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...

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!