’ve failed to tell the boys is “This is geography!” I think I’ll do that tomorrow.

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DOCUMENTARIES WE LIKE

Many documentaries take you to other places and teach you about people, animals and the land they inhabit, but here are a few documentaries I especially recommend for your social studies and geography lessons.

If you watch only one documentary series about our planet and the humans that inhabit it, it should be this one: Human Planet (We found it on Netflix.)

The following are several series that I like to call the “Wildest Series.” These are some of the most educational documentaries we’ve ever watched, and we learned about wildlife we never knew existed. Look for these and others like them on Netflix.

• Wildest Indochina

• Wildest Arctic

• Wildest Islands

• Wildest India

• Wildest Middle East

Planet Earth is so popular that you’ve probably already seen it, but I couldn’t leave it off this list. It’s available now on Netflix.

See how humans have changed their planet in Generation Earth. If you love engineering, it’s a must see.

For a list of all the documentaries I recommend, see my Pinterest board.

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Stuff We Like :: 11.24.17

Our mandatory Thanksgiving mishap: On Wednesday, I accidentally made my shortbread crust for the lemon bars out of the cornbread for Jason’s dressing. Oops. (They actually weren’t bad. I did have to make more cornbread, though.)

around the web

Why, yes, thank you I would like to read about Russia’s version of the Bronte sisters VERY MUCH.

And obviously I would also be VERY INTERESTED in reading about the challenges of writing a biography of the actual Brontes.

This is crazy and interesting in a terrifying way: the zombie diseases of climate change

at home/school/life

on the blog: Native American history reading lists for high school, middle school, and elementary school

also on the blog: We kicked off our Books for People Who Love Books series with ideas for readers who love Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time

one year ago: Gift ideas for people who love Norse mythology (must be that time of year)

two years ago: The truth about having it all

three years ago: Homeschooling isn’t always easy—so why do we do do it?

reading list

Some people bring a bottle of wine to Thanksgiving dinner, but your real friends bring you a copy of The RBG Workout: How She Stays Strong . . . and You Can Too! (Y’all, Justice Ginsberg is hard core!)

We always start a series this time of year to carry us through the holidays, and this year we’re rereading the Moomins, starting with The Moomins and the Great Flood.

I read a couple of comfort-y books while all the Thanksgiving cookery was going on: Winona of the Campfire (Campfire Girls earning badges—well, beads, but same idea), Strawberry Acres (poor relations inherit tumble-down country house!), and The Ivy Tree (imposters! inheritances! scheming!).

at home

We are having so much fun watching Project Runway Junior together. My son has even borrowed my sewing machine for some creations of his own. (No crop tops and skirts, though, he wants everyone to know!)

Thanksgiving break means lots of board games at our house! We played our old favorite (Adventure Time Munchkin—which is more fun if you get the expansion pack and your kids always let you play BMO) and Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle, which we got last year and really enjoy.

I feel like my life might not be complete until I have this paper clip holder for my desk. (I realize this is totally superficial, but isn’t it kind of fabulous?)

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Great Books for Studying Native American History: Elementary

We’re highlighting some of the elementary books we think do a great job illuminating Native American history.

We couldn’t fit all of our favorite Native American history books in the fall issue of the magazine, so we’re running our favorite middle and elementary school books on the HSL blog. Today, we’re highlighting some of the elementary books we think do a great job illuminating Native American history. Add them to your U.S. History studies for a more inclusive study of the past, or use them as a jumping-off point for a study of Native Americans.

If you’d like a spine to structure your Native American studies around, I recommend The People Shall Continue by Simon J. Ortiz. With language subtly echoing the cadences of the Native American oral tradition, this short picture book traces the history of North America’s original inhabitants from the world’s creation to the present day. Though it’s a small book, it contains many jumping-off points for additional reading and discussion, and it manages to balance hope for and celebration of the People with a respectful treatments of the suffering and hardship that has been their history for most of the life of the United States.

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I think everyone should follow up Little House in the Big Woods with Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House. Like Little House, The Birchbark House chronicles the work and celebrations of life through the seasons as seen by a young girl named Omakayas. Omakayas is a child of the Ojibwa people who live in an island in Lake Superior in the 1840s, and like young Laura, she both observes and participates in the rituals and routines of her family and community. 

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Joseph Bruhac’s Children of the Longhouse tells the story of life among the Mohawk  Bear Clan from the perspective of two 11-year-old twins: brother Ohkwa’ri and sister Otsi:stia. Like The Birchbark House, it follows a seasonal cycle, the highlight of which is the big Tekwaarathon game — it’s a version of lacrosse with a sprawling field of play. There are a lot of lovely details here about how clan decisions are made, the different roles people play in the clan, and the traditional festivals and celebrations of the Mohawk people. I especially like that it highlights the importance of women in Mohawk society.

(And when you’ve read that, you’ll probably want to read more about Tekwaarathon and other Native American games, so pick up Bruhac’s Native American Games & Stories.)

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Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom is a lovely story that touches on two dark slices of U.S. history. Martha Tom and her Choctaw community live on one side of Mississippi’s Bok Chitto River, which offers the promise of freedom to the slaves who live on the other side — if they can just get to the other side of the river, they’ll be free. Martha Tom befriends an enslaved boy named Mo, whose dream of freedom becomes urgent when his mother is sold to another plantation. 

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The Choctaw similarly come to the rescue in The Long March. The Choctaw have only recently been resettled by the Long March west, which led to much death and hardship for their people, but when they hear about the potato famine in Ireland, the Ahitabo Apat Okla — the potato-eating people — want to help. Young Choona can’t understand why his people would ever want to help the European people who have injured them so deeply, but his great-grandmother reminds him that it’s precisely because the Choctaw have suffered that they should help others: “We have walked our trail of tears. The Irish people walk it now. We can help them as we could not help ourselves.”

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Eve Bunting’s Cheyenne Again focuses on another often-forgotten chapter of Native American-United States relations: the forced removal of Native American children to “Indian boarding schools” during the late 1800s. Young Bull is sent away to school where he learns to act, talk, look, and think like a “white man,” but his heart remains firmly connected to his heritage. 

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It’s hard to read about some topics with younger children because you’re constantly walking that fine line between informing and horrifying. I think Only the Names Remain: The Cherokees and the Trail of Tears does this really well — it doesn’t sugarcoat or soften the forced removal of thousands of people from their homes or the journey that would kill one out of four people who undertook it, but it maintains a matter-of-fact, informative tone that doesn’t add melodrama to the tragedy. Bealer quietly shows the ways in which the young United States made tragic choices that failed to live up to their new ideas of freedom and democracy.

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Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scorecard (11.21.17)

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!

Happy Thanksgiving! All of us at Library Chicken HQ wish all of you a delicious turkey dinner (or vegetarian entree of your choice) and a stack of fresh library books to keep you occupied while you’re digesting. And now, to the books!

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

I love reading stories about older women who reach a point in their lives (after the children are grown) where they get to decide what they want to do without considering anyone else’s needs or feelings. (Maybe that says something about my life, after spending nearly 20 years as a stay-at-home mom. But nah, probably not.) This novel falls into that category: an 88-year-old matriarch, for many years a diplomatic and political hostess at her accomplished (and now deceased) husband’s side, is finally able to direct her own life. Predictably, her adult children are horrified by her choices. In the hands of another writer (maybe Angela Thirkell?), this could be a charming tale of eccentricity, with a pair or two of young folks getting married off along the way; as written by Sackville-West, it’s more contemplative and philosophical, but still charming. (LC Score: +1)

Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West by Matthew Dennison

After reading Virginia Woolf’s biography, I had to find a biography about the inspiration for Woolf’s Orlando, the scandalous Vita Sackville-West, who became a popular and successful author while juggling her many lovers. Unfortunately, I found Dennison’s narrative of Vita’s life often muddled and confusing, and while that may be a reflection of her admittedly confusing affairs, it’s hard to believe this lackluster biography could have been inspired by such a fascinating woman. I get the sense that Dennison doesn’t actually like Vita all that much. This was fine for an introduction, but I’ll have to go on the hunt for a book that does a better job of showing Vita’s charm and attractiveness. (LC Score: +1)

Below Stairs by Margaret Powell

Servants’ Hall by Margaret Powell

From the lady of the manor to the kitchen staff: as the subtitle will tell you, Below Stairs is “The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey.” Published in 1968, it was an immediate hit and led to Powell’s follow-up, Servants’ Hall. In this second book, Powell shares the story of a real-life “upstairs downstairs” romance (and eventual marriage) between a beautiful housemaid and the much older son of the house. Since this is not, in fact, a gorgeously produced BBC epic, things do not end well. (LC Score: +2)

Minding the Manor: The Memoirs of a 1930s English Kitchen Maid by Mollie Moran

Moran is a much more recent author; this memoir of her downstairs life wasn’t published until 2014, when the former kitchen maid turned 97 (!!!). I actually found Moran’s account more enjoyable than Powell’s better known books, perhaps because Moran herself is great fun and actually seems to like her fellow servants and (at least some of) her former employers. (LC Score: +1)

The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House 1918-1939 by Adrian Tinniswood

Humph. I was all ready for more tales from the manor and the subtitle here led me to believe that this book would dive into the wonderfulness that was English country house life between the wars (which apparently was awesome, as long as you were white, titled, and rich, but hey, who doesn’t like to spend the occasional hour imagining themselves as one of the fortunate few at the local stately home), but instead it was mostly about ARCHITECTURE. With the occasional chapter on INTERIOR DESIGN. The Amazon description even says, “Drawing on thousands of memoirs, letters, and diaries, as well as the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and bibulous butlers, Tinniswood brings the stately homes of England to life as never before,” but DO NOT BE FOOLED. I was promised “aristocratic soirées” and I got modernist layouts in Country Life. Not cool, Tinniswood, not cool at all. (LC Score: +1)

The Secrets of Wishtide by Kate Saunders

I’m giving up on the Edwardians and going back to hang out with the Victorians. In this mystery, widowed Laetitia Rodd acts as sleuth, investigating cases for her lawyer brother. Amy recommended this one and as usual, she was right! Now we just need Saunders to finish up the sequel. (LC Score: +1)

Library Chicken Score for 11/21/17: 7

Running Score: 116 ½

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

• This House is Haunted by John Boyne (my Halloween reading has finally made it to the top of the stack)
• Slade House by David Mitchell (another mysterious house from my fav Mitchell)
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (finally getting to this and I have no idea what to expect)
• The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi (I love a good theme)

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Great Books for Studying Native American History: Middle School

We couldn’t fit all of our favorite Native American history books in the fall issue of the magazine, so we’re running our favorite middle and elementary school books on the HSL blog. Today, we’re highlighting some of the middle grades books we think do a great job illuminating Native American history. Add them to your U.S. History studies for a more inclusive study of the past, or use them as a jumping-off point for a study of Native Americans.

If you want a texbook-type spine for your study, the Bedford Series in History and Culture has several excellent books about Native American History, including The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America and Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era. I think these books do a great job choosing primary source documents to highlight, and middle school is exactly the right time to start dipping your toe into this kind of critical reading.

Similarly, Cavendish Square publishes the middle grades nonfiction series Peoples of North America, which captures the history and culture of different Native American tribes, including photographs, art, snapshots of daily life (in both history and modern times), and a traditional folk tale. Titles include The People and Cultures of the Apache, The People and Cultures of the Crow, The People and Cultures of the Huron, The People and Cultures of the Delaware, and The People and Cultures of the Inuit. A collection of these books makes an excellent (if not cheap) mini research library.

But I think fiction is often the most accessible way for middle grades readers to dig into history, so the majority of this list focuses on historical fiction. Joseph Bruhac has written several books about Native American history, but Hidden Roots is a particularly good pick for middle grades. In it, Sonny — a shy boy living in 1950s New York — discovers the dark side of his family’s Native American heritage, including the Native American Sterilization Program and its devastating effects on the Abenaki and Mohican people. This book is hard to read — I mean, obviously, it’s about genocide, and we have a big problem when that gets easy to read about — but it’s well done and sensitively balanced enough for most middle school readers to handle.

Similarly dark, How I Became a Ghost: A Choctaw Trail of Tears Story tackles another dark chapter in U.S. history, chronicling the forced removal of Native American tribes through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy who can see the future and knows that he —and many others — will die on the trail. That doesn’t matter so much, though, because ghosts have their own part to play in Native American life, and storytelling is part of that. The book is written by an Oklahoma Choctaw storyteller, and it’s heavily based on the stories of actual Choctaw people. 

In the free verse novel Who Will Tell My Brother?, a part-Native American high school senior who has just begun to connect with his Native American roots, goes to battle against his school’s racist mascot. (Think the Washington Redskins or the Atlanta Braves.) It’s a quiet, powerful book that illuminates why it’s worth “making a fuss” about words we use and mascots we choose.

Indian Shoes reads like a series of glimpses into contemporary Native American life. In this collection of interrelated short stories (they read almost like vignettes), Ray — a half-Seminole, half-Cherokee boy who lives with his Grampa Halfmoon in Chicago.

Half-Lakota Jimmy McLean is the official protagonist of In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse, but Tasunke Witko (a.k.a. “Crazy Horse”) is the real hero of the book. Author Joseph Marshall (also a Lakota) paints him as a larger-than-life hero, a Luke Skywalker poised against the Galactic Empire of the United States. It’s an amazing story about a man who fought to protect his people and his culture from the encroaching United States. Crazy Horse’s story becomes a touchstone for Jimmy, who is struggling with being not-quite-Lakota and not-quite-standard-Caucasian.

Sherman Alexie is pretty much required reading for modern-day Native American studies, and his The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is already a classic. Junior wants to be a cartoonist, so he takes his learning into his own hands and enrolls in the town high school instead of the school on the Spokane Indian Reservation where he’s always gone. His new school comes with a big learning curve (and an Indian mascot), and the story is as much about the problematic experiences of modern-day Native American kids — where do they fit in? — as on Junior’s Everyteen experiences figuring out who he really is. An excellent book for more mature middle schoolers, though you may want to make sure it’s a good match for your particular kid.

The Trickster figure appears in many Native American tales, and the graphic novel Trickster: Native American Tales puts this mischief-making character front and center.  Because it tries to include tales from across the continent, the collection feels a little mishmash-y, and some readers were put off by the simplicity of the tales and lack of sophistication in the artwork. Fair enough. But it’s a solid collection of stories from different tribes about the many manifestations of the Trickster, and I think a lot of middle schoolers would enjoy it.

Just for fun, check out the comic Super Indian, about a totally ordinary Reservation boy who develops superpowers after eating tainted government cheese. There are plenty of sly pokes at Native American stereotypes that kids will have fun pointing out.

Bonus: We Shall Remain isn’t a book, but this American Experience series (it includes five 90-minute episodes) is a fascinating look at three hundred years of U.S. history from the perspective of Native American peoples, from 1600s New England to the Civil Rights movement of the 20th century.

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Stuff We Like :: 11.17.17

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, though we try to celebrate it as a pause of thankfulness and not as a piece of U.S. mythology. I can’t wait to spend a few days cooking together, eating lots of good food, and reading together every night.

Around the web

The life of a homework assignment

It can be complicated to love T.S. Eliot, so I really appreciated this essay about reconciling the impact of his poetry (which was truly life-altering for me) with its implicit racism and classism.

A really good read about understanding how information disorder — a.k.a. “alternative facts news” — actually works

True story! Why canceling plans is so satisfying

In case you’re planning to up your style game for Thanksgiving, I give you Get the Look: Baba Yaga

At home/school/life

On the blog: 12 great book series to read together

one year ago: Gift ideas for people who love The Hobbit (ooh, I might get that Gashlycrumb Hobbit shirt for someone this year!)

two years ago: How to make a simple Thanksgiving wreath

three years ago: How unschooling shaped my social life

Reading list:

Our book club pick for December is The Golden Compass, so I’m kind of thrilled to have an excuse to read it again. Philosophically, I am torn sometimes about rereads — there are so many books and so little time — but practically, I do a lot of rereading, and it usually makes me very happy.

I can never resist a good historical scandal, so I guess no one will be surprised that I picked up Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England. I always enjoy Alison Weir’s books in spite of — well, actually, maybe because of — her tendency to come up with the occasional wacky theory. (The best one here is that Edward II didn’t actually get murdered by Isabella but went off to become a hermit.) I would read books about British monarchs all day long, but this one really was fun.

I’m moving on to Sophocles with my humanities class after the break, so I’m reading Antigone again, too.

At home

I am at the point where I make the same things for Thanksgiving every year because everybody has a “favorite thing” that it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving dinner without. I am mixing things up with the turkey this year and making this gorgeous lacquered turkey from Bon Appetit. (My have-to-have for Thanksgiving is au gratin potatoes made with Boursin cheese — they are basically pure fat in a Le Creuset since you make them by melting a cake of cheese into heavy cream — but I love them as a once-a-year indulgence.)

The kids and I have been playing Super Mario Odyssey together lately — they love video games so much, and I try to make an effort to play a couple of games a year with them to stay connected to what they care about and they try to make an effort not to be annoyed because I’m always forgetting which button makes your Mario jump.

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Tips to Help Homeschool Your Perfectionist Child

In my early homeschooling days, I was sidelined by a perfectionist child. I had high hopes of correcting everything that went wrong in public school, and worked diligently to close every learning gap. I read up on every method of homeschooling there was, and chose only the best curriculum I could find. Then I started to homeschool my oldest, and my plan quickly derailed. This child had learned a level of perfectionism that no one could compete with. In her eyes, every math problem must be correct, every bit of prose perfectly written—and rewritten, and written yet again. Art was a disaster—especially anything that required free-form expression. The lack of structure was anxiety producing to her, and the constant revamping and start-overs led to a mishmash of art that looked more like mud pies. 

The early days in homeschooling my perfectionist child were difficult. At first, I saw this as a reflection of my teaching skills, but I quickly learned how to help my child and myself, during this trying time.

Do You Have a Perfectionist Child?

Children may be perfectionists by nature or by learned behaviors and requirements. Regardless of the cause, helping a perfectionist child is not easy and takes time. Both teacher and student need patience and understanding to make homeschooling work with the perfectionist child. 

Perfectionists set incredibly high standards for themselves and experience great pain and distress if they fail to meet those standards. Even when they have done well, they are often aware of what feel like inadequacies in their work. 

Recognizing a perfectionist may not be easy. Often, they can appear lazy or unwilling to work. This is not the case at all, and in fact, some perfectionists are highly driven individuals. 

Perfectionists may have some of the following traits:

• Unwillingness to answer questions or participate for fear of being wrong
• Anxiety or anger if they get work wrong, receive low marks, or make mistakes
• Excessive time taken to complete projects and tasks. Or reworking projects and tasks until “perfect”
• Inability to start tasks due to overwhelm
• Inability to complete tasks
• Not being satisfied with a standard of work which others see as acceptable
• Highly critical of others’ work or difficulty working on group projects

Perfectionism in homeschooled students is a problem in several ways. First, perfectionism not only slows children down, but it also slows their rate of learning and leads to missed learning time. These children tend to focus so deeply on the task at hand, that they miss vital instruction surrounding the topic. 

Second, perfectionistic children may refuse to guess answers or try new activities. Children who don’t guess or explore possibilities in their learning have less opportunity to problem-solve.

Both the slow rate of learning and the missed learning can be detrimental to a child’s ability to learn. Homeschoolers can use several methods to help their perfectionist child.

10 Ways to Help a Perfectionist Child

Children, by nature, rarely achieve perfection in anything they do, but there are ways to help a perfectionist child start to feel okay about that. Children need our help to understand that it is normal, expected, and okay to make mistakes.  

1. We need to point out to them that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. People aren't born knowing everything or being able to do everything.  

2. Explain to them that goals may take longer to reach. Help them see that it takes a lot of practice to succeed in some activities and that it's normal to try and fail many times.

3. Children need to understand that some things come easily to people and some do not. 

4. When correcting work, be sure to point out the areas where the child did well. A missed stepped does not equal failure. Especially in math, if the child understands the concept but calculated the final answer wrong, think about how you help them see where the error occurred: “You understood steps 1 through 6, but let’s look at step 7 again.”

5. If your perfectionist writer won’t stop revising their work, try reading back to them. Sometimes, hearing the text can help them quickly correct grammatical or contextual errors. 

6. Work on helping them set deadlines for completion: “Be sure you have done all the revising you need to by 2 p.m.”

7. Encourage draft work. Perfectionist children still need to be allowed time to correct work that is subpar. Give them positive feedback and explicit direction on the areas that need attention. Highlighting draft areas that need correcting is a great way to help a child focus on that specific area. Be sure to tell them that anything not highlighted should be left as is.

8. Help children recognize the time and skill needed to reach a goal. Perfectionist kids may be overly confident in their abilities to complete a task or goal. Help them plan time, equipment, outlines, and skills needed BEFORE they start any task. Assure that they come to you frequently to assess the path they are on.

9. Encourage children to tackle small amounts of work rather than large projects at first. Shorter assignments allow for faster completion. 

10. Value the effort more than the outcome. Praise efforts of guessing and trying regardless if wrong or right. Acknowledge work that is completed on time and left alone. Help your child see that it is possible to learn for the pure joy, without needing to create an end product that will be evaluated or graded.  

Homeschooling can provide some relief for children who are driven to do all assignments perfectly.  It can be a chance for parents and children to reduce external pressures and stress, that are often put-upon children in other educational settings. 

Perfectionist children can be a challenge to teach in the homeschool setting. It can wear thin on both parent and child, but it’s important to remember that any challenge can be overcome with patience and perseverance. Spend time with your child, listen to their concerns, and help them manage their time and energy in completing the homeschool day. Remember too, when dealing with perfectionist children, that the journey is long, but it can be achieved!

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8 Ways to Explore Salvador Dali’s World

Imaginative and eccentric, Spanish artist Salvador Dali turned the experience of art on its head, creating some of the most iconic artwork of the 20th century. He once said, “The fact that I myself, at the moment of painting, do not understand my own pictures, does not mean that these pictures have no meaning; on the contrary, their meaning is so profound, complex, coherent, and involuntary that it escapes the most simple analysis of logical intuition,” suggesting that his work is supposed to feel as weird and open to interpretation as it in fact does. This winter is the perfect time to explore the world of Salvador Dali, and these resources will help you do just that.

Borrow a lesson plan. The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla. has a whole collection of Dali-themed unit studies, including fun art projects and in-depth inquiries. Good bets include the lesson on George Orwell, Salvador Dali, and Censorship for older students and the thematic Spain and Catalonia: A Thematic Introduction to Dali for younger kids. 

Take his word for it. Who knows how much of Dali’s autobiography is actually true? Truth is beside the point when you’re reading The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, which is full of anecdotes, philosophy, and Dali-isms like “Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?” 

Be your own madman. Kids can dive into the weird joys of surrealism with a variety of hands-on art projects in Salvador Dali and the Surrealists: Their Lives and Ideas, 21 Activities. Produce your own Dali-esque dream video, create an art piece from found objects, make solar prints, and more.

Explore his place in history. The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation presents a detailed chronology of Dali’s life, from his first exhibition (at age fourteen) to his film collaborations with Luis Bunuel to his appointment as Marquis of Pubol of Spain a few years before his death in 1989, and everything in between. 

Dive into his work. Dali’s work speaks for itself — though you can certainly spend hours debating what it’s actually saying. Art Story’s online Dali gallery includes some of the artist’s best-known works, plus information that helps put them into the greater context of the art world. (Be aware: Dali was interested in some adult topics, which frequently show up in his work. You may want to do an advance screening to eliminate any works that don’t feel right sharing with your child right now.) 

Take a scientific approach. Carme Ruiz highlights some of the scientists and theories that influenced Dali’s work in the essay “Salvador Dali and Science.” Dali had hundreds of science books in his library, on topics ranging from quantum theory and physics to evolution and mathematics. Like so many artists of his time, Dali found scientific achievements, like the atomic bomb, and discoveries, like the structure of DNA, fascinating, and you can find scientific influence in much of his work.

Fall with him through the rabbit hole. Lewis Carroll and Salvador Dali might just be a match made in heaven. True, getting hold of an actual copy of the edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that Dali illustrated for New York’s Maecenas Press-Random House in 1969 can run you upwards of $12,000, but the William Bennett Gallery has generously made the — truly delightful — illustrations available.

Let him tell you about it. The 1986 documentary Dali gives the artist a chance to tell his story his own way — and boy, is his way interesting. You can watch the first part of the documentary on YouTube, too.

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Great Books for Studying Native American History: High School

On the 150th anniversary of the Medicine Lodge Treaty (a trio of problematic agreements that forced the Plains Indians onto reservations) ensure that your high school U.S. history studies include the country’s marginalized original inhabitants. History books may give their stories short shrift, but you don’t have to. These books are a great addition to your U.S. History reading list.

Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is at the top of our essential reading list for good reason: Brown’s incisive, authoritative account of the systematic 19th century destruction of Native American populations by the United States illuminates the perspective of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes who lived through it. This is not an easy book to read, but it’s an important one.

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To truly understand the contrast between Native American life (in North and South America) before and after European contact, you need to understand what Native American life was like before Columbus et al arrived on the scene. Charles C. Mann’s two-book collection 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created focus on just that, highlighting the rich and varied culture that Columbus and his fellow explorers encountered and the catastrophic, civilization-shaking changes that occurred in the aftermath of that contact.

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In Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution, Oren Lyons collects eight essays by Native American writers that explore the ways in which the U.S. Constitution and the idea of "American democracy" were shaped in part by the ideas of Native American traditions—even though Native Americans were denied the benefits of the freedoms they helped to establish. Similarly, Jack Weatherford entertainingly examines ignored and forgotten contributions to medicine, ecology, architecture, agriculture, and democracy in Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World.

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This Day in North American Indian History is a delightful and useful reference book for your shelf—in addition to biographical and historical information, it contains a 365-day calendar of major events in Native American history (for both American continents), from the achievements of ancient empires to modern-day Native American activism.

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David Grann uncovers a particularly dark chapter of U.S. history in Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In the 1920s, the Osage Indian reservation be- came an unexpected boom town when oil was discovered on reservation land— the Osage became the richest people per capita in the world. Then, someone started killing them off, one by one. One of the FBI’s first major investigations, the Osage murders exposed a sinister conspiracy that still feels shocking almost a century later.

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Killing the White Man’s Indian: The Reinvention of Native Americans at the End of the 20th Century by Fergus M. Bordewich takes a proactive approach to the topic, acknowledging Native American history in the wake of European/United States aggression but focusing the bulk of his attention on the future of Native Americans being developed right now on reservations across the country. If we’re just looking at the past, we’re viewing Indians through the same distancing lenses that allowed our treatment of them to happen in the first place, says Bordewich, and his book aims to open the door to more meaningful considerations.

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Also set in the modern Indian world, Sherman Alexie’s short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven captures the grim reality of life in and around the Spoke Indian Reservation. You can feel the tension between the traditions of the Native American past and modern Native American existence on every page. (Honestly, you could just go read the complete works of Sherman Alexie and be glad you did.)

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Vine Deloria Jr. takes the offensive in Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, a darkly funny, challenging treatise on the problems with the way the modern United States wants to romanticize and patronize the country’s original inhabitants. Deloria’s disdain for U.S. values, especially capitalism, is blatant through the work, but his anger feels like a legitimate response to centuries of systemic racism and genocide.

This list is from the fall 2017 issue of HSL. Look for upcoming lists of great books on Native American history for middle grades and elementary school—we couldn’t fit everything we wanted into the magazine, so we’re publishing the extras on the blog this November.

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Readaloud of the Week: 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving

1621: A NEW LOOK AT THANKSGIVING by Catherine O'Neill Grace

I’m breaking tradition a little bit with this book, which really isn’t so much a straight-up readaloud as it is a book to read together. But if, like me, you struggle a little bit this time of year to balance your joy in Thanksgiving (which is my favorite holiday) with complicated feelings about its origins and mythology, not to mention how this holiday feels to Native American people, this is a great book to start those important conversations with your children.

This book focuses on the first Thanksgiving from the perspective of the Wampanoag tribe, who had been living in the Pilgrims’ “new world” and celebrating an autumnal harvest festival of their own for something like 12,000 years before the Mayflower passengers arrived. It doesn’t sugarcoat the complicated relationship between the new settlers and the native inhabitants—for instance, we don’t just learn about Squanto and his generous farming tips, we also learn that he was able to deliver those tips because he’d learned English when he was kidnapped by previous English explorers. And the “miracles” of discovered corn and supplies by the colonists were actually thefts from Wampanoag storage places. Lots of little details bring the Wampanoag tribe to life, changing them from generic “Indians” to a diverse, complex group of people who had their own reasons, traditions, and ideas about this shared feast with the Pilgrim colonists. For me, this kind of conversation is essential to understanding that history really is made of people’s stories, and some people have gotten louder voices in the telling of these stories than others.

The photographs in this book are gorgeous. (It’s a National Geographic book, so I guess that’s not surprising.) And I especially loved the recipe pages, where a traditional Wampanoag recipe is printed opposite what we think of as a traditional Colonial recipe. It’s also a very flexible book—I’d be comfortable sharing it with kindergarteners, but I think high schoolers would enjoy it, too. I think it offers a valuable perspective shift and a way to better appreciate the historical context of the Thanksgiving holiday.

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Not-So-New Books: Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children)

By Seanan McGuire

“For us, places we went were home. We didn’t care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn’t have to pretend to be something we weren’t. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world.”

No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

That’s the sign outside Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, the under-the-radar boarding school where Nancy’s parents have sent her to recover. But Nancy doesn’t want to recover: When she disappeared through the mysterious door in her basement six months earlier, she found her true home in the Halls of the Dead, where her stillness and silence were welcomed by the Lord and Lady of Death, and all she wants is to find her way back home. But her parents refuse to accept her stories and insist that she needs help, that she needs to get better, so they send her to a school that promises to accomplish just that. Fortunately for Nancy, the school is run by someone who really understands what she’s going through—Eleanor West was a lost girl before she opened her school and filled it with other world-wanderers who’ve stumbled back home and wish they hadn’t. As she gets to know her new schoolmates, Nancy thinks she might have found a place where—even if it isn’t home—she might be able to belong. Then the murders start.

This book—it’s really a gorgeous little novella, so it’s a quick read—hit all the classic fantasy sweet spots: imaginary worlds, lonely girls longing for home, boarding school camaraderie, and a note of wistfulness running through the whole thing. I always wonder what happens to people like Alice after Wonderland, and this book suggests some answers: They’re always looking for the next rabbit hole or magic mirror and wishing to go back. Some of them, like Kade, know they can never turn return. (Turns out, Fairylands want little girls, not little boys.) Some, like Lorelei, are just waiting for their promised doors to reappear. Lundy, the school therapist, warns them that most people never get back to their fantasy worlds, but that doesn’t stop everyone from hoping she’ll be the exception. 

The murder is really just a plot device—it’s not hard to figure out the culprit—the real story is the connections between the lonely students and their attempts to accept—or reject—the world where they’ve been expelled. The characters are the real story: Nancy, who slowly finds a family-of-choice among the students at the school; Sumi, Nancy’s nonsense world roommate whose clever hands are constantly moving; mad scientist Jack and her twin sister Jill; Christopher, who still dreams of his beautiful skeleton girl; beautiful Kade whose parents and Fairyland rejected him when he announced he was a boy. The cast of characters is pretty effortlessly diverse—no tokenism!—and their stories all feel compelling. And the lyrical, jagged fairy tale language feels just right for the story it’s telling. I think this is a lovely little dark fairy tale for young adults.

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Stuff We Like :: 11.10.17

It’s rainy and chilly, but I’m not complaining because it finally feels like fall!

Around the web

Relevant to our interests: Life lessons from Russian literature

Funny because it’s not funny: The unfortunately truthful resume of a young female professional

I love this: Person-centered language. 

At home/school/life

on the blog: 21 new books we’re excited about this fall

one year ago: Mindful Homeschool: It’s not balance, it’s a cycle

two years ago: Easy, thoughtful holiday gifts to make with the kids

three years ago: Raising children who love to write

Reading List

Suzanne lured me into reading The Just City because I’m reading Plato’s Republic with my humanities students right now—so obviously I would want to read about how Athena goes about putting Plato’s ideal society into practice. There are robots! And Socrates!

Speaking of Suzanne, we are in the process of putting together our best books of 2017 list for the podcast, so I’m trying to squeeze in all the books I’ve heard good things about but haven’t gotten around to yet. So of course instead of reading Turtles All the Way Down or 4 3 2 1, I’m rereading The Wishing-Ring Man. I need some comfort reading!

I am still figuring out the best way to balance homeschooling with working not-at-home, and I’m so thankful that we spent a lot of time over the last couple of years transitioning my daughter to more independent work. Right now, we’re both reading Things Fall Apart separately, but thanks to annotated reading and our habit of writing discussion questions for each other, we’re able to talk about it the same way we would if we’d been reading it together. Success!

At home

I have had a rough month, so I’m trying to focus on little things that make me happy. One of them is that I get to wear nerdy t-shirts (like this one!) every Friday.

I voted! :)

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Q&A: Tips for Transitioning From Homeschooling to Public High School

After almost a decade of homeschooling, her son is going back to school for high school. How can she help him prepare?

After nine years of homeschooling, our son will be heading off to public high school next fall. It’s the right decision for him, and we’re all excited to see what new adventures school has in store for him. But we’ve got this last year of homeschooling together, and we’re going to make the most of every minute. I keep wondering, though: Is there anything I should be doing this year to help him get ready for school next year?

Making the switch from homeschooling to a more traditional school environment can take some adjustment, but high school is a big adjustment for many kids, so your son definitely won’t be the only one at his high school who’s figuring out how to navigate a new environment. And there are definitely a few things you can do help prepare your son to succeed in high school. 

Start getting comfortable with homework. The average high school student leaves school each day with three and a half hours of homework, which isn’t something most homeschoolers will have much experience in dealing with. You don’t have to jump in with hours of work every day, but giving your son a few independent assignments each week will help him start to get comfortable with the idea of homework. Homework also gives you an opportunity to practice note-taking and studying for tests and quizzes, both of which may be new features of your son’s educational life.

Get familiar with the logistics. High school means navigating a building to change classes, finding (and working the combination on) your locker between classes, managing your schedule—that’s a lot of new logistics to navigate. Most high schools allow visitors and hold orientations and new student activities leading up to the first day of school, so make sure you call ahead to get your son on the student mailing list. Just visiting the school, practicing using a combination lock, or studying a map of the hallways may help him feel more comfortable.

Ease into your routine. Right now, you have the luxury of slowly adapting to a new routine, so take advantage that fact. Your son can gradually get into the habit of waking up at an earlier time and build up the stamina to sit through seven hours of class time every day. He can also get into the habit of eating two meals—breakfast and lunch—to carry him through the day, which can be a surprisingly challenging routine change for homeschoolers who are used to on-demand snacking.

Boost his organization skills. Most high school expect students to be able to keep up with their own schedules and assignments, so encourage your son to take charge of his own schedule this year while you’re available to help him through any rough patches. Pick up a planner he can use to keep track of activities and assignments, and give him deadlines and due dates so that he can learn how to pace himself for school assignments.

Take a standardized test. One of the most effective ways to set your child up for success in high school is to make sure he can get into the classes he wants to take. A mom-made transcript won’t always carry the same weight as a traditional test score, so it makes sense to have your son take a nationally recognized standardized test to support his academic record.

All big transitions come with challenges, so however well you prepare your son, he may hit a few bumps those first weeks as he acclimates to his new environment. Be available and be supportive, and trust that your years of homeschooling have prepared your son for his chosen future.

This reader question was originally published in the fall 2016 issue of HSL.

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21 New Books for Your Fall Reading List

Fall means new books, and we’re pretty excited about these.

After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again) by Dan Santat

Santat’s first book since Caldecott winner Are We There Yet? focuses on the psychological repercussions of Humpty Dumpty’s great fall. (Elementary)

La La La: A Story of Hope by Kate DiCamillo

Jaime King’s illustrations illuminate this lovely, almost wordless book about a brave little girl who ventures out into the world with a song. (Elementary)

The Antlered Ship by Dashka Slater

Curious fox Marco sets sail with a crew of deer, finding plenty of adventure on his search for a skulk of equally curious foxes. (Elementary)

Where’s Halmoni? by Julie Kim

Korean folk and fairy tales come to life in this charming graphic novel, in which two siblings go in search of their halmoni, or grandmother, through a magical door. (Elementary)

The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse by Mac Barnett

Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen team up again in this tongue-in-cheek tale of a mouse who gets swallowed by a wolf and finds that a duck has already set up a cozy abode inside the wolf ’s belly. (Elementary)

Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome

This gorgeous free verse biography recounts Tubman’s life from her childhood in slavery to her adult willingness to risk her own life for other people’s freedom, chronicling her strength, compassion, and resilience. (Elementary)

All’s Faire in Middle School by Victoria Jamieson

Homeschooled Imogen Vega leaves her comfortable Renaissance Faire world to enter public high school in this graphic novel from the author of Roller Girl. (Middle grades)

The Glass Town Game by Catherynne M. Valente

The Bronte siblings’ imaginary world comes to life—wonderfully and dangerously—in Valente’s first (stand-alone) book since the Fairyland series. (Middle grades)

The Gauntlet by Karuna Riazi

Farah and her friends get sucked into a very dangerous game and must fight their way out to save themselves and the rest of the world in this diverse, steampunk take on the Jumanji idea of a game gone very, very bad. (Middle grades)

Wishtree by Katherine Applegate

In Applegate’s newest work, an ancient oak tree narrates the story of a Muslim boy who finds prejudice and fear in his new neighborhood. (Middle grades)

The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag

In Aster’s world, boys always grow up to be shapeshifters, and girls get to be witches. But Aster’s always dreamed of being a witch, so he sneaks off to the woods to study witchcraft on his own. (Middle grades)

A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney

I’m not convinced that these friendships are as secret as the authors (also literary friends) suggest, but this set of four dual biographies centered on some of literature’s best-known women and their friends is fascinating nonetheless. (High school)

Beren and Luthien by J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien’s son put together this lavishly illustrated version of a story told in the appendices of the Silmarillion, tracing the star-crossed lovers’ story’s evolution and significance across Tolkien’s work. (High school)

The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

Pullman’s long-awaited return to the alternate Oxford of the His Dark Materials trilogy introduces an 11-year-old boy named Malcolm who meets a baby named Lyra Belacqua—yes, that Lyra. (High school)

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds 

With a claustrophobic setting (it reminded me of Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine) and a critical perspective on gun violence, this tense story takes place on a seven-story elevator ride a 15-year-old boy with a gun is taking to avenge his brother’s murder. (High school)

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green 

Teen lit hero Green returns with his first novel since The Fault in Our Stars. This time, he’s exploring the world of a 16-year-old with a mental illness who becomes obsessed with the disappearance of a billionaire. (High school)

The Dire King by William Ritter

The supernatural Sherlock Holmes series Jackaby wraps up with its fourth book, in which Jackaby, his intrepid assistant Miss Rook, dog-shifting policeman Charlie Cane, and ghostly Jenny Cavanaugh work to prevent the apocalypse. (High school)

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Vivian Carter isn’t trying to start a revolution at her Texas high school when she starts publishing an underground feminist zine—she’s just fed up with her community’s sexist attitudes. As it turns out, she’s not the only one, and before she knows it, Vivian is leading the resistance. (High school)

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao

Dao’s first novel in a new fantasy series is steeped in Asian mythology and folklore. The first installment follows an 18-year-old beauty who must choose between good and evil en route to her destiny. (High school)

Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor

In book two of this series, newly minted witch Sunny works to develop her skills so that she can fulfill her destiny and prevent the apocalypse. This series is a little like a feminist, Nigerian take on Harry Potter. (High school)

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Teenage Justyce starts a journal writing to Martin Luther King, Jr., after a false arrest has him questioning racism and resistance in his world. When his worst fears are realized in a police shooting, Justyce has to confront the darkest parts of himself and the world he lives in. (High school)

This list is reprinted from the fall 2017 issue of home/school/life.

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Library Chicken Update :: 11.7.17

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!

How is it November already? I mean, I’m more than happy for 2017 to be nearly over with (it hasn’t been great, let’s be honest), but I’m just not sure how we’ve made it this far. Clearly I need to pay more attention to what’s going on in the outside world--OR I could bury my head in my books and continue to ignore the passage of time. Yep, that second option works for me.

The Just City by Jo Walton

This book, about Pallas Athene setting up an experimental community based on Plato’s Republic and populated by people chosen from throughout human history, begins with Athene and Artemis trying to explain the concept of consent to Apollo. I’d recommend it based on that alone, but it just gets better from there. (Wait til you get to the part where Socrates tries to talk to the robots.) It’s first in a trilogy, so I’ll be tackling the sequel next — and I suppose I should finally get around to reading the Republic.
(LC Score: +1)

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Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

The Scooby Gang accidentally reads from the Necronomicon. There. That’s all I’m going to say. If you don’t run out and IMMEDIATELY get this book, it’s no fault of mine.
(LC Score: +1)

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Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball

Elderly people are going missing in a small Japanese town. A young man confesses responsibility, but refuses to speak further, either in explanation or defense. This is a strange and compelling book. I found it both intriguing and irritating and honestly I’m not sure which reaction the author intended.
(LC Score: +1)

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One Foot in the Grave by Peter Dickinson

James Pibble mystery #6. This final Inspector Pibble mystery begins with Jimmy (now a widower and stuck in a fancy nursing home for the aged and infirm) contemplating suicide. Fortunately, before he can do anything drastic, he finds a dead body and gets caught up investigating the murder. After the depressing opening I was concerned that this last outing would be grim, but I found the ending to be unexpectedly sweet.
(LC Score: +1)

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Wobble to Death by Peter Lovesey

I could tell you that after finishing the Pibble books I needed to start a new mystery series, and this one — set at a Victorian six-day “pedestrian” competition and introducing Sergeant Cribb as our sleuth — seemed like a nice option, but we all know I had to pick it up because there’s no way I could resist that title, right?
(LC Score: +1)

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Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall

The (male) Transcendentalists may be obnoxious and annoying at times, but they did hang out with some incredibly brilliant and amazing women. (That I’ve SOMEHOW never heard of. American History, go to your room and think about what you’ve done wrong.) I didn’t quite fall in love with Margaret Fuller the way I have with some others in my recent Alcott-adjacent reading (Elizabeth Peabody, please be my best friend!) but this is a fascinating biography of a talented and unjustly-neglected American.
(LC Score: +1)

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Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee

From Concord to Bloomsbury! I’ve read a bit of Virginia Woolf’s fiction (most recently the very charming Orlando) and have been meaning to get back to her (and her motley crew of associates), so I thought this massive biography by Lee would be a good place to start. (If you haven’t noticed, I have a weakness for massive biographies.) As a newbie to all things Woolf, I found it a bit overwhelming — Lee engages not only with her subject, but with all the biographers, commentators, and critics who have written about Woolf over the years. It’s difficult to jump into the middle of that multi-decade conversation, but I enjoyed Lee’s take and am looking forward to reading more about the Bloomsbury (and Bloomsbury-adjacent) folk.
(LC Score: +1)

Yeah, I STILL don’t really want to talk about it: RETURNED UNREAD
(LC Score: -5)

Library Chicken Score for 11/7/17: 2
Running Score: 109 ½

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

• The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton (sequel to The Just City)
• The Poison Oracle by Peter Dickinson (even though I’ve finished Inspector Pibble there is still Dickinson weirdness for me to enjoy)
• The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf (rereading Woolf while reading about Woolf...)
• Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West by Matthew Dennison (...and Woolf’s buddies)

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52 Weeks of Happier Homeschooling Week 42: Identify Your Negativity Triggers

You can’t always control what happens in your life, but you can—at least to some extent—control your inner narrative about what happens. 

We all have a constant stream of conversation with ourselves running in our heads all the time—psychologists call it self talk, and we’re often only semi-aware of what we’re telling ourselves. But in between reminders to throw in a load of laundry or pay the sanitation bill, we’re silently opining on everything we do or see all day long. And the tone of this self talk plays a huge role in happiness—the more critical and pessimistic your self talk, the lower your everyday happiness quotient; the more positive your inner dialogue, the higher your overall happiness level.

The key to turning up the positive in your self talk is recognizing when your inner voice gets stuck in negativity. Some signs you might be focusing on the negative:

• After a great homeschool day, you immediately focus on updating your to-do list instead of congratulating yourself on a successful day full of good experiences.
• When something goes wrong, you jump straight into blaming yourself: your son’s math skills, your homeschool budget, your daughter’s social faux pas—you are responsible for any problems that happen in your homeschool life.
• When something isn’t going perfectly, you immediately leap to the worst case scenario—you missed a music lesson, so obviously your child will never graduate from college, have any friends, or have any kind of happiness in life. 
• You tend to see things as good or terrible—either your homeschool life is great, perfect, wonderful, or it’s the worst, most horrible, awful thing you’ve ever done. You have no middle ground.
• You keep rehashing problems and negative events—you’re focused on what went wrong, what you did wrong, and what might go wrong so that you’re spinning your mental wheels instead of moving forward.
• You can’t seem to make any decisions because you get stuck going over the choices again and again in your mind—you can’t teach math because you can’t settle on the “perfect” math curriculum.

Identifying the places where you’re prone to negative self talk isn’t a cure-all—it’s just the first step toward a more positive attitude. But it’s an essential first step toward upping your overall optimism. Only when you recognize your negative thinking can you start to make a mental shift to the positive—and give your everyday homeschool happiness a boost.

Your mission this week: Keep track of your negative thinking. Don’t judge yourself! Just be aware of where you’re ruminating or over-focusing on the negative, and pay attention to possible triggers, from not getting enough sleep or skipping lunch to struggles over history readings or doing homework for outside classes. 

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Readaloud of the Week: Tua and the Elephant

Tua and the Elephant

By R. P. Harris

TUA AND THE ELEPHANT by K.P. Harris

Tua knows every inch of her Chiang Mai neighborhood, but she’s never seen an elephant like Pohn-Pohn there before. Determined to rescue her new friend from his abusive handlers, Tua orchestrates a nighttime elephant liberation, and—with the elephant’s evil owners hot on her trail—makes her way first to her aunt’s house, then to a temple, and finally to an elephant sanctuary where Pohn-Pohn can live happily ever after. 

This is a fun adventure story, but what makes it so fun to read aloud is the way that it brings the culture and landscape of Thailand to life so vividly. Tua lives with her hard-working mom, but everyone in the village feels like part of her family: Uncle Somchai, who makes the best banana roti pancakes; Auntie Nam, who always has a curry treat for Tua; Uncle Sim, who tries to teach her how to haggle to get the best deals at the market; and famous Auntie Orchid, one of Thailand’s best known actresses. Everyone loves the “little peanut”—that’s what Tua’s name means—and wants to help her in general and in her quest. It’s great to read a children’s book with a Thai main character who isn’t a refugee, and there’s a strong environmental and ethical message running through the story.

There’s not a lot of subtlety in the good guy/bad guy dynamic for this book—the elephant hunters are unabashed bad guys—but that doesn’t bother me in a kids’ adventure tale. The book is sprinkled with Thai vocabulary and customs—some readers seem to have been irritated by the fact that not all of these cultural notes are explained and defined, but I actually like the way it makes you feel like you’ve dived into a entirely different world. (I’m always looking for ways to decenter Western perspectives, but if you aren’t, you could easily look up foreign words before reading the book with your kids.) I think it’s a lovely little book—I'd definitely pass it on to kids who loved Mr. Popper's Penguins or Owls in the Family—and Tua and Pohn-Pohn are delightful protagonists. 

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