Weekly book shelf, 6/4

Calvin is still reading through the Wizard of Oz, and still leafing through the Wizard of Oz pop-up book. His birthday is this week and we are celebrating with family next weekend in a full Wizard of Oz (the books, not the movie) party as planned by Calvin himself. I think it will be a riot!

One morning this week, as I was just waking, he brought me Over in the Jungle. It's one that we read to him when he was pretty young, but not much since. I love rediscovering books that are still on his shelves through his own reading. He was pretty excited about this one in part because of the animals, but mostly because of the pictures, which are reliefs, staged using polymer clay and then photographed. The images were one of the reasons I picked this book when I did—because it was so different from all the others we already had. Otherwise the book is based on the "over in the meadow" song and rhyme but uses rainforest animals instead. The animals are really brought to life not only by the unique art, but also by the use of realistic/scientific yet melodic language. It's a simple book, but a true winner.

He was also reading Animalia this week. Beautiful illustrations—thank you Graeme Base. And Little goat's New Horns is a Reader's Digest Kids book from the Little Animal Adventures Series. We have several of these books, all picked up from book sales and garage sales. They were printed in the early 90s and are cute anthropomorphic tales with a strong dose of animal facts thrown in—in this case Little Goat is comparing her almost non-existent horns with those of other animals and learns that every animal she comes across has unique and important characteristics.

And we are just about finished with The Magical Monarch of Mo.

On my bookshelf for this week...I am still reading Proust. I think I will be saying that for many, many weeks, but one of these days I'll finish. I did finish Night and Dawn, by Elie Wiesel, and am now almost done with Day, the final book of that "trilogy".

Weekly book shelf, 5/28

A quote to share, from a letter to readers in L. Frank Baum's Magical Monarch of Mo:

"It is the nature of children to scorn realities, which crowd into their lives all too quickly with advancing years. Childhood is the time for fables, for dreams, for joy."

The last thing I believe is that children scorn realities, or that realities cannot be a part of childhood joys, but I do value worlds of magic and wild imagination as well, and what better place to find those than in a good book.

Anyhow, here's what we've been reading this week.

Here's some of what Calvin was reading by himself this week. We read The Wizard of Oz together last fall (reviewed here) and have been making our way through the series ever since. Now we're waiting for the next book to come in at the library, the first in the series as written by Ruth Plumly Thomson, and in the meantime Calvin decided to re-read the Wizard of Oz all by himself. This is by far the longest, most advanced book he's read by himself as yet, but he's having no trouble whatsoever.

  

Some picture books we read together. Bamboo Valley has long been favored around here. There's nothing particularly stunning about it, but it's a mixture of endearing and realistic. Like Bird, Butterfly, Eel it's the real story of this majestic animal, mostly devoid of anthropomorphism. Then I'm not a huge fan of Jan Brett, but Town Mouse Country Mouse is one that I do just fine with. Lastly, The Great Kapok Tree is a parade of beautiful rainforest animals arguing for the life of their forest. This one I love not only for its message, but also for the beautiful illustrations.

While we wait for the next Oz book to come in at our library we've been reading the short stories of The Magical Monarch of Mo, also by L. Frank Baum, written before the Oz series. I'm still in love with Baum. And Jon has been reading The Arabian Nights with Calvin, too.

 

On my bookshelf this week... for fiction I've started Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, in which I'm still on Swann's Way. In non-fiction I finished In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson, and am starting on Night, by Ellie Wiesel.

Nate the great (a review by Calvin)

Weekly book shelf, 5/21

Here's some of what Calvin was reading by himself this week:.

Jon and I read a number of picture books with Calvin this week, too. Bird, Butterfly, Eel is one of our favorites. It's a year-in-the-life story of the eponymous animals, following their life and travels from their summer homes in New England to their winter homes, in three different locations, and back. It's an endearing story, completely devoid of anthropomorphism, accompanied by beautiful illustrations. Calvin loves it.

And we finished Glinda of Oz, but are still reading our way through the Aeneid.

On my bookshelf this week... in fiction I just finished Shogun, by James Clavell. My copy of Beasts in the Garden arrived so that's my new non-fiction, but I haven't picked my next fiction yet.

Weekly book shelf, 5/6

Like many families we have a read-before-bed tradition. Usually that's when Calvin and I read another chapter, or two or three, in our most recent read aloud, these days that's usually an Oz. But we have a morning book tradition in our family, too. Since Calvin usually gets up in the mornings before Jon and I are (fully) awake, he selects a handful of picture books and brings them into our room to sit either in the sunshine on the floor or on top of us in bed and read to himself while we slowly blink the day into focus. The books then remain in our bed or on our floor until that night when I set them on the dresser. I have a stack of at least fifteen books still on my dresser from this week because I've been too busy to put them back, but also because sometimes he'll revisit one of them on a morning, and because I like to see the stack grow over the course of the week.

That's just a little reading anecdote, and whatever books he read in the mornings this week are still upstairs on my dresser, so here are the books I know he read downstairs this week. Earl the earthworm is a cute little story with lots of information about worms and their ecosystem. We both continue to be a fan of the Magic Tree House series, he's started on a Rome kick, and he also continued to devour Nate the Great in such quantities as our library had.

He read these two out loud to me this week while I worked in the garden. The first, Jip and Janneke, was a gift sent to him by my cousin who lives in the Netherlands. I wish this book was available here so that I could recommend it to everyone. It's adorable, and he's had a great time with it since it arrived on Tuesday. And he read two chapters to me from that perennial favorite, the original Winnie the Pooh, sans Disney influence.

We've used these for our exploration of Ancient Rome, and yes, I realize I've mixed my Greek and Roman myths here with the appearance of Theseus, but since we started with the Aeneid he at least understands how they intersect, and some of our other research books even explain the lineup of Greek and Roman gods.

We are almost done with Glinda of Oz, but not quite.

And on my bookshelf this week... in fiction I finished A Man Without A Country, by Kurt Vonnegut, and Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, and am now reading Delta of venus. In non-fiction I'm almost finished with The Monk in the Garden, by Robin Marantz Henig, but it's a tad tedious so I'm still plugging away at it.