Thursday, May 26, 2016

What We're Reading :: May

Me
L' Amour's The Lonesome Gods (set in the California desert)
Undset's Kristin Lavansdatter (chagrined to say I've never read this classic!)
Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (a re-read for our local book club)
Shakespeare for Children: Six Scripts for Young Players (previewing on Amber's recommendation)
Cholmondeley's The Story of Charlotte Mason (have had this on my shelf for a year but am finally reading it!)
Cooper's When Children Love to Learn (for our local study group)

Vincent, age 9
Enright's Thimble Summer and Morey's Gentle Ben (both Year 4 free reads)
Fradin's The Signers (some Revolutionary-era non-fiction)
Eager's Knight's Castle (a re-read, part of his Tales of Magic series, which sounds twaddly but isn't ;))

Gianna, age 9
Cecily Barker's The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies (she's drawing her way through these poems)
Burnett's The Lost Prince (not as good as her other books, but Gianna doesn't seem to mind :))
Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (starting in on the Year 5 free reads!)
Haywood's Betsy's Busy Summer (reading aloud to Cate)

Cate, age 7
Elsa Beskow's Princess Sylvie (she took her most recent art project with her teacher from Beskow's illustrations for this book)
Beskow's The Flowers' Festival (inspired by our yard bursting into bloom this month)

As a Family
d'Angeli's The Door in the Wall (a re-listen on audio)
Ransome's Swallowdale (on audio also -- just started it as our "car book")
Enright's Gone-Away Lake (just finished -- I handed the Big Kids the sequel to read on their own)
Collodi's Pinocchio (the new read-aloud in our Morning Basket)

The Little Kids have been busy with birthday books from the past month...

From Xavier's birthday...


The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose (a lovely hardcover copy popped up on PaperbackSwap!)
Helen Ward's The Rooster and the Fox (I just love Helen Ward's illustrations)
Peter and the Wolf, illustrated by Wallace Chappell (yep, yet another version :))
Belloc's The Yak, the Python, and the Frog, illustrated by Steven Kellogg (fun combination!)
Greene's Railroad Engineers and Airplane Pilots: What Do They Do? (perfect for a transportation-loving boy!)

And Drew's second birthday books...


Ruth Krauss' I Can Fly, illustrated by Mary Blair (ours is a larger copy, but I linked to the regular Golden Book version)
McKie's Noah's Ark (love oversized books)
Margaret Wise Brown's The Wonderful House (classic)
the Ahlbergs' Each Peach Pear Plum  (which we somehow did not own already!)

In the Mail


Animal Tales (my parents found this lovely reproduction full of pop-ups sitting in their garage!)
Lobel's The Wisest Man in the World
The Jessie Wilcox Smith Mother Goose (I can't get enough pretty Mother Goose editions)


For our non-fiction collection...
Pettit's Animal Signs and Signals
What Makes a Bird a Bird (I love Leonard Weisgard's illustrations)
Day's What Is a Flower?
Cherry's A River Ran Wild
Gail Gibbons' The Honey Makers


Girls Who Looked Under Rocks (I pre-read this for my daughter and it has a couple bothersome phrases I need to make a little note next to before handing to her, but otherwise it's a decent book of short biographies for a girl naturalist -- especially because it includes Comstock!)
Five Little Peppers Abroad (in hardcover, how could I resist?)
Palace Wagon Family (a book about the Donner Party that I want to preview for my Year 5 kids)
two more hardcover Narnias to make our collection complete -- now I can sell the paperbacks!
Aliki's William Shakespeare
Dalgliesh's The Columbus Story (not as good as d'Aulaires' but couldn't pass up Dalgliesh)
The Age of Chivalry: The Illustrated Bulfinch's Mythology (a beautiful edition!)

What are you reading, friends?  Picked up any good books lately?

(Links above are affiliate links. I left un-linked the books that are recommended by AmblesideOnline because I'd prefer if you clicked over to their site and bought through their affiliate links. As always, thanks for your support!)

6 comments:

  1. Oh my. I'm sorta forcing myself to NOT look. ;) LOL! You have SOOOO many good ones here! :) Thank you for posting!

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  2. Caroline just finished Girls Who Look Under Rocks! I just sticky noted the couple of stories I wanted her to skip and I read those aloud and edited. ;)

    I've never heard of Tales of Magic series. I'll have to check that out. We are reading Thimble Summer as our read aloud right now and we have yet to read Pinocchio. Honestly, it has never completely appealed to me, so I have not gone for it. But I'm sure my mind is tainted with Disney's movie from when I was a child. My kids would have no such issue and it's on AO's list so is probably good. You'll have to let us know how y'all like it.

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    1. Vincent and Gianna listened to Pinocchio on audio by themselves during the summer after Y1, so I haven't read it but figured it was time. ;)

      And how funny that you have the same book! I just got it in the mail from either Molly or Becky...I like it despite those couple troubling bits. I was actually pre-reading it because I was wondering whether I might add it to our Y5 stack for next year, but I don't think it's quite up to that. I already penciled in a couple notes in the margins and will put it on their free reading shelf. :)

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  3. Celeste, I LOVE your book posts! You're helping me have a more discerning eye. I popped in to ask you what your favorite version of Pinocchio is and I see that you're reading it during your Morning Time. :-). Which version do you have? Also, when do you get your children to read all of the science picture books that aren't scheduled in AO, like the ones posted above? I'm actually really torn right now about how to approach science. MA 1A seems like too much and AO seems not enough, but simple. I'd love to hear how you incorporate science picture books into your day. :-).

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    1. I'm glad, Elizabeth!

      The version we have is illustrated by Roberto Innocenti: http://amzn.to/1sKn9c3

      I put our science book on their free reading shelf, from which they choose a book to read in the afternoons. I don't put every science book on there -- just the ones I think they'll find particularly interesting or that are meatier. The rest are on our regular non-fiction shelves, which they can access any time they want. My oldest son grabs non-fiction very often, so I like to have well-stocked shelves for his sake. He also chooses from those shelves to read aloud to my kindergartener and preschoolers, so they end up hearing those books read also. But my kids also don't have computer access, so if they want to know something, they use those shelves as their reference library. I do occasionally schedule some non-fiction read-alouds into our school days; for example, right now for "summer school," I'm reading a book about animals during our Morning Basket time and the kids are reading the One Small Square books, a few pages per week. But I actually have found the AO schedule to be sufficient science-wise, particularly when coupled with diligent nature study. And my kids that are science crazy just naturally squeeze more non-fiction reading into their days. :) But that's just how it works for us! :)

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