Weekly book shelf, 3/14/14

This week in history we learned about medieval India (SOTW2 ch. 5). That included reading about the Gupta Dynasty, and about Siddhartha and the rise of Buddhism.

Demi is one of my favorite go-to picture book authors. Her collection of picture book bios uses flowing language coupled with vivid illustrations to impart timeless knowledge. We used two Demi books for this study. The first, Buddha, is a standard story book biography. It tells the well known story of Siddhartha, the prince who renounced his riches to become a beggar and gave rise to the Buddhist religion.

Our second Demi book of the week was Buddha Stories. It is a collection of ten of the more famous moral tales from the Buddhist tradition, fables that have become famous though centuries of retelling. Think Aesop, or, more interestingly, the much varied Anansi stories of Africa. Engaging text and bright illustrations make this collection fun to read.

For a more real-life connection, we also read a few completely non-fiction books with this chapter. My Friends' Beliefs is a compendium of common religions. It is fairly comprehensive, but in order to be so it is also somewhat long winded and devoid of visual entertainment. I'm all for lots of reading with little distraction, but this was supposed to be a light foray into comparative religion, not a hard core study. We only skimmed the pertinent parts, but I think it's a text we'll return to when we have more time for in depth study.

On a much lighter note, the "Religions of the World" collection gives very brief informative accounts of the titular religion. In order to set the scene we read I am Hindu from this series. The defining facts are simplistic, but straight forward, which means a lot when taking first steps into what can be a confusing religion.

From the same series, I am Buddhist also relays simple, defining facts about the named religion. Though it feels dry in comparison to Demi's stories about the same subject, it provides simple facts about the contemporary religion instead of stories about its past.

Although I do like this series, it is worth noting that it, like so many other things, is written from a Christian standpoint. While it doesn't feel judgmental or demeaning in any way, it does try to fit every religion into the same finite box that fits Christianity, even they don't fit into that box neatly.

In science this week—BFSU1 review. Ongoing.

In literature this week we read and studied Rascal, by Sterling North. This is a memoir, written in the 60s about a year of the author's childhood in 1918. The focus of the story is North's year raising a racoon who becomes a beloved friend, but the memoir encompasses so much more than this sweet story. It is a rich picture of small town life during World War I, and a poignant tale of friendship, family, and coming of age in time that was both harder and easier at once. I had never read this book, and I loved it. And Calvin is running around the house with a stuffed racoon he has taken to calling, of course, Rascal. Beautiful.

Calvin's choice for alone reading and studying this week was The One and Only Ivan. Ivan the gorilla has come to terms with, or at least ceased to consider, his life of dismal captivity in a shopping center mini-zoo. But he is forced to face the desolation of his situation when he befriends Ruby, a baby elephant new to the small cages in the mall. Ultimately a story about friendship, the underlying message is about caring for our fellow creatures, and each other.

And lastly, just for fun, Calvin is still on his Jules Verne kick. This week it was The Mysterious Island, which I still have never read, but Calvin enjoyed. Of course.