Weekly book shelf, 9/3

What Calvin read to himself this week...

Escape from the Chanticleer, is the story of a merry-go-round horse who longs to leave his post outside the Chanticleer restaurant to visit the nearby ocean shore, and in this fantasy such dreams come true. The book is probably a local hit in Nantucket, and it paints a beautiful picture of the northeast beach both with poetic language and illustrations. The story simple and lacks the stressors of suspense, questionable behavior, or what have you, but it's the simplicity that allows it's beauty to shine. The illustrations are detailed without being overwhelming, and they contain hidden treasures for those who look closely enough. This one is a big hit in our house.

What would happen if all the water in the Great Lakes was drained away? Where would we vacation? How would we ship cargo? The Day the Great lakes Drained Away is exactly the ecology book it sounds like and it relays a valuable warning, but it does so in poorly developed rhyme that is hard to read and enjoy. The illustrations are interesting, but mostly because they include recognizable landmarks from actual points of interest along the lakes. I have yet to find a book that Calvin openly dislikes, but he really didn't seem overly interested in this one, and really I can't blame him. There are better books out there on water preservation.

The Happy Hedgehog is not so happy when his grandfather accuses him of wasting his life being lazy, so he goes in search of some goal in life. Our actually un-happy hedgehog interviews a number of other forest animals who are busy with their own fields of study or practice, but he rejects all of these and ends up recognizing the value of his own interests and of doing exactly what he was doing originally. I think Calvin liked this one, the characters are shallow and petty as they train to be best in their fields, and hedgehog is so negative about all the work they have to do that he really does seem kind of lazy. Calvin brought this one home from our library sale room, but it's one that I will be donating right back.

The Boxcar Children #2, The Surprise Island is the second installment in the Boxcar Children Series but it didn't come along until 1949, over 25 years after the original. Calvin is really enjoying it.

What We read out loud...

We are still working our way through The Secret Zoo, and Jon has been looking through the graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline with him, too, although they are not strictly reading it together—especially in this form the story is a bit dark for Calvin.

On my own shelf...I've finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and plan to focus on Proust and a handful of homeschooling and parenting books for a short while, although I'd better step it up or I'll never finish 52 by the end of the year.

Weekly book shelf, 8/24

What Calvin read to himself this week...

Goodnight, Owl! made our favorites list when Calvin was a toddler. All the owl wants to do is sleep, but his tree is filled with diurnal birds who are keeping him awake with their litany of calls. No worries, he gets revenge at night! The large, clean font is easy to see and follow, the illustrations are textured and warm, and the story has an enjoyable rhythm, and it's fun for both reader and listener to make all those bird sounds.

Sam the Sea Cow is a great mixture of story and factual writing. You meet Sam shortly after his birth, then follow him as he learns to live life as a manatee. When he gets caught in a pipe he has to be rescued by the nearby aquarium, rehabilitated, then released. Sam is endearing, the illustrations are very sweet, and the writing is structured for younger children, but there is a lot of great information shared here, too, and the manatees are made loveable without the intrusion of personification. Calvin absolutely loves Sam and his story.

Creatures of the Desert World is a National Geographic Society pop-up action book. Each page of this book presents different flora and fauna from Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Like most pop-up books the focus is not on the text, which is mainly used to describe and label the animals and plants that are depicted in the beautiful, realistic illustrations. The pop-up actions are well made and Calvin really enjoys them.

Eve of the Emperor Penguin is part of the Magic Tree House series, but it's one of the Merln Missions so it mixes in a bit of fantasy (more so than the time travel, that is). Jack and Annie are whisked away to Antarctica, presumably in the current era, to find a secret needed to save Merlin's life. They travel part way up Mt. Erebus, fall through the glacial ice, and meet a group of Emperor Penguins before traveling home. Calvin loved this one so much he read it twice, once to himself and once to me. I continue to be pleased with the series because it doesn't hide the factual information inside the story but presents it as information as Jack and Annie look it up during their travels. You can read Calvin's review here.

What we read out loud...

We finished reading The Tale of Despereaux this week and you can find our review here. I was disappointed, but Calvin enjoyed it well enough. Our next book is going to be The Secret Zoo, by Brian Chick.

And on my shelf this week...nothing has changed. I've spent so much of my time this past week on looking into curriculum and preparing projects for Calvin that I'm only half way through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, only about 50 pages further in Proust, and haven't made any progress in Raising our Children, Raising Ourselves.

The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo (our reviews)

A mouse and a rat both fall in love with a princess and a story of chivalry, revenge, and heartbreak ensues. Despereaux is a misfit in his own mouse world and is banished to the dungeon where he expects to meet his death. Roscuro is a misfit in his own rat world, but finds only rejection in the world of light above, and returns to the dungeon thinking only of revenge. Mig, the unloved peasant who is too simple to either love or seek revenge, wishes only to trade places with the princess. We hear their stories separately first, then they all come together to finish the tale. The story is generally charming, but while the beginning seems promising DiCamillo continually interrupts the flow of the story either by jumping without warning to another time, place, and character, or by playing the interrupting narrator. With so many disruptions it can be hard to stay interested, but the underlying messages, such as "have courage" and "dare to be different", are obvious enough and the rich language makes the book a pleasant read.

As a parent I think this is a fine book to read to a young child, but I was disappointed by the quality of the story and writing. At age five Calvin was completely capable of understanding the the story as read to him, but would not have been able to read it fluently enough to make it worth while.

Interview review with Calvin
I didn't ask Calvin to journal a response to this book because he is reading and journaling books like it on his own now and I didn't want it to become a chore. Instead I interviewed him on his feelings about the story:

Can you tell me what the book is about?
Despereaux is a small mouse who never grows big. He likes light and he can read and he loves Princess Pea. The mouse council sends him to the dungeon because he doesn't act like a mouse, but he escapes. A girl named Mig works in the castle. She is fat and not happy because she is without her parents. Roscuro is a rat who causes the queen to die of fright, so Pea is angry with him. But Roscuro does not want to be in the dungeon with the other rats, he wants to be in the light upstairs. He wants revenge because eh people won't allow him upstairs. Mig and Roscuro steal Pea and take her to the dungeon and Roscuro wants to keep her there forever, and Mig wants to be the princess. But Despereaux saves them.

What did you like or not like about the book?
I like that there were different parts in the book because they were like little stories about each character.

Eve of the Emperor Penguin (review by Calvin)

To go with our exploration of Antarctica we picked up Eve of the Emperor Penguin from the library. He loved it so much it took him just a couple of days to read, and then he read it again out loud so that I could enjoy it.

Weekly book shelf, 8/20

We 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.