Thursday, October 29, 2015

What We're Reading :: October

Thank you, kind readers who emailed to see if my quiet here this past week meant that baby had arrived.  Sorry for the false alarm!  I am still here--no baby just yet--but busy working on a bunch of different posts without time to actually publish any of them.  But I figured I had to at least get my monthly reading round-up up before October passes us by! :)  Hoping to be back tomorrow with a bit of nature study chat!

Me
Aldrich's The Lantern in Her Hand (just started for our local book club)
Speare's Calico Captive (gulped this down on my own even though I'm supposed to be reading only a chapter a week alongside the kids--whoopsie! :))
Charlotte Mason's Volume 6 and Macaulay's For the Children's Sake (for our CM study group using Brandy's Start Here)

Vincent, age 9
Animalium (a birthday book from Grandma--I have a round-up of favorite Big Books About Animals coming soon!)
Kipling's Jungle Books (a re-read from AO Year 3)

Cate, age 6
Syd Hoff's Sammy the Seal and Arnold Lobel's Small Pig (she's starting to take off in reading to herself!)

Xavier, age 5
Go Dog Go! and Hop on Pop (he's Seuss-obsessed)
...and he finished his first set of Bob Books in a couple days so I think I need to grab a harder set from the library!

Reading aloud
Barrie's Peter Pan (just finished--a re-listen for us in the car on the way to and from the beach)
Nesbit's The Railway Children (the Big Kids read this independently a few years ago, but I hadn't yet)
Speare's The Sign of the Beaver (moving along slowly, but I have such fond memories of this book!)
E.B. White's Charlotte's Web (a Year 1 free read - on audio read by White himself)

And the birthday books for my birthday girls, which has consumed most of their reading lately...

For Gianna, age 9


For Bridget, age 4
de Regniers' May I Bring a Friend (found a copy of our own after borrowing the library's many times!)
Walter Crane's An Alphabet of Old Friends (this is a lovely copy)
Favourite Winnie-the-Pooh Stories (seems to not be available on Amazon, but this is just several unabridged original stories with original illustrations in the miniature form little hands love--hurrah!)


For Clara, age 3 
Margaret Wise Brown's The Good Little Bad Little Pig illustrated by Dan Yaccarino (I think this particular edition is out of print, sadly, so no link--the other illustrations don't look nearly as engaging, unfortunately)
Golden Books' Animal Babies


Gianna also got some new favorites from Grandma...


George MacDonald's The Golden Key and The Light Princess
Burnett's A Little Princess on audio (we listened to this version last year and loved it!)

More used finds...
And naturally, I picked up a few at the local library and thrift store this month...


First, a pile of from "The Real Book About" series.  I'm not familiar with these, but is anyone else?  They were selling them for fifty cents each, so I couldn't pass up the set, but I haven't had a chance to dig into them yet to see if they're worthwhile.


Donald Hall's The Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America (another for my shelves of poetry anthologies)
Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days and Estes' Ginger Pye (both hardcovers to replace what we already own in paperback--from AO lists)
Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (we already own this one too, but I couldn't resist a version with Rackham's illustrations for Term 3)
Blake's Early Airplanes (more non-fiction for my oldest son)

What are you reading, friends?

6 comments:

  1. "Any friend of our friend is welcome here." We love and constantly quote May I Bring a Friend! Also, the Flower Fairies were our introduction to poetry. My four year old just pours over the illustrations in it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes! May I Bring a Friend is lovely. And Flower Fairies definitely inspires my girls to draw! They love mimicking the illustrations. :)

      Delete
  2. You find the greatest books!!! :) I haven't heard of some of these! Lovely! :) Glad you are doing well and hanging in there! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hadn't heard of some of them either! I just love used book shopping and finding new treasures. :) Thanks for your best wishes!

      Delete
  3. Celeste, just waiting to see that sweet baby. =) Probably not as much as you though.

    I was wondering if this version of Alcott's Flower Fables is illustrated?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :)

      There are black-and-white line drawings interspersed throughout: each story has a full-page drawing, and then there are little drawings within the text as well as illuminated first letters here and there. So not fully illustrated but here and there.

      Delete