Weekly book shelf, 8/20
Saturday, August 20, 2011We spent a lot of our time in Antarctica this week, or at least in learning about it. After finishing Mr. Popper's Penguins Calvin was keen on learning more penguins and their home. He picked out a lot of library books on the subject, we went to the zoo, and our home has been filled with (imaginary) members of that species all week long, each with an exotic name, such as Penguinogio, Penguinogiotonio, and Gambul. It's been a lot of fun.
What Calvin read to himself this week...a lot of non-fiction because of the south pole exploration.
I am in love with the Getting to Know Nature's Children book series from Grolier (Scholastic) because they have beautiful full page photographs that face pages of well written text in a font that is easy to read but is not meant to be "eye-catching", and they are completely devoid of the extra graphics, icons, gimmicks and the like (which are so prevalent in children's non-fiction today, and which I think add confusion and over stimulate the senses). Unfortunately the series is out of print, and the cover image I have here is from a later printing (in which it is inexplicably linked with elephants), so I don't know if it's the same inside, but our library has most of the originals and they are on our favorites list there.
The True Book series from Scholastic is not on my top list. There are at least two fonts on every page, and two to four font colors, font sizes, font types or variations, plus graphics that are meant to draw the eye (away from the important text) towards quick fact tidbits (for those who don't want to read the book maybe?) and away from the photos. There are good facts here, I just wish they'd let the photos and facts stand for themselves. Calvin did fine with the book, and I know he read it, but I feel like it was more of a jumble for him than when he read the Nature's Children book straight through (and got a lot out of it).
And he finished The Boxcar Children #1 this week, and started in on Eve of the Emperor Penguin, and its non-fiction counter part, Penguins and Antarctica, right away.
What we read to Calvin this week...we're still working our way through Despereaux, which is pretty enjoyable, but I'm finding the slang dialect annoying...almost as annoying as the intrusive narrator (since I'm reading it out loud I've actually started skipping over the words "dear reader" and the like). I'm also not sure about some of the subject matter. There is violence (like the girl getting beat over the head until she is near deaf, and the mouse getting his tail cut off), plus the queen dies and the rat desires nothing but revenge because people don't like him. these things haven't upset Calvin at all, but maybe I should have read it myself first.
And on my shelf this week...I am back at Proust, I'm plugging through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I'm in the middle of Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves, by Naomi Aldort.
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