Weekly book shelf, 9/28/14 (California edition)

We spent the last two weeks in California. Lots of sight seeing, lots of family time, no formal schooling. Calvin packed three books. Two of them I suggested because of their settings in California, the third he chose from his literature book shelf at home.

By the Great Horn Spoon is an adventure story set during the California Gold Rush. A young boy goes in search of gold to help his family back home. It's full of surprises and excitement, and the writing is good enough to categorize as at least side dish reading, even if it's not quite full meal literature. Calvin read it twice.

Esperanza Rising is the story of a young girl who flees Mexico with her mother and settles in a camp of workers in California during the Great Depression. This is great young adult historical fiction. The characters are fully fleshed out, and great description brings the situation validity. Of the two California books, this was Calvin's favorite.

The Swiss Family Robinson, is the classic Calvin brought on our trip. He'd started it just before we left, and was eager to finish it, as he is with most books. I'm not sure it grabbed him the way the other two books did, but he really enjoyed the descriptions of the family's life on the island. Of course.

Weekly book shelf, monthly edition: September

This is the last monthly edition. Probably. Because we will be traveling for the last two weeks of September we are putting the start of our classical, scheduled learning on hold until the first week of October. These first two weeks of September we are using to review past topics and make a plan for the rest of the year.

With that in mind, September was a month of rediscovering old favorites as we cleaned off shelves and reorganized for the coming scheduled year. All of these are rereads, which means he must have really loved them the first time to pick them up again.

Peter Pan and Wendy is not the Disney movie, and although it is sprinkled with a few similar faux pas that reflect the era of its composition, this story has its place. If nothing else, it's a good jumping off point for discussing the evolution of prejudices everywhere, but it's also a really imaginative and beautiful story. Plus it's written with challenging and rich language.

Ginger Pye is simple and sweet. A dog, some sweet kids, the dog gets stolen, chaos ensues. Simple and sweet.

The One and Only Ivan is a beautifully written story—one of the better children's novels to come out of our current era. The story of a caged gorilla and his friends and their efforts to help a baby elephant who has been added to their caged ranks, this is a book that will tug at the heart strings. It's also a social commentary on animal rights. A good one. Calvin rereads this one regularly.

Another regular revisit for Calvin, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is full of fantastic word play and hilarity that challenges a young reader to think, while making them laugh.

Weekly book shelf, monthly edition: August

Calvin was all about the spooky books this month, which was interesting because prior to this he was so anti-spooky books that he wouldn't even let them reside on the shelves in his room. He's turning over a new leaf, I guess. The following are the standouts, per Calvin. The first three I'd consider pretty good reading, the Chillers series is definitely what we call "junk food" reading—temporarily delicious, but completely devoid of sustenance. 

Thirteen-year-old Thomas moves into a large old house with quite the reputation. Once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the legend held that two fugitive slaves and the man who was hiding them were killed there. With secret tunnels and possibly buried treasure, the house seems like a dream to Thomas, but is the house haunted? This book and its sequel, The Mystery of Drear House, are wonderful options for historical fiction from the Civil War era.

Twelve-year-old Kenny moves to Providence, Rhode Island, only to find that his attic bedroom is haunted by the ghost of a teenage slave named Caleb (see a pattern here?). As Kenny learns more from Caleb about his life and its end, Kenny is increasingly troubled by the wrongness of it. Beautiful and haunting while also inviting the reader to think about justice and racial equality.

Young Horace has a very logical mind and doesn't at all believe in ghosts. That is, until he is hired to photograph a gravesite and, in the process, discovers that his photographs seem to have supernatural powers. Caught in a money-making scheme dreamt up by his boss, Horace inadvertently releases a force from picture into the world. This is certainly not the best of Avi's writing, and the story is pretty dark in places, but it serves for a good, spooky, light read.

The Michigan Chillers series is a rather outrageous collection of monster stories, all set in the main tourist spots throughout Michigan. Light on the writing front, and even light in the setting description, I get the feeling these are fairly formulaic horror stories with just a few key setting details thrown in to give them a push in the market place. It seemed to me that in several instances the actual action of the story took place in places outside of the supposed setting (like underground caverns, or inside buildings), so that not too many specific details had to be used. The author is a Michigan native, though, and the books are certainly fun, light reads for a little late summer night spooking.

Weekly book shelf, monthly edition: July

Calvin begged me to locate a good copy of Oliver Twist for him to read. Then, as possibly was to be expected, he had a little trouble with it. It wasn't the vocabulary, or even the language, I don't think. His main complaint was that the beginning was so negative; everything that happened to Oliver was bad. We assured him that it would improve, and the further he got into the book, the more into the book he got. By the end he couldn't put it down. I agree with him, though, the beginning sure is a downer.

Vampires are all the rage now, but this series is actually a 1980s classic. If you can call anything about the 80s classic, that is. Originally published in German, the story is about a young boy whose life takes a turn for the exciting when he makes two new friends—a vampire boy and girl pair. Adventures and hilarity ensue. Jon handed this one to Calvin because it was a favorite of his when he was little (oh those classic 80s), but upon further reading he found it to be lighter than he remembered. Such is life. Calvin enjoyed it, but he didn't go back to reread it the way he usually does with books he loves.

Speaking of books he loves, though, it was apparently time for the apparently annual Oz reread. I first read the Oz series to Calvin the summer he turned four. He loved it then, and as his reading skill grew, he reread it to himself almost immediately. He loved it so much, and some of the series books were so hard to get through the library, that we went in search of all fourteen Baum books—in the Books of Wonder editions because they have the original illustrations in situ. He has reread the entire series every year since.

Another beloved series of the 80s, but in a totally different vein, we were just waiting for the day that Calvin would discover our Calvin and Hobbes collection. Now he has. He spent the latter part of the month totally engrossed in the comics. Of course some of the humor is lost on him, but not all of it, and he has had a wonderful time play acting some of the antics, and he's picking up on some of the kid's humor, too. We asked for it. (Disclaimer: we did NOT name our Calvin after the comic, but he really is starting to resemble that iconic kid).

Weekly book shelf, monthly edition: June

Calvin's great discovery of the Harry Potter series occured over Memorial Day, and the whole month of June was reading, and rereading, and rereading the series in its entirety. And acting it out. The series obviously needs no real introduction here.

There was some additional reading, too, though. On his birthday (June 9) we took him out to dinner and to our local bookstore to pick a new title. He chose The Thickety, a new release that is the first in a promised trilogy. He picked the book for its cover, and I let him, because why not, and because everyone has to do that every once in a while, right? As it turned out, he really enjoyed the book. Unfortunately he's been spoiled by reading finished book series, so the fact that the second book doesn't come out until next June was a huge disappointment.

A find the boy took home from our library used book sale—and an award winner at that. Natalie Babbitt is the author of several other well known books, like Tuck Everlasting, and this story doesn't disappoint. Young Egan moves to a small town where the people live in the belief that a monster inhabits there hills. Finally one night he climbs the rise to discover the truth once and for all about the urban legend.

Another title from a well known author picked up from our book sale. Avi, though, is more prolific, more varied, and less reliable, and Poppy, though sweet and enchanting, is not award winning material. It also turned out to be the second book in a series that kind of resembles the Redwall series that Calvin loved so much. He enjoyed Poppy, too, though not quite the same.

Together we are still reading The Golden Compass. It's been difficult to get our read aloud time in, what with his eagerness to read his own books, and the later summer nights that lead to late baths and immediate zonking upon hitting the pillow. Slow and steady wins the race, though, and he's definitely still enjoying it.