Monthly Archives: July 2010

Read Aloud Thursday

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I’m really excited about this week’s post because we have read several picture books lately that I consider real winners.  The real test, though, is whether or not my girls actually like them.   I can answer with a resounding “yes” if you were to ask me if they liked this particular titles. 

I know in the past that I’ve at least implied that my girls aren’t too fond of poetry.  Actually, I just came right out and said it in a recent post, didn’t I?  :-)   Well, that statement needs a few qualifiers.  The Bugliest Bug is a picture book that is written in verse form, and my girls actually “got” it and giggled over it!  Maybe it’s because Carol Diggory Shields’ verse tells a very exciting story about a buggy talent contest (beauty contest?)  which is almost sabatoged, but for the heroics of a young damselfly who is “neither clever nor frilly.”  Add to this the fact that “the stink bugs united, gave off their worst smells,” a detail sure to elicit giggles from any pint-sized audience.  (I personally like the fact that “the mantises prayed.” :-) )  Scott Nash‘s illustrations are cartoonish and clever, a perfect pairing with this fun story in rhyme.

Emily Arnold McCully is an author and illustrator who really needs no introduction, I’m sure.  (I’ve written about her books here and here and here.)  Her book Crossing the New Bridge is just plain fun, and it has really good message, to boot.  I like books with good messages, but I don’t like books with good messages that are delivered in a heavy-handed way.  This book is just the opposite–a message that could get ponderously heavy by the end of the story is actually turned on its ear by a surprise, very funny ending.  I like that.  This book is about happiness and the joy of a person doing what he’s good at.  If you can find a copy of this one, it’s worth buying. 

What’s in rotation at your house this week?  Share your current read-alouds by linking up your blog post below or by leaving a comment.

A Few Caldecott Picks

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I was so excited a couple of months ago when the 5 Minutes for Books team announced that for the last half of this year, the Children’s Classics Challenge will focus on award-winning children’s books.  I have been plotting and planning this post for a month! (Actually, I envisioned writing more than one post, that’s how pumped I was about this challenge!) It took me a while to settle on a Newbery award winner, but I finally settled on The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, and I’ve been picking up Caldecotts that we haven’t read just about every time we’ve been to the library.

And then reality struck.  I’m participating in The Bible in 90 Days challenge, and my commitment to it (a WONDERFUL thing!) necessitates that other things be put aside.  Oh, and I have a little baby now, too.  :-)  

I’m still reading The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, but my girls and I have enjoyed a couple of new-to-us Caldecotts over the past few weeks that I’ve been saving to share.  How I Learned Geography, written and illustrated by Uri Shuleviz, is one of those picture books that would work great even for “big kids.”  Its text is somewhat sparse, but the author’s note at the end fleshes out a few of the details:  Uri Shulevitz moved with his family from his native Poland when he was around five years old due to the impending Nazi takeover.  From there, his family moved to the Soviet Union (specifically Kazakhstan) and then to Paris, France, and finally, to Israel.  How I Learned Geography is the story of his family’s experiences in Central Asia–they were poor and hungry refugees, but his father knew the importance of imagination, even in their dire circumstances.  One night, instead of bringing home a meager supply of bread for their supper, he brought home a map.  This map provided just what the young Uri needed:  a refuge from the squalor and violence that had invaded his life.  He studied the map for hours and imagined all the places he could travel.  Since this is a 2009 Caldecott honor book, it goes without saying that the illustrations are phenomenal.  Although I am a great admirer of art, I don’t know much about it, so I can’t even identify the techniques or materials Shulevitz used to create these illustrations, but they are vibrant and colorful and detailed.  I would definitely recommend this book for the school-age crowd, from early elementary and up.  Highly Recommended!  (For reviews of a couple of other Caldecott winners, including another book for which Uri Shulevitz won a Caldecott honor, go here.)
This next book is one that I think I might like a little more than my girls do.  Red Sings from Treetops:  A Year in Colors by Joyce Sidman is one of those books that appeals to the English teacher/language lover in me.  Unfortunately, my girls are not as thrilled with poetry as I am.  ;-)   As the title indicates, this book is all about colors and seasons.  Here’s how the book begins, just to whet your appetite:

In SPRING,

Red sings

from treetops:

cheer-cheer-cheer,

each note dropping

like a cherry

into my ear. 

I think this is a completely clever image because I’d never thought of how musical notes look like cherries, but given Pamela Zagarenski‘s gorgeous illustrations, I see it now.  This book is a 2010 honor book, and it’s one I’d love to own.  The best way I can describe the illustrations is scrapbookish and collagey, but not in the way one might expect.  For example, on the page from which I took the verse above, there is a house.  The roof of the house appears to be made from the page of a bok, and the roof is lifting off the house so that redbirds can escape.  Lovely.  Really, it’s better seen than described–that’s what makes it art, right?  This is another Highly Recommended pick!

I’m not sure how well my categories are working since I’ve moved to this self-hosted blog, but I have a Caldecott category and a Newbery category here at Hope Is the Word. (This is yet another thing on my to-do list!)  Feel free to peruse at your leisure!  :-)   Oh, and for even more award-winning book posts, visit this month’s Children’s Classics challenge at 5 Minutes for Books!

 

 

 

The Bible in 90 Days–Week One

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Bible in 90 Days- join in July 2010I am so pleased and thankful to report that I have successfully completed week one of The Bible in 90 Days!!  Woo-hoo!  Honestly, I’m somewhat surprised that I even kept up for one week.  (I have a ba-a-a-d track record!)  My precious husband, Steady Eddie, is reading along with me (of course, we don’t literally read together–you know what I mean), and I think it helps to have someone in the house with me who’s doing this, too.  A few observations from the past week:

  • So far, I really like the pace at which we’re reading.  It’s amazing to me to realize that we read the entire books of Genesis and Exodus in one week, but I do think it helps me to remember what I’ve read better.  (I’m dealing with major post-partum brain!)
  • Steady Eddie bought me an I-pod Touch (or Tri-pod, as the girls call it :-) ) for our anniversary back in June (11 years of wedded bliss!), and each night he’ll load up the next day’s reading from BibleGateway.com.  I’ve actually begun reading the day’s passage in the early morning hours when I am up nursing the DLM.  This gives me a head-start on the day’s reading.
  • Although in some ways this seems like an odd time in my life to be undertaking such a challenge (5 weeks post-partum with my third child), in a lot of ways it’s the perfect time.  As I mentioned above, I have a lot of “down time” while I’m feeding the baby, and I’d likely be reading something while I’m doing that.  Plus, I need all the spiritual strength I can get right now!

My prayer through this entire experience is that I will see the big picture–that I will sense God’s plan, love, and provision for humankind (and me, specifically).  I don’t want this to be just about putting a check-mark in the box next to today’s reading–I want to learn and grow from this.

More Mockingbird Links

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Three-fifths of the residents here at the House of Hope are asleep tonight before 10:00 (a minor miracle, this), and the other 2/5 are not too far behind.  However, in light of my last To Kill a Mockingbird post and the upcoming challenge I hope to host (more on this later, of course), I wanted to post a few Mockingbird-related links:

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

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Whew and wow.  That’s about all I can say about this book.   Like I said when I reviewed its prequel, that wouldn’t make much of a review, would it?  ;-)

 Although I read The Hunger Games at the beginning of the year (and loved it!), I waited to read Catching Fire until now because the third and last installment in this series will be released on August 24.  I’m definitely marking that date on my calendar–Catching Fire is a real cliffhanger!  My only regret is that so many months elapsed between my reading of the first novel and now.  I sometimes have a hard time remembering the details in a novel while I’m still reading it, so such a long time between stories is a definite problem for me. 

Despite this problem with my memory, I still managed to thoroughly enjoy Catching Fire.  I don’t want to say much about the plot at all because almost anything I could mention would be a spoiler in this very suspenseful and fast-paced story, but I do want to comment on the romance therein.  I remarked in the comments on my review of The Hunger Games that the protagonist is “putting on an act” (or at least we–and she–think she is!) in terms of her “on camera” romance with her co-tribute, Peeta.  Well, the intensity of this “romance” is turned up a couple of notches in Catching Fire, and somehow this endears both Katniss and Peeta to me even more.  I came away from this story really liking, well, almost every one of the likable characters.  (Fortunately, as readers we don’t really get to know the enemy very well, so I spent most of my time thinking about how Collins managed to draw the tributes in such a way that by the end of the story, I had a lot of sympathy for all of them.)

There.  I’ve probably said enough.  While I’m not sure at what age I’d want my girls reading this story, I can heartily recommend it as an excellent summer read for adults who don’t mind teenage protagonists.  I can’t resist pulling a LeVar Burton here– “But you don’t have to take my word for it”–Janet recently read it and liked it, too.

Read Aloud Thursday–Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

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Peter Pan is one book about which I can say with a great sight of relief, “I’m so glad we finished this book!”  Unfortunately, this is but one more example of a book I went into blindly, having never read it before myself.  Unlike some books I’ve read without previewing, there was nothing in Peter Pan that I would consider too grotesque or shocking to read to my 4 year old and 6 year old daughters.  (Mary Poppins comes to mind immediately as such a book.  Have you read it?)  However, I just found Peter Pan extremely challenging to read aloud.  Maybe it’s my slow, post-partum brain, but this book is a mouthful and then some.  In addition to some obscure (at least to me, certainly to my girls) British-isms and allusions to unfamiliar situations (political, maybe?), something about Barrie’s style is just hard for me to read.  In fact, there were several times when I thought I’d just give up this story altogether, but my girls wouldn’t let me.  I will say that the fight between Captain Hook and Peter and the Lost Boys at the end of the story is riveting, so I’m glad we made it that far.

I was happy to follow up our unabridged version of the book with a Robert Sabuda pop-up, which we’ve had on the shelf for quite a while.   (If you’re unfamiliar with Sabuda, by all means visit his website and acquaint yourself with this amazing paper artist.  You can also read my previous posts about him here and here.)  As with all of Sabuda‘s creations, this one is nothing less than spectacular.  I found it interesting to note the changes in this abridged version of the story, though.  Although the Sabuda book actually includes a good bit of the story (especially for such a lushly illustrated book), some details (which are endearing or weird, and sometimes both) were left out.  For example, at the end of the story, Mr. Darling has taken to sleeping in Nana’s (the canine nanny who cares for the Darling children) kennel as punishment for treating Nana poorly.  In the Sabuda version, though, this detail is left out.  My girls thought this part was particularly funny, so I wonder at this “sanitizing” of the story.   Any thoughts on abridged versions and how the editors decide what to leave out?  (I understand editing for length, etc., but I’m just wondering about the details.  I’ll admit that I found some parts of the story just a little bit weird, but still. . . the story is what it is, right?) 

Now I just need to introduce my girls to the Disney version.  I always have such mixed feelings about doing this, for some reason.  I think at heart I’m such a purist/perfectionist (yes, I’m sorry to say that I am) that it’s hard for me to offer them a watered-down version of anything.  However, another part of me thinks they’re missing out on a fun part of childhood by not seeing some of these old classics. 

I’m apparently in a contemplative mood, so I want to ask you, my dear Read Aloud Thursday readers, a couple of questions:

  • How do you feel about abridgements and movie/cartoon adaptations of classics?
  • Do you ever abandon a book just because you don’t like it–even if your children do like it?

Please share with us what you’re reading aloud together as a family!  Leave a link to your specific blog post below, or simply leave a comment.

Wordless Wednesday

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It finally cooled off enough at the end of last week (which, in the South, means that it was merely 92 degrees instead of 98 ;-) )  for us to take the DLM outside and have some fun.  We haven’t even bought the girls a pool this year (shame on us!), but we made do with a bucket full of water.  The idea was that they could fill their water guns out of the bucket.  They had other ideas, as you can see.  :-)

(For more Wordless Wednesday posts, visit Wordless Wednesday and 5 Minutes for Moms.)

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

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 I spent the first 3/4 of this book thinking how quirky and clever it is and the last 1/4 wishing it were over.  However, this probably doesn’t say as much about the book as it does my attention span right now.  ;-)   (That, and the fact that I had both Catching Fire and Her Mother’s Hope waiting for me!)  Make no mistake about it–Alexander McCall Smith is a talented and entertaining author.  I’ve read his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and La’s Orchestra Saves the World (both linked to my reviews), and I picked up this title because Beth recommended it.  I was interested to read in the preface of this story that McCall Smith wrote this as a serialized story for a newspaper in Scotland, in the tradition of Dickens, etc.  This means that none of the chapters are over a couple of pages long (and the book is smallish, so the pages are small), which is good for a quick “bite” here and there. 

This story has lots of characters, and each one of them is memorable, and that’s where the book’s strength is.  Actually, to call this book a mystery (my library has it marked as such, and that’s the genre McCall Smith is associated with) is a stretch–nothing that I would call even remotely mysterious happens until page 80 or 90, and then, it’s merely a break-in at an art gallery.  Oh, there’s also the question of the identity of the creator of a painting at the art gallery at which one of the characters works, but this is not something that would keep me up at night.  Instead, what this book is really is a collection of ongoing character sketches.  Some of the characters interact with each other; others, rarely if at all.  However, they all have one thing in common:  they either live in an apartment building at 44 Scotland Street, Edinburgh, or they know someone who does. 

The story is more or less told from the point of view of Pat, a young woman who is on her “second gap year” before attending college.  (I found the fact that she is embarrassed because she is beginning her second gap year pretty funny, given the popularity of the gap year on the homeschooling message board and blogs I frequent.  Before I began looking into home education, I had never heard of a gap year.)  Pat moves into 44 Scotland Street into a flat that she shares with a young man named Bruce who is the epitome of the handsome but extremely self-absorbed jock, as well as a another young man and young woman who are on vacation for the entire story.  She also begins work at the aforementioned art gallery.  We learn a lot about Pat and what makes her tick, and the focus largely is on her inexplicable attraction to Bruce.  Although she finds his conceit despicable, she still feels attracted to him.  Hmmm.

As I mentioned before, there are several other charcters in the story.  I noticed that McCall Smith created several of them to be extremely stuck on themselves, while others show an extreme lack of self-confidence.  Hands down my favorite character in the story is Angus Lordie, a portrait painter who writes poetry on the fly and owns a winking dog.  (See, I told you this is a quirky story!)

I enjoyed this story, although I still think I like The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency better.  I just like reading about Africa, I think.  Plus, there are actual mysteries in that particular series/story, mild though they are.  I’m glad I read 44 Scotland Street, though.  I’m beginning to see that McCall Smith writes stories in which not a lot happens, but stories in which the reader really learns a lot about the characters.  Again, I was pretty tired of the characteres by the time I got to the end of the story, but on the whole I would call this an enjoyable, light read.  If you like books that are heavy on character development and light on plot, you would probably enjoy the works of Alexander McCall Smith.

The Bible in 90 Days Introduction

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Bible in 90 Days- join in July 2010An alternate title for this post might be “PLEASE PRAY FOR ME!”  I am attempting to do going to do, by God’s grace, something I’ve never done before:  read the Bible in its entirety.  And I’m going to do it in 90 days. 

I first heard of this challenge/plan on Candace’s blog, and I rejoiced with her when she finished the challenge herself earlier this year.  I decided to join the challenge which begins today because I am in a serious spiritual slump.  I lack discipline in my life when it comes to spiritual issues (particularly having a devotional life), and I hope that this forced discipline will shape me up–at least that’s my prayer.

With an infant in the house, sleep is at a premium, so I know better than to plan to do my reading early in the morning.  I am still in the “sleep when he sleeps” mode, especially while the girls are sleeping, too.  Instead, I plan to take advantage of the girls’ afternoon quiet hour.  The DLM is usually awake at this time, but I hope to be able to read and hold him, too.  :-)

If my blogging slows down, you’ll know why.  I am currently behind by two book reviews and I’ve almost finished another book, and I do hope to catch up and keep up with my reviews.  However, with as much Bible reading as I’ll be doing, my reading of other materials will also slow down.  It will be so worth it to me, though, when I reach the end of this challenge and have the whole Bible “under my belt.”  I hope I will be able to post a brief check-in post on Mondays to hold myself accountable, and also because this is the check-in day at Mom’s Toolbox, the bloggy home for this challenge.

That’s what I’m up to.  If you’re visiting my blog from Mom’s Toolbox/The Bible in 90 Days challenge, welcome!  You can find out more about me here.  :-)