Thursday, September 22, 2011

September Read Alouds

Farmer Boy - Snowy and I are ploughing our way through this one, pun intended. I must say, Little House isn't nearly as much fun with my boy as it was with my girls. Even the chapter where Almanzo and his siblings get left alone for a week and spend the whole time eating cake and icecream and feeding candy to pigs hasn't really grabbed his imagination. I do, however, enjoy reading aloud the bits about food.

He ate ham and chicken and turkey, and dressing and cranberry jelly; he ate potatoes and gravy, succotash, baked beans and boiled beans and onions, and white bread and rye'n'injun bread and sweet pickles and jam and preserves. Then he drew a long breath and ate pie...He ate a piece of pumpkin pie and a piece of custard pie, and he ate almost a piece of vinegar pie.

The Wombles at Work -  This is our 'fun' read aloud but I'm unimpressed. I'm a Womble fan - indeed, I went to Wimbledon Common to see the Womble habitat - but this book finds the Wombles relocated to Hyde Park and I'm not buying it. Snowy, however, finds it a soothing sort of bed-time read.

A Girl of the Limberlost -  Since the girls and I finished Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, we've been lost for a book. The library is uninspiring and the bookshop hasn't got in any of the lovely new books we're waiting on, like The Penderwicks at Point Mouette. ( We could order everything from Amazon and indulge in Good Books to our heart's content, but I'm the last homeschooler left on earth gamely trying to support the independents, or so it feels. Jobs are looking shaky in the bookshop business. )

It puts me off balance, not reading aloud to the girls after lunch. In desperation I rummaged around in a box of under-the-bed books yesterday and discovered Limberlost. It's been under the bed for years, having read it myself and found it to be overwritten and sentimental. Strangely enough, in the way some books have, it's much better suited to reading aloud. It's the kind of book where you can have fun 'doing' the voices. It's a coming of age story, lonely Elnora Comstock, burdened with an unhappy and widowed mother, making her way out of a harsh life of rural poverty via An Education and the collection of moths. Yes, moths. I seem to remember there's some sickly romance in the later chapters, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, neither of my girls being great admirers of sickly romance.

3 comments:

  1. Hmm, maybe I'll give "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" a shot as soon as I finish "Around the World in 80 Days"...

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  2. Wendy, it was fun - in an eye-rolling, this is so not spooky way! Fantastic job of making London a character in the story though.

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  3. I love the Penderwicks! Also nice that you read to all your kids! And after lunch, great idea. I have been reading at bedtime for so long a change in plan might be good. At least for the older one, maybe the younger could listen and color or something.

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