Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 54

Book Review: My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish

[image error]Yes, this book is part of a series, but since I only read the first one, I can speak only to that book. As of 2017, there are six books in the series:

My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish
The SeaQuel
Fins of Fury
Any Fin Is Possible
Live and Let Swim
Jurassic Carp

Why didn’t I read the rest of the series? Well, this kind of writing doesn’t cross over to adult reading  very well (unlike, say, Where the Red Fern Grows or even Winnie the Pooh or Frog and Toad) and my son was not interested enough to continue. He thought the book was decent, but he wasn’t hooked the way he was with Magic Treehouse or Jack Stalwart. This is saying nothing of the literary merits of any of these books, because, quite frankly, I thought Zombie Goldfish was better and more interesting than either of those other options.

This isn’t a future classic. It kind of feels like a dime-a-dozen thing. But it also seems very appealing for children who are in the beginning reader stage before they get to heftier or more literary books. The idea is cute. The characters are cute. The whole thing is just pretty cute.

[image error]On the flip side, the writing is not always very fluid, and somewhat basic. Yes, I get that it is meant for younger kids (with its giant font size and limit of like ten words per line between giant margins), but I also like reading to stretch the child a bit. The illustrations are neat, but they look rather computer-generated and sometimes have very little to do with the text. Overall, the book seems to be standing halfway between a standard novel and a half-comic (a la Wimpy Kid), and I would have liked to see one or the other.

Overall, the story is an easy-to-read romp where things happen very quickly and kids can probably relate to the setting and circumstances. As an adult, the pacing requires simplicity which can often make the whole thing seem wonder-breakingly unbelievable. I suppose the pacing is for the benefit of the little kids and their reading level, but there you are. Still, unlike some of the other books in this genre, O’Hara manages to work in plot twists and engaging characters, with a dash of humor and proper grammar.

If your beginning reader picks this up to read for themselves, there’s no major reason to object.

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We read My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish¸written by Mo O’ Hara and published by Scholastic Inc. in 2013. It was illustrated by Marek Jaguki.

Book Review: Homer Price

[image error]I must have been writing this review in my head while reading this book, because I feel like I already wrote it. I looked on the blog, I looked in the blog drafts, and I even searched through my Word file. Nothing. Must have been in my head.

Why? Because this book is so surprising. At its conclusion, I would call it magic realism, but from a time before and a style outside of what we usually see in magic realism. Think of Beverly Cleary mixed with Half Magic and you might have an idea. Everything is so perfectly mid-century America until something happens and it defies reality, but just barely. Sort of like if Henry Huggins were a Looney Toon.

The book has also been called satire before, poking a bit of fun at the Midwest of the 1940s, but supposedly in a very genial way. The world does have that typically wholesome, gentle feel, like in Beverly Cleary’s writing, which can strike the reader as either nostalgia or wonder. I personally like reading literature from this time period, and it generally does read nostalgic with me, as I watch the boy Homer move about a safe town autonomously, riding his bike, tinkering with machinery, being helpful, getting into scrapes, and finding odd jobs.

[image error]You may have read Robert McCloskey elsewhere, as two of his children’s books are ubiquitous award-winners: Make Way for Ducklings, and Blueberries for Sal. As with these other books, the illustrations in Homer are solid and classic, enhancing the story and interesting to look at. (They are from a time when illustrations actually demanded artistic accuracy.) Speaking of this “book,” Homer Price is officially a novel, but it reads more like a series of rather long short stories. There is a sequel, Centerburg Tales. (I just put it on hold at the library.)

[image error]Out of curiosity, I did a little poking around to see if I could figure out why many of the characters had such heroic names. (Homer, Ulysses, Telemachus, etc.) I could find nothing, and didn’t see a parallel from those characters to the original stories, although their naming could have been part of the satire.

My son found this book interesting and, more to the point, funny. He had to wrap his head around the magical elements, like me, before he could enjoy it, and I think he prefers realism. But he liked seeing what life was like for a boy like him from a different place and, more importantly, a different time. This book took some getting used to, but by the end, we were rather enjoying it.

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We read the Puffin Modern Classics version of Homer Price, by Robery McCloskey. The book was originally published in 1943.

Book Review: Olive Kitteridge

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Is it a novel? Is it a book of short stories? Personally, I have it filed on my bookshelves in the short stories section, but you could really go either way with this Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Elizabeth Strout.

I came across this book several years ago, when it won the Pulitzer and landed on reading lists for book clubs around every corner that I turned. I especially remember one friend recommending it to me, so I picked up a copy. I read through the first few chapters (or stories), and—since I had no standing commitment back then to finishing books—I let it disappear. A year ago we moved into a new house and a few months later were able to put up a number of book shelves and finally display our complete library. For months afterward, the yellow spine of Olive Kitteredge caught my attention, facing my usual spot on the couch. Had I ever finished that book? Couldn’t remember. But it certainly wouldn’t cost me anything but time to read and review it now.

Olive Kitteridge is, really, a book of short stories, but when pieced together give the reader a much wider view of the town of Crosby, Maine and of the common character (no matter how obscure in some stories) of Olive Kitteridge, at different points in her life and from varying angles. The beauty of the story is in this set-up, because we get to see just how many opinions go toward revealing the truth about any one individual and likewise, how a community has its many stories to tell the truth about it. Paired with its lyrical, sometimes witty, writing, it is a fair candidate for the prizes that it took home, I think.

[image error]Elizabeth Strout, according to her bios, has always been a writer. She is from the area Kitteridge covers and is a nature-lover, which shows in her writing. Her first novel was published at age 26, and her genre is considered literary fiction. (She also writes for magazines and has an inexplicable degree in law.) She has this sort of dreamy, writer-envy-inducing life (at least when looked at as bare bones), with a pair of professors for parents (one an English professor) and lots of time in the wilds of Maine and New Hampshire. She started sending out stories at age 16, spent some time at Oxford University, and waitressed before publishing her first book, Amy and Isabelle to critical acclaim. The fairy tale continues from there, and by her third book, her stuff was selling in the millions and she had landed some of the big awards in fiction. Her other books are Abide with Me, The Burgess Boys, My Name is Lucy Barton, and Anything Is Possible.

[image error]How would I describe Olive Kitteridge? Sometimes pretentious. Sometimes slow and depressing, it definitely has its points of interest. By the end, I really did become engrossed in the character of Olive, but it was hard work to get there. Rewarding, but hard because I could have been reading things much quicker to reward. Did I love the book? Not really. Olive will stick with me, I think, but without a storyline to drive it, I don’t think I will return to the book again.

There are upsides, though, to reading realistic fiction like this, which portrays people as universally faulty and often mistaken. But does this book have a shred of hope? I don’t really know. There is no conventional plot, since it is a book of short stories, but many of the individual stories end—not so much with loose ends as—on a sour or deeply sad note. There were some stories that I appreciated more than others, including the long and winding revelation of Olive herself. I can relate to her, as someone who recognizes my own unwanted and unexpected tyranny in motherhood. But I love a book infused with hope, which I believe is the ultimate reality.

I think my favorite part of this read is the stark and sometimes painful portrayal of old age. Aging doesn’t show up in just any ol’ book, and this one is very honest, at least about the trials of aging and at various phases in the aging process. There’s a breadth of issues here that would be hard to find elsewhere, and the issues are stripped of any shenanigans. Clean, but perhaps a little bleak.

Overall, I would recommend it for a limited audience, and without the expectation of a beach read. If you are into short stories, literary literature, or bleak books, this is for you. Also, it would be excellent for a book club that focuses on books about aging. Otherwise, you might find its speed and route to be a little too slow and meandering for you.

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I read Olive Kitteridge in paperback, published in 2008 by Random House.

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[image error]When I looked up the cover of the book, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was an HBO miniseries that aired in the past few years. It is Emmy-award winning and starring people who strike me as perfect matches for the characters in my head. Unfortunately, the battle for affordable movies continues in this country, and I had to enroll in a seven-day free HBO trial to avoid paying $15-$20 to watch a four-episode TV show. Sigh.

Despite that Olive looks more like a swarthy Julia Childs in my head, Frances McDormand did a superb job as Olive. Honestly, the casting was amazing, and the miniseries certainly deserved an Emmy for its cinematography, directing, acting, writing… you name it. Thankfully, as well, the writers really seemed to have a sympathy and understanding for the book, which is SO, SO hard to find. There is only one obnoxious scene (showed twice) which was made up and didn’t jive with what I understood about Olive.

Other than that, if you are going to read this book, definitely follow it up with the movie. It is more of the same (a little depressing, stark, slow, terrifying and beautiful) but has a shorter and more continuous format. My husband enjoyed it so much that he is now reading the book.

 

Book Review: The Jesus Storybook Bible

[image error]I love this book and everything about it.

When my daughter was an infant, it was cool in our circles to buy this Bible for your children, and a friend of the family bought a copy for our daughter. Over the years, there have been many children’s Bibles that I have seen that did not meet my expectations, but this one has some real stand-out characteristics and I would highly recommend it as a first “Bible” for children.

Great thing number one: the stories are just that; stories. Each story told from the Bible (and make note: this is only a collection of many significant stories, maybe fifty) is in a separate, headed chapter and uses simple, straight-forward, interesting, engaging, and even sometimes poetic language to make these stories immensely accessible, especially to kids. It even occasionally asks your kids to answer a question or just wonder about something or place themselves in someone else’s shoes. Often, the kids will ask for “one more.”

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Great thing number two: the illustrations. This is actually my favorite part of this book. I love the illustrations. They are more culturally accurate than most children’s Bibles, which is great. Not everyone looks like a superhero or a model. In fact, no one does. The illustrations are beautiful and gentle and artful all at the same time. I often find myself fantasizing that it was my job to illustrate this Bible and that I did it even a fraction as well as this illustrator. So creative. So aesthetically pleasing.

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Great thing number three: the unity of the stories. This is, I believe, the reason this storybook Bible trended in the early 2000s and why it is still very popular now. All the stories end with a paragraph or so which tie it to the overall arch of the Bible, at least as how this author sees it. All the Old Testament stories point toward Jesus, and all the New Testament stories point toward Jesus loving and rescuing us. The book just screams, “This is the plan! It was always the plan, to save the people that God loves and to do it through great sacrifice!” There are also lesser themes, like God using regular people, love conquering all, and God as a shepherd.

I’m sure not everyone loves this book as much as I do. Its issues are the flip-side of its strengths. (Isn’t it that way with everything?) Obviously, it only tells a limited number of Biblical stories, and someone had to make the decision what to include and what to omit. Overall, the edge is taken off of things, which is consistent with modern American parenting. Also, as a paraphrase, it does a significant amount of interpretation, some of which you may not agree with. (Personally, I think it does a commendable job, there.) The book does not use direct quotes, but re-tells the stories as you might for a small child. Obviously. It does, in small letters, tell the reader from what scripture the story is coming from, making it easy to reference and compare, or even supplement.

This storybook Bible is not, literally, a Bible at all, but a series of paraphrased Bible stories for children. I would highly recommend it for small children, or even for older people who are new to the Christian faith. From there, though, one would want a direct-translation Bible, of which there are many to choose.

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We read (and re-read) The Jesus Storybook Bible, re-told by Sally Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Jago. It was published in 2007 by Zondervan.

Book Review: The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child

[image error]I devoured this book.

But maybe this book isn’t for you. Most likely, it isn’t, unless you are embarking on your first year of home schooling, or even if you are in your first year and need to reach out for help, which would not be uncommon. This book is obviously written for homeschoolers or for those considering it (or even who have someone they love considering it).

As it is, it has its moments of mediocrity, but it also covers a lot of ground and acts as a cheerleader and a friend when you don’t have either handy. I bought it because I was in the world’s best used book store (in Pittsboro, NC) and this was in the home school section and, indeed, I was weeks away from starting my son home-schooling. I don’t regret it.

It kind of reminds me of one of those Whatever for Dummies books, but for home schoolers. Even the look of it is similar. And it moves quickly, like those books, giving you a thinner coverage over a wide range of related topics. If you  have been wondering about it, there is probably something here about it. But if you want deeper and more detailed answers, you might need to go to a Dobson article or website. And I think that this book would best serve someone before they settle into their curriculum, since it introduces the reader to various home school curriculum, styles, and types.

[image error]Linda Dobson is, just for the record, not related to James Dobson or his ministry. She started homeschooling in the 80s and has since then had a varied and long career orbiting around her involvement in homeschooling. She has something like eight home school titles of her own, as well as many credits as a writer, advocate, contributor, speaker, and administrator of sorts. She has helmed a couple different home-school-supportive organizations and is a “big name” in the field, to be sure. I can not say whether her other books are different from this one.

While I found this book to be encouraging, it is more anecdotal and much lighter on research than some of my other reads. That is the setup of the book: compiled advice from hundreds of home school moms (and, perhaps, dads) woven between the wisdom of one famous home school mom. That’s what the book is, and I suggest that you not require it to be more.

As an aside, I am not a fan of her snarky, sarcastic remarks, though I enjoy that sort of thing elsewhere.

I have learned, already, that I can not possibly use all of the bits I “arrowed” in the margin of the home school books that I read, and there are many, many more I could read. So, on the advice of this home school giant, I will move on from reading and into teaching now; “lighten up, stay flexible, and enjoy the ride.”

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I read an old, beat-up copy of The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child, by Linda Dobson, which was published by Three Rivers Press in 2001.

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QUOTES

“’Our oldest boy was six kinds of difficult, and I knew if we put him in school, he would be labeled and possibly go on to become real trouble’” (p9).

“’Rather than trying to outschool the schools in my daughter’s first grade year, I would have spent more time laughing and playing with her’” (p41).

“If I remember to live fully and happily in the present, the whole family is happier, and learning flows easily and naturally” (p46).

“This means reviewing enough sources so that you’re not taking one person’s point of view as the last word on homeschooling but not so many that your kindergartner becomes a high school freshman before you feel you’re ready to start” (p47).

“’You can try to teach a three-month-old baby to walk,’ Le Ann explains, ‘but you will face only frustration until the baby is neurologically ready to walk. It works the same way for reading, writing, bike riding—‘” (p67).

“Chris’s mom, for example, figured out through trial and error that he best comprehended auditory material while jumping up and down on the trampoline” (p69).

“But pay equal attention to your frame of heart so that you help create and maintain a healthy balance as you educate your child” (p79).

“Accepting, then, means giving up your own perceptions of what should be and allowing what is to blossom” (p80).

“When we see something in our children that we don’t like, it’s often something in ourselves we’re seeing” (p85).

“There will be days of utter panic at what a terrible thing you’ve done to your child’s life. There will be others when you are astounded at the enormous brilliance of your child” (p87).

“…all parents have been homeschooling their children since birth” (p90).

“’The biggest lesson I’ve learned through trying all of these approaches has been that if it doesn’t work, change!’” (p117).

“I have learned that how we approach or begin things makes a huge difference in their outcome” (p133).

“Since we are all fallible human beings, happiness is more attainable than perfection, equally worthy of your efforts, and, in the long run, much less likely to produce the need for therapy” (p157).

“You are accomplishing more in an hour of attention to your child’s education than a school accomplishes in a day” (p157).

“Homeschooling provides you with time to do just that—regularly exercise patience and devotion—and they grow brighter and stronger in the process” (p168).

“’I wish someone had told me that when the day’s work is done, you are done’” (p189).

“It’s the nature of family life that what affects one of us affects all of us…’” (p205).

“’It’s hard to change a strong tendency toward orderliness, but there is a greater plan where your housework is not as important’” (p217).

“No one comes out of any mode of schooling knowing ‘everything’” (p226).

“Rather, you’ll realize that your deficiencies—real or perceived—don’t matter as much as you thought, simply because you’ve been putting far too much emphasis on teaching, instead of on your children learning” (p229).

“Experience will teach you that you can always think of more wonderful things than you will ever have the time (and possibly the money and energy) to accomplish anyway” (p255).

“Don’t forget to lighten up, stay flexible, and enjoy the ride!” (p258).

Series Review: The Magic Treehouse

[image error]My son has been reading The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne for some months, now. He is what is termed a reluctant reader, so we take his reading interest where we can find it, even with comic books or the Jack Stalwart series (see previous review). I’m not super fond of the Magic Treehouse, but my son is determined to read his way through the entire 57 (and counting)-book series, and it has been a favorite with elementary-age kids and new readers for years.

My main issues with the series are the stripped-down nature of the writing and the complete lack of plot. Maybe I should say complete lack of plot sophistication. Even for a new reader, I think that a story with some twists and turns is needed. Even fairy tales involve some complexity. These stories? Let’s just say that Osborne reuses whole phrases and paragraphs at the beginning and end of each and every book because, yes, they all start and end exactly the same. That wouldn’t be so horrible, but the middle part is also shamelessly predictable. Jack and Annie go in the treehouse and through a book to a new place and time (from the dinosaur age to the Revolutionary War). They have to retrieve something determined by the magical Morgan le Fey, and they encounter one or two simply-cast obstacles on the way back to the treehouse. As far as I could pay attention (I often slide out of consciousness), this is all there is to every book. We are on number eleven.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: if you think that these books will help your children with grammar, you are sorely mistaken. Osborne is very fond of writing in sentence fragments and of too-short paragraphs, which drives a homeschool mother crazy. I spend half the day reminding my son to capitalize, punctuate, and complete his thoughts, and then hand him a grammatically farcical book before bed? Oi.

And the illustrations. Not a fan. Simply okay, but not great and definitely nothing special. (See what I did with the sentence fragments there?)

[image error]I suppose that one of the up-sides to this series are the information books that you can get to supplement the fiction books. Although not tremendously deep with knowledge, these books seem to be easy to access and interesting for children and would be a great resource for a project or paper. However, my son—and I am sure plenty of other kids—refuses to read the Fact Tracker series in lieu of reading yet another Magic Treehouse adventure. I think he does glean some history and maybe even science from the books, but I’m not sure it’s completely worth it.

At any rate, I’m not going to stop my son, or other children, from devouring these books like I did The Babysitters’ Club. Many children love them, and they have only increased literacy, even for “reluctant readers” (which does make me reluctant to be harsh in my review). But although extremely popular, they are not literary classics, and I would recommend trying Beverly Cleary or E.B. White first to see what happens.

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My son has read out to me the first twelve, around-75-page books from Random House. The series is listed here. (Note: The official Magic Treehouse website’s list of books was down, so I looked to fan lists.):

Dinosaurs Before Dark
The Knight at Dawn
Mummies in the Morning
Pirates Past Noon
Night of the Ninjas
Afternoon on the Amazon
Sunset of the Sabertooth
Midnight on the Moon
Dolphins at Daybreak
Ghost Town at Sundown
Lions at Lunchtime
Polar Bears Past Bedtime
Vacation Under the Volcano
Day of the Dragon King
Viking Ships at Sunrise
Hour of the Olympics
Tonight on the Titanic
Buffalo Before Breakfast
Tigers at Twilight
Dingoes at Dinnertime
Civil War on Sunday
Revolutionary War on Wednesday
Twister on Tuesday
Earthquake in the Early Morning
Stage Fright on a Summer Night
Good Morning, Gorillas
Thanksgiving on Thursday
High Tide in Hawaii

Merlin Mission Books (Advanced series)

Christmas in Camelot
Haunted Castle on Hallow’s Eve
Summer of the Sea Serpent
Winter of the Ice Wizard
Carnival at Candlelight
Season of the Sandstorms
Night of the New Magicians
Blizzard of the Blue Moon
Dragon of the Red Dawn
Monday with a Mad Genius
Dark Day in the Deep Sea
Eve of the Emperor Penguin
Moonlight on the Magic Flute
A Good Night for Ghosts
Leprechaun in Late Winter
A Ghost Tale for Christmas Time
A Crazy Day with Cobras
Dogs in the Dead of Night
Abe Lincoln At Last
A Perfect Time for Pandas
Stallion at Starlight
Hurry Up Houdini!
High Time for Heroes
Soccer on Sunday
Shadow of the Shark
Balto of the Blue Dawn
Danger in the Darkest Hour
Night of the Ninth Dragon
A Big Day for Baseball

Fact Trackers (formally called Research Guides)

Dinosaurs
Knights and Castles
Mummies and Pyramids
Pirates
Rain Forests
Space
Titanic
Twisters and Other Terrible Storms
Dolphins and Sharks
Ancient Greece and the Olympics
American Revolution
Sabertooths and the Ice Age
Pilgrims
Ancient Rome and Pompeii
Tsunamis and Other Natural Disasters
Polar Bears and the Arctic
Sea Monsters
Penguins and Antarctica
Leonardo da Vinci
Ghosts
Leprechauns and Folklore (or Auguste Bartholdi, unsure)
Rags and Riches: Kids in the Time of Charles Dickens
Snakes and Other Reptiles
Dog Heroes
Abraham Lincoln
Pandas and Other Endangered Species
Horse Heroes
Heroes for All Times
Soccer
Ninjas and Samurai
China: Land of the Emperor’s Great Wall
Sharks and Other Predators
Vikings
Dogsledding and Extreme Sports
Dragons and Mythical Creatures

Book Review: The Well-Trained Mind

[image error]This has been, for personal reasons, the summer of homeschool books. Those personal reasons include me starting to homeschool my fourth-grade son. This is not the first or last book that I will review for that reason, and in fact, I forsee many homeschool-related reviews in our future here at The Starving Artist. Many of those reviews will be universally helpful, but some of them will be specifically for homeschoolers (or homeschool enthusiasts). The majority of reviews, though, will still be for novels, influential books, and junior books with the thrown-in cookbook. But now you’ve been warned.

The Well-Trained Mind, by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer, is one such homeschool book: it is not really meant for the population-at-large. It wasn’t on my need-to-read list either, but it came up so many times in conversations with homeschool friends that when one of them offered to sell me a used copy, I took it.

There are caveats for this book, as well as some of the other homeschool books that I use. The first is that it is distinctly Christian. I am a Christian, but I also found that homeschool material abounds in the Christian bracket, so it would be hard to avoid even if you were doing secular or other-religion homeschooling. For some of these materials, you could use them anyhow, skirting their religious content. This book is like that. (For the rest, you just wouldn’t even want to try, since it is so pervasive.) The second caveat is that this book is meant for “Classical Education.” You see, just like in education in general, there are various schools of homeschool, and one of the main ones is “Classical.”

If you aren’t going the Classical route, whole-hog, this book is going to have limited applicability for you. This book is basically the primer for a Classical Education. I say that, and yet I have gleaned a fair amount from the book. I have marked it all up, and I have pulled many things from it for use in our classroom. (Our homeschool is what would be labeled “Eclectic,” meaning that I have created curriculum that pulls from several different styles, including—but not limited to—Classical.) Still, all those handy book lists, etc., would be so very useful if you were teaching in the Classical style.

The authors of this book are a mother and daughter team. The mother started homeschooling back when homeschool curriculum was a desert wasteland, and her daughter was homeschooled, accidentally, in the Classical style until she grew up to be very successful and homeschool her own children. The team will definitely tries to sell the reader on the Classical style, and the book does not include as much practical encouragement (All our houses are disasters!) as other homeschool guides tend to.

I wouldn’t go back and un-read this book, since I am using it here and there. Also, I may incorporate it more as my son gets older, especially since I read it after I had solidified many of my curriculum choices for the year. (It is broken into three learning stages, so I only read the first one.) I was a little turned off by the one-track way of educating, and yet the appeal of following a formula was very strong. (Unfortunately, my son is not a great fit for Classical education, as much as Wise and Wise-Bauer want to sell it and have had great success from it.)

I would recommend this book, but only in harmony with some other, more basic, introductory, homeschool books. If you are going to teach homeschool with the Classical method, you really have to have this book on your shelf. You have to read it. And you really should utilize all those lists and resources inside. If you are not sure which method you want to use, then perhaps this is one of the books you should read to figure that out, along with more basic books and books about the Charlotte Mason method, Eclectic homeschooling, Great Books, Un-schooling (sigh), and other methods. (I am still learning the field, so I don’t know all the types. HERE is an article that walks you through some of them. We have a local Five-In-A-Row chapter, so that would be an option for us, too.) Also find homeschool brands online, like Sonlight or Abeka, and see if you want to just stick with them, instead.

At any rate, I’m glad I have this book on my shelf. Could I live without it? Sure (though not if we were a Classical homeschool). But it’s well-written and useful, and quite frankly, I find homeschool information to be really fascinating right now.

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I read The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. It was published by W. W. Nortan & Company in 1999, and I’m pretty sure I read the first edition. It now comes in a fourth edition.

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QUOTES

*I have only included quotes that are less technical. Much of my underlining involved curriculum ideas.

“But don’t be afraid to take off on a tangent” (p168).

“The grammatical structure of English is based on Latin, as is about 50 percent of English vocabulary” (p200).

“Resist the temptation to spread your instruction too thin” (p215).

“Home schooling allows time and space for the teaching of practical skills” (p582).

“Plan ahead, of course, but don’t panic” (p583).

“If your child were enrolled in a large, well-equipped high school that offered many courses, that would still allow only so many selections” (p583).

“Personally, I decided to put on hold some of my goals” (p587).

“Every October and March, I wanted to quit. (I learned to take a week off when that feeling came over me)” (p587).

“The classroom places the child in a peer-dominated situation that he’ll probably not experience again” (p590).

“Make the family the basic unit for socialization” (p590).

“Nor should you be afraid of being alone. A measure of solitude can develop creativity, self-reliance, and the habit of reflective thought. Socialize, but don’t crowd your schedule so full…” (p593).

“You can’t live in the real world without structure and authority” (p597).

“Although it takes organization, energy, determination, combining home school with work can be done” (p599).

“Do the A’s first, the B’s next, and let the C’s fall off your schedule” (p602).

“Start the year with a disciplined approach, following a preplanned, written schedule. If the plan is too strenuous, you can adjust and ease up…” (p603).

“Remember that everything costs either money, time, or energy, all of which are in limited supply” (p606).

Book Review: You Can Teach Your Child Successfully

[image error]If I said it once… okay, so I said it once. But here it is again: I am going to be spending the majority of my summer building a curriculum for my new homeschooler and reading about homeschooling. (Who am I kidding? I’m also still reading novels and even some short stories.) The first book I picked up, and the first I read, was You Can Teach Your Child Successfully: Grades 4-8, by Ruth Beechick. I had bought this book because it is a homeschool classic, at least in Christian circles, and I saw it on every homeschool shelf that I visited. Also, it was right there in the used bookstore when I had a part of my education budget to spend.

We can all tell from the title that this book is not going to discourage anyone from homeschooling. It is, predictably, encouraging, which is exactly what I need as I start out this rather scary venture. What the title doesn’t tell you, exactly, is that this book is not only for homeschoolers, but also for any parent who wants to understand their child’s education and continue their learning at home (even over homework and nightly read-a-loud). What is even less obvious is that the book is Christian. However, the Christian-ness of it is not pervasive, and it could rather easily be read around. Why would one do that?

Because Beechick is a fount of useful information, encouragement, and interesting factoids. Sometimes I found that what she included was imbalanced (like having 100 pages on math curriculum and not even a list for reading), but it still seems you could build a whole curriculum just starting with the sheer breadth of what she covers, here.

Her biography on Amazon reads as follows:

Dr. Ruth Beechick spent a lifetime teaching and studying how people learn. She taught in Washington state, Alaska, Arizona and in several colleges and seminaries in other states. She also spent thirteen years at a publishing company writing curriculum for churches. In “retirement” she continues to write for the burgeoning homeschool movement. Her degrees are A.B. from Seattle Pacific University, M.A.Ed. and Ed.D. from Arizona State University.

[image error]Honest to goodness, it’s not the easy to find information about her, despite the fact that her books are classics in the homeschool world. She has been writing since the 1980s, and exudes this very educated, knowledgeable, and thoughtful perspective which she then makes easily accessible and digestible.

But despite the fact that she instilled an intuitive trust in me, one should really read more than one book as they start homeschooling, or so says the author and voracious reader in me. I plan to read no less than three more books before school starts (in one month!), so I will keep you updated as to whether or not this book still seems completely sane and balanced to me as I read other perspectives.

The main issue with this book is that it was last published in the 90s, and regrettably has not been updated since then. I do believe that many things have not changed since I was in school (which was when this was written) and in many ways have only been ratcheted up, but obviously some of the trends and facts will have changed. I don’t know what to say to this, except that you will want to read the book with that in mind. Still, I think you should read it.

I did really enjoy reading this book. I have a capacity for increasing my own interest when I need to. In other words, since I have to homeschool now, I can get myself pretty interested in homeschooling. (I did the same thing with pregnancy, birth, and raising children, as well as travelling to Eastern European countries and a myriad other things). But I doubt that I am the only one who pretty much devoured this easy-to-read, engaging, and even conversational book. It is so thorough, though not always hands-on, but gives you a more general frosting as well as lots of encouragement. Then again, I made a few lists while reading, of things to incorporate into this years’ and further years’ curriculum, and it is also easy to reference things since the book is organized in smaller and very logical chunks.

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I read You Can Teach Your Child Successfully by Ruth Beechick. It was published by Mott Media in 1988, and updated for the 1992 and 1999 edition, the second of which I have.

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QUOTES

*There is way too much underlining in my copy to transfer all the quotes I marked, here. I will narrow them down extremely and share a few favorites.

“Everyone thinks that it goes smoothly in everyone else’s house and theirs is the only place that has problems” (pvii).

“But if you find yourself trying to mold your child to a book, try reversing priorities” (pvii).

“Ultimately, children need an inner discipline if they are going to become good learners” (p15).

“Reading to children should not stop suddenly when children complete the primary grades” (p37).

“This one-on-one interaction of child with adult is a major advantage of teaching at home” (p39).

“Some activities could develop into long projects, such as writing a play, and if interest is high you should not cut the project short just to keep up with a schedule” (p69).

“If your child makes a particular letter poorly, help him to get a good picture of that letter in his head” (p124).

“You may comment first on something good about a child’s writing and then find something that can be improved” (p125).

“They learned a great deal of grammar as they learned to talk” (p167).

“The ‘utility’ purpose of arithmetic are largely met when children know basic arithmetic facts from memory and can calculate in the four basic operations” (p177).

“The best general advice about tests is to not be driven either by current test scores or by ambition concerning next year’s results …. But those who teach for meaning (while not neglecting computation) and who emphasize problem solving do achieve remarkable results (p198).

“Any time something isn’t clear to a child, try to arrange a way for him to work through the process with checkers or rods or coins or other objects” (p203).

“But an important principle l to remember is that real-life teaching is never as easy as it looks when laid out in a book” (p228).

“Both in real-life and on multiple-choice tests an estimated answer often suffices” (p260).

“The most obvious weakness [of textbooks] is the superficial treatment of most topics” (p295).

“You may be more of an expert when you finish the unit, but that is one of the hazards (or pleasures) of teaching” (299).

“The best ingredient of this sequence is the excitement of the parent” (p303).

“So you need to realize… that not everything in print is true” (p305).

“The California committee wanted history to be as a story well told—‘an exciting and dramatic series of events that helped to shape the present’” (p307).

“But in science, they should hold answers or opinions tentatively, even skeptically” (p326).

“Homeschooling families have the unique opportunity to raise children in a quiet, unstressful atmosphere in which they can develop powers of intense concentration” (p343).

Books That Changed My Life

The last four years have seen a lot of change in my life. Four years ago, my husband graduated from school and changed careers, and my last child at home went off to kindergarten. I started writing full-time and published a novel within nine months. Two years ago, we made the decision to take said-son back out of school and put him in virtual school, so I effectively put my career back on hold. Last year, we moved (twice). And this summer, we have removed said-son from virtual school and are transitioning to homeschool.

That said, I am spending most of my time this summer researching curriculum, scouting used book stores (online and brick and mortar) and reading about homeschool. While zooming through You Can Teach Your Child Successfully (review forthcoming), I started jotting a list in the margin, of books that I wanted to work into my son’s curriculum at some point (not this year, but in the future) because they had changed my life. (One of the coolest aspects of homeschooling is I get to do things like that.) I probably missed some, but I had a few days to think about it as we traveled across-country. I also didn’t include things that would be built into his curriculum, like basic philosophy, religion, history, literature, mythology, psychology, sociology, health, science, etc. (Also, this list is almost exclusively non-fiction. For my favorite fiction books, just go to the Book Reviews => Devon’s Fave Books or Recommended Reading tabs. We are covering many of those fiction books in his curriculum, as well. Who are we kidding? I’ve been reading him favorite fiction books for a lifetime.)

*Do not be surprised that many of the books on this list are either explicitly Christian or are influenced by Christianity. This is my worldview, so some of the books that have influenced me do have the same worldview. I have marked them with a star, for you.

Don’t you want me to share that list with you?

With no further ado, here it is:

[image error]The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

Yep, that’s fiction. But why it influenced me so strongly was because of its ground-breaking exploration of truth versus reality (and conversely lies versus falseness). I still internally reference this book, but more importantly, the concept has become a part of me. I still tend toward a black-and-white personality, but I realized a long time ago, partly because of this book, that literal truth is not always the truest thing. And I use that concept most when writing, myself.

[image error]What’s This Thing Called Science?, A.F. Chalmers

This book, unknown to most people, really changed the way that I thought about science. And boy have I found it useful lately! In a society that tends to see all science as rigid and infallible, this book showed me that there is lot more nuance and art and malleability to science. It definitely gives one a broader perspective. Actually, I would love to revisit this book soon.

[image error]Environmental Science, G. Tyler Miller Jr.

This isn’t just limited to this particular book, but also to books and to a class on environmental science. Back when I was growing up, there just wasn’t as much emphasis given to environmental science, so this college course was actually life-changing for me. As in I wrote my philosophy thesis using it, became a vegetarian, and joined several environmental agencies, immediately. These days, children are getting environmental education tucked inside almost any other science course, but still, it is important.

Greek and Latin

It’s not a book, I know, but my ninth grade English teacher included a basic education in Greek and Latin as part of the Advanced English course. Little did I know, this basic training would help with a lifetime of reading and writing, including deciphering everyday words.

[image error]*Desiring God, John Piper

Growing up in traditionally Wesleyan and basically conservative churches, this book—assigned to me in my last year of college by a professor who chose this book precisely because it is life-changing—really blew my mind about what Christianity could be in the modern world (while simultaneously unveiling what it was always intended to be). You don’t have to agree with it, but it changed the way I looked at the world and my religion.

[image error]Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon

This one is no secret, although it tends to be the fringe-type who are drawn to it. Butter, healthy? Homemade yogurt? This book is chock-full of (sometimes controversial) health and diet information that may just explode your modern mind. It jived well with my feeling that more natural foods are better for you, and is chock-full of good recipes. I see this referenced many places.

[image error]Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver

Which could be paired with several Michael Pollan books, like Omnivore’s Dilemma and Morgan Spurlock’s movie Super Size Me. I am a foodie, so this book was inordinately interesting to me, but it also challenges a modern America that can be oddly distant from its own food and therefore its own health and vitality.

[image error]Prescription for Nutritional Healing, Phyllis A. Balch

This is a reference book, and probably the most-used of all my reference books. With a natural-first and doctor-second approach to most common illnesses, I love all the information in this book. It makes me feel like my observations and input on my own health matters, and like there is something I can do to make myself healthier. Again, not something that I grew up with.

[image error]The Ultramind Solution, Mark Hyman

Although this book didn’t solve all our mental health woes, it did give me amazing insight into the brain and how our lifestyle affects it. We also really love the Ultramind Solution Diet, and use it sometimes as a detox.

[image error]*Life’s Healing Choices, John Baker

There is a whole library of books and resources that go along with the Celebrate Recovery twelve-step program, and I spent eight years involved in the program and teaching it. There’s plenty of resistance to twelve-step programs, but they work amazingly well for some people. CR materials not only influenced my life (and how I deal with my own junk and see people around me), but have influenced hundreds of thousands of others, as well.

[image error]*The Total Money Makeover, Dave Ramsey

One of the things that I want my kids to have a solid grasp on before graduating—and that I did not—is smart financing. And I am super solid on this: stay out of debt and save for your future, the logical way (and early). We found Ramsey’s straight-forward program a little late, but it has changed the way we approach our finances (and how much stress we carry) on a daily basis, and will continue to have a profound influence on us into the future.

[image error]The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language, by Melvyn Bragg

Okay, so I haven’t actually read this book. I include it because it has great reviews and when I was in high school, I did my big research paper on—you guessed it—the history of the English language. That project had such an influence on me largely because it helped me to understand in a round-about way the malleability of history and how story changes with who tells it and when and to whom. Don’t ask how, but it has something to do with how language morphs over time and belongs to so many different people at once. Perhaps I should have gone with A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, or 1491, by Charles C. Mann.

[image error]*Rich Christians In an Age of Hunger, Ronald J. Sider

I read this book as part of my college thesis, which was on the obligation of affluence. Sider’s book blew me away, with almost unbelievable statistics about our own affluence and the poverty of others. It gave me a vocabulary and information. It also helped me to find ways that I could live consistent with my desire to use what I had to benefit not just myself. It wasn’t the only book I read that got me where I landed, but it was perhaps the most influential.

[image error]*Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning

This book came at a time of great changes—both negative and positive—in my life. It really drove home the accessibility and grace of God, which I had mostly gleaned earlier from Max Lucado, Philip Yancey, and Grace Walk, by Steve McVey. Ragamuffin also spoke in a voice that was natural and passionate, from someone who I felt like I could trust and like I might also hang out with.

[image error]*God Guides, by Mary Geegh

This slim volume would be hard to find today, but it served as my more modern version of Book of Martyrs. In it, a very humble woman shows an American teen (that would be me) how prayer can by a vibrant and powerful part of anyone’s life. Geegh quickly became my Mother Theresa. Not that I need another one.

[image error]Columbine, Dave Cullen

There is something so readable about this book, that it wouldn’t even have to be influential for me to recommend it to you. But it is also its ability to make you feel for other humans—whether “good” or “bad” or—like everyone, really—somewhere in between, that makes this book so memorable for me. Like being in a twelve-step program, it let me peek under a door where I saw, and knew I always would see, people with issues, people like me, people fleshing out what it means to be human. It’s also very engrossing.

[image error]*Sex: What You Don’t Know Can Kill You, Joe S. McIlhaney

This book was assigned to me as a college student by a quirky professor in a class that had nothing to do with sex. And it is unapologetically conservative Christian and pro-abstinence. Perhaps you’re not big on scare tactics, but I didn’t really read it as defensively as many other people would. All I recall was that it really bolstered my already-made resolve and made watching Friends like a game trying to guess just which STDs each character would have by season six. Fun times.

[image error]Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, Ina May

You might think that natural pregnancy, childbirth and mothering would come naturally to me, but I can assure you that it wasn’t even on my radar when I got pregnant. Like really. I had a metaphorical radar, and natural childbirth was nowhere on it because I had never really seen it before. When I learned, through friends and classes and this book, that I could be pregnant and birth and raise children in a way that felt intuitive to me, I felt an enormous pressure lift. Again, not the only book I’ve read on it, but probably the most influential.

[image error]Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born, Tina Cassidy

While this book totally blew my mind and kept me up reading it for my last week (ever) of pregnancy, it was one incident it really influenced: when my son was born, he didn’t cry. He just looked around the dark, quiet room and for one second I panicked. Until I remembered what I had just read in Birth: babies don’t have to cry when born; it just shows that they are warm and comfortable. I relaxed and looked at Eamon, who was peaceful and observant and learned a deep-down lesson in that moment about how modern practices and assumptions aren’t always right.

 

So, while these books may not change everyone who reads them’s lives, they were what expanded my mind and enriched my experience at the time, and they are also full of little things that I recall on a regular basis. Again, there are plenty of fiction books and more basic books that might make this list on another day (like Anne of Green Gables, The Holy Bible, Aspects of Rabbinic Literature, Classics of Philosophy, and Neighboring Faiths), and there are many areas in my life which developed without the influence of one book… but this is a peek into the literary moments that changed the trajectory of my life and living.

Book Review: I Capture the Castle

[image error]I can hardly remember how this book got added to my TBR (it had something to do with Cold Comfort Farm), but I don’t think it would make most “best” lists out there. On the other hand, it is pretty solid for a—what?—YA romance? Classic YA? YA before YA existed? It transcends some of the more modern stuff, as well, and defies a solid category.

I knew very little when I started, and the book kept me guessing all the way through. What was this book? What was going to happen next? How was it going to end? I mistrusted the ending, never sure if this was the kind of book that ended happily or tragically. I won’t tell you here, except that it ended, for me, disappointingly.

You see, there are two main flaws with this otherwise intriguing book. First, you are never convinced in your subconscious of who Cassandra, the narrator, truly loves, so the ending has to be unfulfilling. This is related to the second flaw, which is that the book, in the end, assumes that Cassandra knew herself. While I was reading what is basically the diary of a teenager, (myself being in the thirties,) I was convinced that I knew better than Cassie. Why wouldn’t I? I was sure that there were clues pointing us to the truth while the narrator was still somewhat in the dark. Writing it that way would have strengthened the book tremendously, and not left the reader waffling. Also, being force to believe that Cassie was so insightful forced the reader to assume that Cassie was—instead of misdirected and growing—pretty darn cruel.

Even though those two flaws are fatal, the book is still an interesting read. What else is like it? The characters are lovable and eccentric (except for the ones who are hatable and eccentric), and the relationships are complex and realistically multi-faceted. Start with one girl and one journal, add poverty, disappointment, Bohemian artists, Americans, the 1930s, fame, England, romance, and a castle, and you have a recipe for something different. I really didn’t want to put it down. And I can’t help but wish it into the hands of teens who otherwise have a lot of the same-ol’ to read.

And the epistolary form works really well here, or at least until you realize it is supposed to be infallible. (In my opinion, character-narrators should always have some amount of untrustworthiness, and as I said before, I thought this was in Cassie’s not knowing her own heart. I thought.)

Although I had a fun time reading this book, I really wanted to re-write the ending myself, which would completely change one’s experience with the book. One of the characters ends up being a red herring, and the “truth” flies out at you from left field. A little author insight and subtlety would have gone a long way. So in the end, I can’t really recommend this book. Then again, if the set-up sounds irresistible to you, I think you will enjoy it.

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I read I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. I bought a used copy from Circle City Used Books—which is an awesome used book store. My copy is a 2004 Vintage version of the 1949 novel.

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[image error]MOVIE

I love it when I can follow up a read with a decent movie. And that’s what this movie is. Decent. It does manage to capture the spirit of the book, even if many of the details had to be changed for the short form. In fact, they captured it so well that the movie has the exact same flaws as the book. Why would you watch this movie? (It’s a little slow on its own.) Because you have read the book and want to be able to visualize it. For this, it is good.

(Warning: there is nudity in the movie, of a largely nonsexual type.)

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QUOTES

“I begin to see that writers are liable to become callous” (p11).

“Rose says I am always crediting people with emotions I should experience myself in their situation” (p26).

“Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that is free” (p31).

“I have noticed rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold” (p65).

“I have an idea that it is a game that most girls play when they meet any eligible young men. They just… wonder” (p66).

“Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle” (p89).

“The way one’s mind can dash about just while one opens a window!” (p116).

“Perhaps one not to ever count things one overhears” (p119).

“Gentlemen are men who behave like gentlemen. And you certainly do” (p124).

“…when things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn’t safe” (p190).

“…there are limits to human intervention” (p203).

“But it struck me that if a man is going queer in the head, he is the last person to mention it to” (p233).

“‘Why not?’ said Thomas. ‘His creative mind’s been un-trammeled for years without doing a hand’s-turn. Let’s see what trammeling does for it’” (p371).