Go to the library...

...today! And check out these books. These are for all ages. Funny. Serious. Factual. Take your pick!


Barbed Wire Baseball by Marissa Moss (This is a great book. Check this book out. Just do it.)


Are the Dinosaurs Dead Dad? by Julie Middleton (I love this book!)


The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot! by Scott Magoon (Hilarious)


Open Wide by Catherine Ham (Calvin loves this book. Really, really.)


Water in the Park: A Book About Water and the Times of the Day by Emily Jenkins (Flannery loves this book. Really, really.)


Animal Masquerade by Marianne Dubuc (I love this book!)


If You Want to See a Whale by Julie Fogliano (I love this book!)


Mrs. Harkness and the Panda by Alicia Potter (I love this book! It's my pick for our battle of the books competition. Fascinating!)

Great Book Series for Summer

I get the real sense that most parents are concerned about their kids losing academic ground over the summer. I hear parents describing plans to get their kids reading and writing and doing math wherever I go. This is wonderful! We should be doing this, we should be concerned. I've done these plans before, every year. My Battle of the Books plan is a piece of this.

But I've had a deepening recently. A deepening? you say. What in the heck is that? I don't know, I'm making it up, but I've had several experiences recently that have deepened my belief that the best thing you can do for your kids is to immerse them in whatever you want them to excel at.

If you want your kids to play music, you've got to expose them to music often, regularly, in many different venues. This includes listening at home, concerts, practicing, etc...

If you want your kids to be great at math, you've got to expose them to math. Singapore, a tiny country that can't compete with the US in most areas, kills us every year in math. This is such an amazing phenomenon, entire curriculums have been drawn up to model what Singapore does with math in their schools. But these curriculums haven't helped kids in the US much, because the real truth is, math is part of the culture in Singapore. The children there are such a part of the family economy, they are buying and selling from the time they are preschoolers. How many children in this country reach the age of twelve without really having to deal with money or numbers at all outside of school? Plenty.

If you want your kids to be great at literacy—reading, writing, interpreting data, analyzing, reasoning—you have to immerse them in language.

They have to read, and they have to be engaged in their reading. It has to be a part of your family's fabric. That fabric can look very different from mine—it should—but it needs to be important to everyone.

If you want your kids to be good writers, they have to write, and they HAVE TO READ! (This is a link to an article about Malcom Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule and how it applies to writing)

Lucy has her EOGs next week, and her teacher (who we love) has been sending home practice sheets for the language arts portion of the test. I cannot tell you how ridiculous these questions are. On one of them, she had to read a small passage from The Secret Garden and answer questions pertaining to the passage. The first question was supposed to relate only to the passage, but you couldn't possibly get the answer right unless you knew the entire story. Someone made a mistake somewhere. (This is a link to a question on the NY State tests for 8th graders. It is such a ridiculous question, so impossible to answer, the head of NY State's School board apologized publicly and promised the question would be removed from all future tests. It's about a talking pineapple. Please read it, if only for a laugh.)

All this confuses kids. It frustrates them. My Lucy, who is an excellent reader and writer, is in all the gifted language arts classes, got into a gifted and talented school, was in tears yesterday because some of these questions and passages were so ridiculous. School's today are often ridiculous.

But we have summer to make up for that. We have summer to just read. Read for enjoyment. Read for pleasure. Read to learn. Read to know. Kids still get that. Kids still want that. And it isn't about a test that means nothing and tests nothing.

Reading makes you a better reader. A better scholar. A better thinker. A better interpreter.

So consider this summer, as you are making your plans for your children, simplifying those plans. Consider making this summer a summer about books. Consider turning off the TV! Consider buying a set of books your kids might love. A series.

That's what I've posted down here. Really quite affordable sets of books your kids might love. Bring them in the car on the family trip (and turn off the TV!). Have them spread across the kitchen table throughout the day.

Our children have such a better chance to succeed in this life if they are readers.


Horrible Histories! You can't buy them new on Amazon, but you can get awesome deals on this series on ebay. Same on the series below, Horrible Science. We have both sets and my kids LOVE them. They also make Horrible Maths (the British way of saying Math), and Horrible Geography. I want to get my hands on those...


Do you remember Mother Westwind by Thornton Burgess. I loved these books as a kid, and my kids love them too. They are as plain and simple as anything. No fancy publishing here. They are stories of talking animals living in the forest. Boring sounding, I know, but they are HYSTERICAL! And so well-written. Great language. Short. Easy to digest in one sitting. We bought the whole set from Dover. Twenty-six books for less than fifty dollars.

Candlewick Press publishes my favorite series of nonfiction for younger children. It's called, Read and Wonder, and you can now buy a six book set that includes Audio CDs:

This is such a great series. I love them 100%.

Rainbow Resource is one of my favorite places to buy curriculum and books. It's a homeschool curriculum clearing house, and they have a section on their website called, Library Builders (that's where the above link takes you). You can get great discounts on all kinds of books and series like Mr. Putter and Tabby and The Little House on the Prairie. 

Summer is a great time for series reading! Any other series suggestions???

Danger Zone

Kenny Loggins is awesome.

But aside from that, I want to ask a question.

Is there a series of nonfiction books about history that kids actually want to read? Is there a series so engaging, they can't wait to read the newest one? Is there a series so captivating elbowing fights will occur, feelings will be hurts, threats will be made, shouts will be heard all over the newest installment?

Yes!

I've told you about it before, but I'm going to tell you about it again, because my mom recently sent us a few we didn't have and it reminded me of the amazing power of these seemingly goofy books.

Every single kid in our family loves these books. They read them very differently, but they all love them, and yes, they fight over them.

Is it bad that this fighting makes me happy? Probably. Is it bad that this fighting makes me lose my temper, even when it makes me happy? Probably. But that's another story for another day.

This series is sometimes called Danger Zone and it is sometimes called You Wouldn't Want to be a...




Get a few from the library or invest in just a few. Leave them around the house. I am 99% sure you will find your kids sitting, reading, learning, and not even realizing they are doing it. Stealthy parenthood in action!

Washington DC

I didn't think the kids would be very excited about my library books on American History. I thought they would perhaps glance at them as I stuck the books beneath their chins. I was pretty certain they would be passed by for better reading or better games or better fighting with siblings.

To my surprise, they kept asking me for more, and I ran out of books to give them (I think I brought twenty or so)! I'm not sure every word was read, actually, I'm positive not every word was read, but they picked up a lot of information I've heard them recite back to me since.

This was the hands down favorite with everyone:

So You Want to Be President? by Judith St. George (presidential facts are fascinating for unknown reasons—celebrity maybe?)

They also loved this:

Two Bad Pilgrims by Kathryn Lasky (true, funny story)

But they also waded through this:

Lafayette and the American Revolution by Russell Freedman

And after going to Mt. Vernon, everyone wanted to read this: (the kids really loved Mt. Vernon)

Give Me Liberty by Russell Freedman

The kids were excited about this because I get the facts on this event mixed up all the time:

The Boston Tea Party by Russell Freedman

And after going to Ford's Theatre where Lincoln was shot, everyone wants to read more about him:

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass by Russell Freedman (you will notice these are all by Freedman, an expert in writing nonfiction for children!)

This has always been a favorite—Shaemus read it several times!

John, Paul, George and Ben by Lane Smith

And this book is fantastic:

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport

I was a little disappointed in DC itself. Not the place itself, really, but the crowds and how incredibly not kid-friendly it is. No food or snacks allowed inside ANY of the museums. You can't leave backpacks or strollers anywhere, so you have to walk around all day without any food to give your kids. And the food in the cafes is so expensive. We went to a Nationals baseball game and had to throw away our water bottles. And it was so crowded—did I mention how crowded it was? We weren't even there during a holiday! We took the metro everywhere, which was a huge mistake because it also costs a million dollars. We would have been better off driving and paying for parking. (I understand, by the way, that they have to take these safety precautions because of the fear of bombs, etc..., but it is still makes traveling with children almost impossible).

But still! It was an experience and overall good. It truly did get my kids excited about history, and even better, excited about books about history!!! I've got to make use of this excitement for as long as I can.

Have any of you seen any great movies (fairly accurate) about American History that youngish kids could watch and enjoy? I'm looking to make this an ongoing theme.

Here's some pics of our trip:

A really awesome battleship that probably has a specific name, but I don't know what it is.

We toured the capital building. It was cool, but they made us throw our entire backpack full of lunch and snacks in the garbage, which I didn't think was cool.

Mt. Vernon was gorgeous!!!

This was taken before we walked a hundred miles to get to the Lincoln Monument

(I am hunched over here. Mary is NOT taller than I am. Yet.)

YA Pick, Nonfiction for Everyone, and a Really Great Sentence

I really loved this book:


A Corner of White: Book One in the Colors of Madeline by Jaclyn Moriarty

It's bizarre, but that's not a good word because it's not bizarre. It's partially set in a different world, but that's not right either because it's really not. There's a depth to this book that I do not quite get. And yet, I get it. Australia produces some great authors who are not afraid to write a book that fits no formula or prescription. This book is brilliant, but it doesn't feel like Moriarty was trying to be brilliant. She's trying to make you feel, but what you feel is up to you.

This is great YA fiction, the best, and as such, it really isn't for tweens. They will miss too much—it's a book worth waiting for until you can really understand the feelings behind it. This is for fourteen and up, really, I'd say for sixteen and up. A big, fat read, but, for me, it was worth every minute.


Now for Nonfiction for Everyone!

Do you know that The National Geographic is much cheaper than it used to be? You can get a years worth of issues (12) for fifteen dollars!

We get plenty of kid-friendly nonfiction magazines for homeschool purposes, but National Geographic is their favorite. They like it better than magazines specifically written for kids. The pictures are amazing and the articles are so interesting. My kids have read about the ability of scientists to recreate prehistoric creatures based on genes, the beauties and dangers of Rio, fracking, the Titanic, illegal ivory trading around the world and more. And they've read them for fun. Without parental pressure!

So worth the investment!

I have a roll of black contact paper waiting to go up on my wall so that we can take turns writing (in chalk) our favorite sentences, but we're working like mad to finish planting and mulching our front yard (pictures coming, I swear! Just in case you were worried...), and I haven't had time.

So you're stuck with my favorite sentence of the week. The purpose of these sentences is just to get us and our kids thinking about words. Words are fun. Sentence structure is awesome. Seriously.

Here it is:

"After a cursory search of the sleeping berths and a peek into the hold, he pointed his curved beak toward the Egg Gallery, where he found Junco sitting, of all places, on top of the stolen egg, fast asleep."

Imagine this sentence how many of us (and our kids) would write it:

"He performed a cursory search of the sleeping berths and peeked into the hold. When he turned his curved beak toward the Egg Gallery, he found Junco sitting on top of the stolen egg. Junco was asleep."

The latter sentence, the true sentence, is long and complex, but it doesn't feel convoluted. It flows. The commas are in all the right places, the structure of the sentence emphasizes all the right things.

Imagine the sentence this way:

"He finally found Junco, fast asleep in the Egg Gallery, sitting on top of the stolen egg after he searched the sleeping berths and peeked into the hold."

Not quite right.

This is Calvin's version of the sentence:

"He did a fast search in the bunkbeds and hold when he turned toward the Egg Gallery and finally found Junco asleep on the egg."

Here is Shaemus's:

"A person named Junco hid from a guy as he sat on an egg."

I had them do this, and soon after, both of them came to me with awesome sentences they found in something they read. It takes very little to stimulate our kids. Give them a question or an interesting idea, and watch them go. Give them words, give them sentences, and watch those brains wake up to the wonderful world of language. (Oh boy, that was cheesy. You can shoot me later.)

Please post a great sentence any time! We love them!

Etiquette and Espionage

For Friday's YA Pick:

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Seriously weird, but seriously awesome. Mary and I both loved it. If you're looking for something fun and unusual, a rip-roaring sort of thing, give this a try! Good for twelve (or maybe even ten) and up.

For Nonfiction for Everybody:

Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

This is an old book, but so very wonderful. We own it and we love it. This gets pulled out and read all the time by everyone. It demonstrates what a real passion for something can do for you and the people around you. For the world. Definitely worth checking out and discussing. You could ask your children what things they feel passionate about. These things can, of course, change as our children get older, but they are NEVER too young, I don't think, to start examining the world around them closely and asking themselves what is important to them.

What a different world this would be if everyone had a passion for something and set about using that passion to make the world a better place!

I've been working on helping Mary in particular and my children in general love writing. I have some new ideas (some coming from a good friend), and one of them is pointing out great sentences (amazing sentences) and loving on them together.

So every Friday, I'm going to post a Great Sentence (or passage). Hopefully these will, in the future, come from sentences my kids have chosen, but for today, here's one I found in Going Solo by Roald Dahl.


Breakfast in Dar es Salaam never varied. It was always a delicious ripe pawpaw picked that morning in the garden by the cook, on to which was squeezed the juice of a whole fresh lime.


Can't you taste that pawpaw? I've never had a pawpaw, but I sure can imagine it (I imagine it tastes like lime mixed with Sprite. Probably not accurate). A simple sentence that tells so much! Find a great sentence today and share it with your kids!

YA Pick and Nonfiction for Everyone!!! (And some spear throwing)

Today's dangerous thing ended up being spear throwing. I was a little panicked when Calvin came out of our dungeon (our name for our garage thingy) with a hoe (a regular-sized garden hoe) and Shaemus came out with a heavy bat, and they declared their intentions to go throw some spears. But they both had on helmets and swimming vests. So they were well prepared.

I did not encourage them to do the spear throwing (one of the 50 dangerous things), they came up with the notion on their own, so I repeated many times that the person not throwing the spear had to stay far away and well-behind the person throwing the spear. This was after Calvin said, "Well, the good news is, when I throw the hoe, if it hits Shaemus, the heavy pointy metal part would only hit him right here." Then he pointed to Shaemus's helmet. I quickly pointed out that Calvin had no clue where the heavy pointy metal part would land and Shaemus had to, had to, had to stay behind him.

Then I let them go out side to seriously injure each other. But no one was hurt today and spears were thrown, so all's well that ends well (except that Flannery decided to stick her finger inside our little floor fan. And she'll never do that again!).

My YA pick is a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. I didn't love, love it, but I really did enjoy it. Excellent YA Fantasy, I would say, and I've now heard from friends that I must read book two, so there you go.

Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rachel Carson

(I do not love this cover...)
This is a girl-protagonist book, something boys generally avoid reading. A friend of mine has a teenage son who can't find anything to read. He wants clean fiction—little profanity, no sex, mild violence—and it is harder and harder to find this in YA literature, particularly YA geared to guys. If anyone has any great suggestions for books that are YA but clean and have high boy interest, please pass it on!!!


And for nonfiction, we are all enjoying perusing the great photos and illustrations in this:

Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty by Tonya Bolden

Now if this is the kind of book that makes you want to curl up under the covers and take a nap, change your ways. Now. Kids love this stuff. They love true stuff. They eat it up, but if they sense your wariness, your fear, your discomfort with heavy-duty history—with real stuff—they will quickly pick up your discomfort and blow it up into hatred. And if you haven't checked out, like really checked out, nonfiction for kids nowadays, it is (generally) awesome. These things read like novels now, they are so well done.

How's that for a lecture? But seriously, this is a book that your entire family could browse and read and discuss, and Lincoln is big right now, and, really, I'm not sure there could be a more important document for our kids to be familiar with. Might as well get 'em hooked at home, while it's fun.

I am posting about how to get our kids hooked on reading and writing on Monday. That's the only way to motivate people! To hook them, to get them interested, to reel them in...

50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do

Today is the day for books for that hard age, 6ish to 9ish.

I had something else planned, but decided to post about this particular book, because Shaemus hasn't put it down since it arrived two days ago (except to eat, and even then, he ate quickly).



50 Dangerous Things (you should let your children do)

It's based on this TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html

(five dangerous things for kids—that you should let them do)

Shaemus is so excited. He wants to do everything on the list. Thanks to this book, he wants a pocket-knife. He wants to learn how to whittle. He wants to learn origami. He wants a complete toolbox. He wants to learn how to stand on the roof, which he did one time, he informed me, and he LOVED it. (So he says)

We'll see how all this goes, all these fifty dangerous things. But in the meantime, he is reading an informational, nonfiction book geared toward adults and he loves it. He's asking me what words mean every five seconds. He wants to know what these words mean. He is craving to know.

Which just goes to show what motivation is all about. Give a kid a book they are INTERESTED in, and they will struggle to make sense of it. On their own. Because they want to.

Interest = motivation = a learner = a reader

(I made that up—very deep, I know.)

The Running Dream and the Revolution

This post could be about how much I wish I could be a runner, but how that will always be a dream because I hate running. Really hate running. I ran every day straight for a year and a half in college and got endorphins once. Once, I tell you. Even then, those endorphins were weak and perhaps due to altitude.

But I'm not going to talk about exercise because that would turn this blog into fiction. Instead, I'm going to suggest a book I suggested once before because I picked it up again this week in a moment of brain deadedness (those moments are very rare for me...) and reread the whole thing.

The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen


So good for anyone twelve and up. It's about courage and work and faith, and of course... love. It's inspirational and motivating no matter what frame of mind you are in, and who couldn't use some inspiration and motivation? Perhaps even to go running? (I prefer to read about athletes rather than pretend to be one—it's very motivational in an empathetic sort of way.)



And for your family-nonfiction-around-the-dinner-table discussion, Those Rebels John and Tom by Barbara Kerley.

It's a light, sweet take on the relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, their differences, and how they got the revolution going and the people of America united against the British. The pictures are fun—a good opportunity to have a miniature family SOLE.

(I'm going to talk more about those on Monday!!! Very exciting—and just so you aren't worried this is some weird mystical thing, SOLE stands for Self-Organized Learning Environment—just a way for you and your kids to learn together or apart.)

Friday's YA and Nonfiction for all

I've been looking for a little lighthearted reading lately, and I stumbled on this book a few days ago. A little espionage, some fun girl-relationships, New York City. And, yes, a little romance. It has been the fulfillment of my not-so-serious quest for a little fun reading.

Kiki Strike by Kirsten Miller

I started with book three in this series because I didn't have book one and I am one of those people that peeks at the endings of books and doesn't follow proper procedures. Even when installing garbage disposals, but we don't need to talk about that.

But even not knowing what happened in books one and two, I'm enjoying myself. I think this book crosses the line between middle grade and YA, so ten and up? The characters are all girls, but the adventure is definitely great for all sexes. (As if there were more than two...)

And as for nonfiction:

The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs by Sandra Markle



The pictures are remarkable, the story is compelling, and this a quick read for all ages that can get your whole family talking about this amazing world we live in and ways we can take care of it. I think this book would be particularly interesting to pair with a discussion about six thousand dead pigs floating through the main river of Shanghai.

Let's fill our lives with beauty and richness. Let's fill up our kids with curiosity and desire and depth.

Let's read!