HS Comments on the Fly

100 Books Your Child Should Hear Before Starting School

I found this list by clicking through from Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea.

I think it’s just stoopid to put “should” in the title of the list. Possibly “might” would be a better word.

OR … wait for it … maybe the could produce a flyer that helps parents and children choose books all by themselves instead to fostering dependence.
Maybe the flyer could state:

• See the shelves (or bins) in the E section? Look through them and pick out some books that look interesting. (After all, why couldn’t any one of those books be a good book?)
• Parents should pick out some books that appeal to them personally because the parent may get to read it a few times if the child enjoys the book a lot.
• Buy books for your child and give the child unlimited access even if it’s a really nice book. If the book gets rough around the edges or falls apart, buy another.
• Not all children like to hear the same story over and over again.
• If the child is not enjoying the book, find another.
• Look for books that evoke happiness, peace, and wonder, ones with lovely illustrations and engaging characters. Reading should be enjoyable.
• The goal is to raise a person who, as an adult, enjoys reading — novels, newspapers, travelogues, how-to books, reports, history books. So try to make all reading experiences with your child enjoyable. Give them happy memories of trips to the library or bookstore with their parents. Give them warm memories of you, the parent, reading books aloud to them on the couch, in bed right before lights out, or out on a summer day in the shady hammock. If they are happy while reading, it will be a feeling that they will want to duplicate as the years go by which will result in a person who ends up loving to read.

One thing that really bugs me about the book list is that some of these books will be enjoyed more (or again) after a child is school age. Just because a book is listed on List A to be read during grade 1 doesn’t mean a 3rd grader may not enjoy the book also. Putting limits on when a person should read a book is foolish.

I know that we didn’t do the Macaulay books (City, Castle, Pyramid, Mosque) when the homeschooling catalogs said we should at around 9 years old. My oldest read City around age 14. We had already studied Rome a few times by then and so the info in City was easily assimilated and had a deeper meaning. If he’d read that book at age 9, he’d never pick it up again later, which is sad since it’s a great book on city planning — great light reading for a high schooler who may be considering engineering. Timing. It’s really important, but getting it right is a matter of serendipity, really. The only reason that City didn’t get read earlier is because I didn’t see it at the library and couldn’t afford it in addition to all the other books we truly needed. I finally found it at a library sale. You see, it wasn’t about sticking to a reading list; it was just how things turned out.

Ack. I just realized that I’ve already written an entry like this. Create Your Own Classics aka Skip Twist. Repeating oneself, a sure sign of getting old. I should be doing crossword puzzles to stave off Alzheimer’s, but crossword puzzles just make me cross.

Anyway, my point, lest I get lost in old-age-induced digressions, is: We can’t let self-proclaimed experts tell us what books need to be read when as if we are too stupid to figure that out for ourselves. A list may be a good starting point, but it shouldn’t be allowed to dictate our reading choices. If we do give it that type of power over us, we are limiting ourselves and our children — and sometimes just wasting our time on drivel-filled books.

But, back to that list for just a second. I do not understand why some books are on that list. I never read my kids Where the Wild Things Are. Teachers and librarians read that book to me incessantly when I was very young. I hated that story. It was creepy and gave me nightmares and made me afraid to go to bed at night.

Here’s how Amazon.com describes the book comments in [] are mine:

Where the Wild Things Are is one of those truly rare books that can be enjoyed equally by a child and a grown-up. If you disagree, then it’s been too long since you’ve attended a wild rumpus. [That’s me! Wild rumpus free for years and proud of it.] Max dons his wolf suit in pursuit of some mischief and gets sent to bed without supper. [Hey, that would be awful. Why scare kids with denial of food?] Fortuitously [Oh, yeah, lucky me], a forest grows in his room, [um … scary] allowing his wild rampage to continue unimpaired. Sendak’s color illustrations (perhaps his finest) are beautiful, and each turn of the page brings the discovery of a new wonder.

The wild things — with their mismatched parts and giant eyes [teeth, claws, fangs] — manage somehow to be scary-looking without ever really being scary; [Um … they are too scary!] at times they’re downright hilarious. [No, they’re not hilarious; they’re creepy.] Sendak’s defiantly run-on sentences [Oh, yeah, let’s teach the children well by using bad grammar defiantly] — one of his trademarks — lend the perfect touch of stream of consciousness to the tale, which floats between the land of dreams [I’ll make my own dreams, please.] and a child’s imagination.

This Sendak [non] classic is more fun than you’ve ever had in a wolf suit [Only wolves and werewolves have fun in wolf suits.], and it manages to reaffirm the notion that there’s no place like home. [There’s no place like home? That’s what Dorothy said after her scary time with the flying monkeys and witch. At least she got to make her own dream.]

Don’t you just want to buy a copy of your own?

This is a recycled entry from sometime in 2003. Still pertinent.

Today in our read-aloud Laura and Carrie, of Little Town on the Prairie, walked with their father to the 4th of July celebration. A gentleman was addressing the town gathered for the celebration.

“It’s Fourth of July, and on this day somebody’s got to read the Declaration of Independence. It looks like I’m elected, so hold your hats, boys; I’m going to read it.” Laura and Carrie knew the Declaration by heart, of course….

Of course? What does she mean, of course? You mean they memorized it and could have recited it themselves? And even understood all the big words?

That, of course, gave me pause. It sounded like everyone memorized the Declaration of Independence back in the 1880s or thereabouts.

This evening I decided to try to find out if most folks actually did memorize it. Googling didn’t do me much good. I did dig up a useful web site about the Declaration, but I couldn’t verify that most folks prior to 1900 could recite the Declaration of Independence from memory.

I doubt any of us in this homeschool will memorize the Declaration. We have discussed it a bit, of course, and will again. But memorize it, no. Not hardly.

Having read the Declaration of Independence before as a teen and not being able to make hide nor hair of it, I never read it again. In fact, I avoided any study of the Declaration of Independence, thinking, “Yuck! Boring! Incomprehensible!”

But the other day, my teens and I read a really good book together. It’s really quite good, and I’m impressed by it.

And I’m not kidding–this book makes the Declaration of Independence much easier to decipher! Granted you may still need to use the glossary in the back a couple of times, but the meaning overall will be a lot clearer.

The Declaration of Independence: The Words that Made America makes the Declaration easier to understand because this book takes what is usually a whole page of words and turns it into about 145 pages of words and pictures. By breaking the Declaration down phrase by phrase, it’s much more easily digestible. You see, just small snippets have been put on a page and helpful drawings accompany them.

Here’s an example. On the right hand page is: “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government,” is written. On the left is a picture of four committee members who worked on the Declaration cheering while the other committee member is drop kicking a crown with the words “British Rule” on it.

An illustrated Declaration of Independence is just what the doctor teacher ordered, and my hat’s off to Sam Fink for putting the book together.

I definitely recommend this work. I think it’s one worth buying and having handy. It’s great for any age, especially students who have previously studied the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence refers to many topics and events that we covered a couple of years back when studying U.S. history. Having that background knowledge helped with understanding the Declaration of Independence more fully.

Anyway, most homeschoolers need to put this book on their either their Library List or their Buy List. If you’re homeschooling in the US, it’s a tool you really can’t afford to homeschool without.

The Road From Home is a fairly well-known homeschooling book. It’s recommended by a few curriculum publishers and is a Newbery Honor Book (1980). It’s about Veron, a young girl who is Armenian, and her family’s trek across Turkey into Syria, I believe, back in 1915. We read it aloud quite a while back, and I don’t remember all the details perfectly.

But my point is that if you read The Road From Home to your students, you might want to tie it in to current events going on between the US House Committee and Foreign Affairs and Turkey. What Veron and her family lived and died through has shown up in today’s current events … nearly a century later.

I’m happy to say that reading the book gave us a bit of a framework to help us understand today’s issues. Funny how that works.

Here are a few articles if you haven’t already heard the about the issue:

• Turkey Condemns U.S. House Vote on Armenian Killings
• Armenia Hails Controversial U.S. Vote Recognizing Genocide
• Turkey Calls Home Its U.S. Ambassador Over Armenian Resolution
• Traumatic Issues Trouble Turkey’s Sense of Its Identity

Okay, so I found BookMooch. I love books. So I joined.

I added one book to my “Inventory” and then added another. Then I went to look at my inventory list, thinking I’d see two books listed.

But no, only the first book was there. So I clicked around trying to figure out what the problem was and found out that someone had already requested the second book that I entered into the system. Within seconds — just that quick! Wow!

That was a shock. And then I had to figure out what to do, which ended up being easy … just “Accept” the “Mooch.” Maybe I have the terminology wrong, but it’s close.

So, now, I can mooch a book from someone else because that moocher who requested my book automatically gave me one of their points. Cool, huh? A free book will arrive for me in the mail once I get a wishlist put together.

PROBLEM: I am wanting to get rid of books (remember?), not get more books. Oops. I guess BookMooch.com isn’t really what I want, is it? It’s basically send a book, receive a book.

It would have been great 10 years ago when we needed more books to replenish our home library for homeschooling. But now, we don’t need books in quite the same way at all. We’ve got almost enough books to finish high school and don’t need any more general books for school. The only one I can think of that we still need to buy is a workbook and isn’t likely to show up on BookMooch.

So. I don’t think I’ll be entering a whole slew of books into my BookMooch inventory since I have to package and ship books if they’re requested. 1) I don’t enjoy packaging up books and 2) I have to pay money to ship them. It’s easier and cheaper to just give them to a thrift store when I want to get rid of them.

Oh, and to top it off! Our post office won’t even let us send books as Media Mail because books aren’t educational materials. I’m not kidding; that’s what I was told. If it’s a textbook, we can use Media Mail; but we can’t send just any ol’ book Media Mail — not even literature (I asked) because “… that would include all books then.” What will the post office come up with next?

UPDATE: The post office worker took the package, opened it, and ripped up the interior packaging which consisted of a plastic grocery sack taped completely shut as a moisture barrier and the newsprint (or butcher paper, I don’t know what it’s called exactly) that the book was wrapped in. The family member who was mailing the book for me tried to get it all back together properly, but the wrapping materials were torn. The postal worker looked at the exterior of the book only and said that it couldn’t go “Media Mail.” It had to go “First Class.” No, there were no personal notes of any kind inside the book (which she didn’t look inside of anyway), nor were there any papers in the package at all — even though an invoice is permitted.

I hope the package arrives at its destination okay.

Oh, yeah, and also What We’re Reading is part of the Subject Line, too.

So have you been keeping up with Bree, the homeschooler, in her online show LonelyGirl15? Yea, me neither.

I did watch it way back before everyone found out that she wasn’t actually a homeschooler, but rather just an actress. Our family was trying to figure out the mystery. We weren’t too fanatical about it, but we were intrigued. It was kind of fun to read all the crazy notions people had about the show.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a simplistic and partially ignorant recap. A small group of acting types got together early last year and made a few videos about a homeschooled girl and her friend Daniel. Somehow, the video diary became very popular on YouTube.com. The main character, Bree, actually wrote back to people who emailed her, but as Bree, a character the actress was playing. No one knew that Bree was actually the actress/student Jessica Lee Rose. Everyone wondered where Bree and Daniel were located. Viewers analyzed everything in her room and everything she said, looking for clues. Even their camera choice is discussed. Finally it was discovered that Bree was an acting student and stuff … I can’t remember the whole story.

Anyway, one thing that made me wonder if she was really a homeschooler was that Bree knew of the physicist Richard Feynman. I thought it was really strange because I think we’re average homeschoolers and we had only just discovered Richard Feynman by looking for science biographies. Maybe I’m way off base (quite possibly), but I don’t think that many average homeschooling moms/students have even heard of Richard Feynman. So, I found it suspicious that Bree, the homeschooler, had heard of him and was even mentioning the book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! That book just isn’t on homeschooling booklists. I smelled a rat.

Which brings me to What We’re Reading. My daughter’s reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! right now, and she’s enjoying it. Feynman could weave a good yarn. It’s part of her science class for this year (remember, she’s a teen). My son and husband read it last spring, right before we found LonelyGirl15 on YouTube.com. I’ve not read the book yet, but my son and husband shared some good bits with me. I’ll read it one of these days.

Warning: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! isn’t a book that everyone will want to just hand to their high school student without pre-reading. I can’t remember what exactly, but there’s something in it that would offend some folks.

I just finished The Second Mrs. Gioconda. I liked it in some respects and didn’t like it in others. But that’s for another entry. One quick comment, though: Way wrong way to title the book.

So the LonelyGirl15 season finale occurs today in 12 separate installments.

Author and Austen fan, David Lassman, submitted three of Jane’s novels (including Pride and Prejudice under the title of First Impressions with the characters’ names changed) and the classic novels were rejected over and over again by big-name publishers like Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, and Simon & Schuster.

Was it because of plagiarism? No, only once was Austen’s work recognized.

Read the article yourself. It’s startling.

But it’s only startling for a second because once you think about it, Pride and Prejudice, while being a good story, is not written in the language of today. It’s a classic because of its popularity in the early 1800s not because it’s easy reading for today.

Language changes. Chaucer would get rejected today also.

But wait … would you recognize the novels Lassman submitted? They were Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. I wouldn’t have recognized Northanger Abbey.

Amazon.com has a rating system based on 5 stars. I know you probably already know that, but just in case one reader out there doesn’t, I mention it.

It’s not often that a book can maintain a 5-star rating through 14 reviews. But I found one!

It’s a really cool book because, if a parent reads it, they’ll be able to answer all those pesky science questions that little kids come up with about the world we live in. Okay, it probably doesn’t have all the answers, but it sure has a load of them. And it’s got helpful illustrations to go with the explanations. It’s a fun book for higher levels, too, because the questions seem easy to answer, but often aren’t. Truly cool.

What book am I referring to? Thinking Physics.

We’ve had our copy for about five years now and thoroughly enjoy it. I wish I’d had it when the children were little so that I could have laid a better foundation for them for higher-level science, but, oh well. Anyway, even through all the book purges we’ve had, we’ve kept this book and will continue to do so because the information in it doesn’t go out of style or become stale. It’s not a textbook; it’s a real book and worth hanging on to.

And 5 stars! No one has given this book a 4-star rating yet; it’s that good! Go on … go read about it and see what others are saying. I’m surprised some “homeschooling expert” somewhere isn’t already extolling the virtues of this book … and hawking it. Be the first homeschooler on your block to have your own copy!

And if I can’t figure out who squirrelled away our copy, I’ll have to buy another!

UPDATE: Hey, look at this … a professor at St. Andrews (Prince William’s alma mater) uses some material from Thinking Physics in his optics lectures (passing mention in syllabus). Interesting.

	I couldn’t hold the camera steady!

We actually traveled about 60 miles to view 20 minutes of fireworks. I guess that’s what happens when you live in the sticks as we do.

To be fair, we did carpool with another family. We also played a lively game of charades, yes, by streetlight, while we waited for the fireworks to start.

So, hmmm. What else? It looks like I’ve got space to fill up because of the photo. So the rest of this entry is just filler. Feel free to click on out of here now.

The library’s Summer Reading Program is in full swing. Let’s hope my daughter wins a prize since this is her last year. She’s currently reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ve never read it. I know I’m missing out, but I’m enjoying A Good Year which is quite different from the movie.

‘Tis the season to shuffle books, or maybe you’d prefer the term redistribute. Recently I sorted quickly through my books, culled 1500, and off they went to the thrift store.

I only have one year of homeschooling left and many of the books were part of our home library “just in case.” You know, just in case someone needed something to read or had a sudden interest in some event, topic, or person. It was difficult parting, though, because I still wanted to read many of them. An example would be Nina Brown Baker’s He Wouldn’t Be King: The Story of Simon Bolivar. I got rid of some really great books and a few duds, too. So now I’ve got a little more room on my bookshelves.

Last year about this time I also performed a book purge, though not as extensive. I took those to the local homeschool book swap. That was a little strange. Many of the folks selling their stuff had really good prices on their curriculum and books. However, very few people were buying. It seemed really strange. Even Sonlight and Usborne titles in immaculate condition didn’t sell for even 25 or 50 cents. I hid a nice, pretty old-fashioned-looking Henty for $5 in the middle of a box as a treat to the person willing to search. So that was fun to watch. She was so surprised to find it. I can’t remember the title, but it was one I bought but ended up not using because, for us, Hentys didn’t live up to their hype.

At the end of that sale, I donated a bunch of the books to some group that claimed to provide curriculum to “destitute” homeschooling locals and gave about 5 boxes to the thrift store to be sold at exorbitant prices. So that purge went well also.

Anyway, I feel so much lighter after getting rid of 1500 books. In just another year, I’ll get to do it again. I’m sort of looking forward to it.

I remember while growing up thinking after a certain age that it just wasn’t cool to color anymore. But that was in the olden days. Now we’ve got these coloring books that claim to be “… suitable for both the college and health professional students….”

I’m talking about the The Anatomy Coloring Book and The Physiology Coloring Book. There are other topics covered by these coloring books. I’ll see if I can find some others.

Yeah, I found these:

• Gross Anatomy
• Gray’s Anatomy (see inside the book)
• Botany (see inside the book)
• Zoology (see inside the book)
• Biology
• Microbiology

I’m not sure if I agree with the pedagogy supporting this form of learning. That much coloring would fry my brain. I don’t think I’d suddenly understand the function of the rods and cones in the eye by coloring a picture of all of them.

However! That’s just me. My daughter can’t believe she’s getting credit for coloring and seems to enjoy it. Plus she’s able to give me a reasonably well formed explanation of what she has colored when she’s done. So … Re Sult!

For the curious, she will not be coloring either of the books in their entirety. That would be overkill. She’ll color until interest lags or she’s not able to pass my tough, but not obvious, evaluation procedure.

And on a lighter note … did you see where The Foil Hat Chick called the Bluedorns “kind of insane” yesterday? I am amused.