what we’re reading

It’s October already! I don’t know about you, but I’m super excited about that. I adore October and November; they’re my favorite months all year long. And I think there are going to be big changes for our family this month. But for now, my fingers are tied on that front.

Instead, let’s talk about what books we’re reading this month!

Read Aloud

We’re still working through our shelf of beautifully illustrated novels. This month we’re going to spend wrapping up both Pinocchio and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. (We didn’t do as much reading of those as we should have last month.) We’re also reading A Cricket in Times Square, and we will have a review on the Progeny Press study guide for that book later in the month!

Scorpion (9th)

As I briefly mentioned last week, Scorpion is reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. He will have a hefty portion of guest posting on that Progeny Press review when it comes up in a few weeks. Scorpion has always loved classic novels. From the time he was very young (like 6), he’s been reading them. Of course, back then he read children’s versions. Now that he’s older, I’m glad that he’ll get the opportunity to read some of them in their entirety rather than as a “Great Illustrated Classic.”

Grasshopper (4th)

We’re making great progress with Wayside School, and when he finishes it we’ll dive into a book I read a few years ago (it’s a kids’ book, but I saw it in the store and was intrigued by the plot so I bought it and read it anyway): Circus Mirandus. This is the story of a magical circus that only those who already believe in it can find. The main character must make himself believe so he can find the circus and get in touch with the one person who can help him save his ailing grandfather.

Me

I recently finished reading a book that had been on my to-read list for months, Sooley by John Grisham. It’s a stray from his normal legal thriller and explores the world of high-end college basketball through the eyes of a South Sudanese young man in America on a series of emergency visas. I love basketball, so I was pretty sure I’d like this book. It was not entirely what I expected, though, and Amazon reviews on the book are mixed. (I would give it 5 stars.) But that’s all I’m going to say for now, because more of my thoughts will be outlined when I feature it in this month’s book club post. For my new book, I’m sticking with my Grisham streak and reading an older novel called The Racketeer.

What are you reading this month?

Blessings,

Happy First Day of School! Many of you have probably already been back to school for a couple of weeks, or even a month, but it’s the first official day of school for us. The first day of school is the one way I struggle to separate our family from the public school schedule, but it’s one that I don’t mind following! One of the ways I plan to keep us more accountable this school year is to go back to posting a reading list for each of my kids here each month. I used to do this a few years ago, and I like the idea. Besides keeping us on track, it offers book ideas for other families. I hope it will give you ideas for books to read to/with your kids.

Read Aloud

My teens don’t really participate in our read alouds anymore. I know a lot of families encourage/require everyone to be there for them, but that doesn’t really work in our family dynamic. So when I talk about our read aloud choice each month, it is for myself, Grasshopper, and Dragonfly primarily. Sometimes Bumblebee will mill around or snuggle while we read also though.

This school year, we will be reading quite a few classics. For my birthday a couple of years ago, Will found a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that was beautifully illustrated for me. I read it to the younger kids right away, and we all marveled at the gorgeous drawings. Recently, we discovered that that book was actually part of a series of classics all with “new” illustrations done by the same illustrator, Robert Ingpen. (I say new with quotation marks because these are newer than the text, but not actually new. Mr. Ingpen has been illustrating books since the 1950s, and working on children’s books since the 70s. The set of classics that we’ve been collecting were all done from 2000-2014.) So we’ve been building up our collection of these books over the summer, and now that school’s in session for our family again, we will begin reading our new treasures. Another thing I love about these books is that each one has an indentation on the front cover that is associated with the story without giving anything away (wood tools for Pinocchio, shoes for Oz, etc). It’s such a neat touch!

This month, we are reading Pinocchio. This is Bumblebee’s favorite Disney movie, by far, and the other kids enjoy it too. They were really excited when this book showed up on our doorstep from Amazon, and we’ve been reading it inconsistently throughout the summer. But with the weather beginning to cool and more time spent inside, we will be making a much bigger effort to read it more regularly now.

In addition to the classics, we are also making our way through the illustrated Harry Potter books. If you haven’t seen those in a bookstore or on Amazon, and you’re a HP fan, I highly recommend them. Jim Kay has done an absolutely stunning job illustrating the familiar stories. We’re about a third of the way through Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone now.

Ballet Boy (17; 12th grade)

Even though the big kids aren’t participating in read aloud time, they are still reading books on their own. Ballet Boy has never been one to care for novels; he’s always preferred biographies instead. So he’ll be working his way through Church History in Plain Language. Will assigned that to him last school year, and it’s so dense that he hasn’t finished yet. This is a hefty read, but a good one if you’re interested in finding out why American Christianity is the way it is now. That may not be the point of the book, but you can definitely read it and see the path that brought us to where we are now. As we get through the school year, I may add other books to his load, but we’re going to start with just the essentials (this one is essential because Dad assigned it). Ballet Boy spends a lot of time working with Will, so his schedule involves more than just school at this point. I’m happy to accommodate that.

Scorpion (14; 9th grade)

I’m going to be assigning Scorpion a book a month, like the other kids, and he will be getting a mix of classics and modern novels, in addition to the reading required by his Khan Academy lessons. First up for him is Animal Farm, and I have a Progeny Press guide for him to do along with it.

Grasshopper (9; 4th grade)

It’s time! It’s time! Grasshopper is finally getting a chance to read Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom. He’s so excited to read this book, and I’m excited to experience it with him.

Dragonfly (5; K)

Dragonfly is still a very early reader. He’s technically been able to put sounds together for a year, but when our iPad died a few months back, he fell behind on doing his Reading Eggs lessons. I bought him those Paw Patrol books over the summer, so we’re going to work on those until he’s super comfortable reading things in the “real world,” and then we’ll see where we end up with him.

Me

Until recently, I hadn’t actually read much in awhile. I love that I’m getting back into reading novels at night, and some of my favorite authors have older books that I haven’t read yet. I just finished up a John Grisham book last month (The Guardians, which will be this month’s book club post), and I’m going to be diving into another Grisham novel this month: Sooley. This one is on the newer side, but my turn on the hold list came up, and I don’t want to miss out after so many weeks of waiting.

What are you reading this month?

Blessings,

Happy New Year!

Christmas brought a lot of new books into our home, and I’m excited to share about them over the next couple of months as we begin to read them all 🙂

Wendy (that’s me!)

Will found two books for me from some of my favorite authors, and I’m really excited to read both of them. The decision of which to read first came down to the one that felt better in my hand, especially since a lot of my reading happens while nursing Dragonfly. So this month, I’m reading At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen (author of Water for Elephants). It’s a period piece that takes place right at the end of World War II about a woman, her husband, and her father-in-law as they search for the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland.

Seahawk (6th grade)

He’s working his way through several things right now… He hasn’t finished the George Washington biography I wrote about last time I did one of these posts. He’s also reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and we got him a Star Wars special edition magazine for his “something to read” for Christmas that he’s enjoying.

Munchkin (4th grade)

Munchkin, as regular readers will know, is my reader. This kid will read anything you put in front of him. He was recently quarantined to his bedroom for 4 days while he recovered from pneumonia. He spent the first day of that quarantine sleeping. He felt better after just a day or so on the antibiotics, but because we have an infant we weren’t comfortable letting him out to risk passing the infection on to the rest of us for a few days after that. This was borderline a treat for him rather than a problem – it meant he had 3 solid days to do nothing but read and draw without his older brother giving him grief about not playing! During that half-week, he read the first three Harry Potter books in their entirety. He’s now about halfway through Goblet of Fire. His goal is to read the remainder of that series and then dive into his Christmas books. He received a single-volume Chronicles of Narnia that he’s excited to dive into, among other things. We won’t need to hit the library for him for the next 6-12 months at least!

Small Fry (3 years old)

Sometime in December, this guy decided he was really into trains. I’m not entirely sure what prompted it, but when asked what he wanted for Christmas, the answer every time was “Trains!” So we got him a beginner train set with the understanding that if he’s still interested on successive birthdays and Christmases, it would be easy to add on to. Additionally, we found on sale a book that had 6 Thomas the Tank Engine books all in one volume, so we picked that up for him. He’s loving the book, and will easily sit through 3 or more of the stories at once – assuming he can find someone to read that many to him!

What are you reading this month?

Blessings,

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It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these posts, but it’s always pretty fun. Since we’re beginning the new school year tomorrow, it seemed like the perfect time to dive back into a book-related post.

Read Aloud (everyone)

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We had so much fun – and learned so much – when we reviewed the Progeny Press literature guide for Little House in the Big Woods last school year that I was thrilled to be chosen to review for this company again. This time, we’ll be working through Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. I’ll read it aloud and the boys will notebook their way through it, using the Progeny Press guide as the backbone.

Me

I recently finished the first book in one of my very favorite series, The Heavens Before by Kacy Barnett-Gramckow. I received that book as a gift from my late mother-in-law before she passed away, and didn’t read it for a very long time – after she was gone. It’s the story of a young woman, Annah, who lives during the time of the great

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flood and Noah’s ark. At what seems like a chance encounter, but is really divine intervention from God (called the Most High in the books), she meets Noah’s son Shem. Within a few months, the two are married (though it’s not as clean a story as I just made it out to be). A few months after that, the flood comes. The story primarily follows Annah, but there are plenty of other characters, too – and lots of drama.

The second book is called He Who Lifts the Skies and follows Annah and Shem’s great-granddaughters, Sharah and Keren, through the Tower of Babel era. Even though I’ve read it once before, it’s been several years so it feels brand new, and I’m not very far in so I can’t explain much of the plot beyond this. But I highly recommend the books.

Seahawk (6th Grade)

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All on his own, Seahawk decided to pick up the Harry Potter books this past week. They’re reasonable for his reading level, and he’s particularly interested since we recently had a movie marathon (the boys and I) where we watched all eight films over the course of a month or so. We own all seven books, but he couldn’t find the first book when he decided that this series was what he wanted to read, so he started with book two, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I hope he ends up enjoying these books as much as I did when I read them several years ago (to give you some perspective, I read them around the time movie 4 and book 6 were just coming out).

Munchkin (4th Grade)

Poor Munchkin had to come home early from church camp a few weeks ago because he was very sick – too sick to stay, even though the week was only half over. He was feeling better within just a couple of days, but by then it was

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too late to worry about taking him back (he’d have only been able to go back for the final day). To help make it up to him a bit, Will gave him a copy of The Neverending Story, and he’s been working on it ever since. It’s a much longer, harder book than he’s read before, but he’s really loving it. He’s nearing the end, and I expect he’ll be done with that book in the next few days, so I’ll likely be assigning him a new book soon. I’m thinking it’ll probably be Because of Winn Dixie by Kate di Camillo. I have access to some great literature worksheets for that book (among many others), so it’ll be a good jump to make. Besides that, Kate di Camillo is one of his favorite authors, so I’m sure he’ll love the book.

Small Fry (3 years old)

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Small Fry is kind of at the mercy of everyone else since he’s too young to read. He loves being read to, though. Sometimes he gets to hear whatever book the reader (and all four of the rest of us read to him on a fairly regular basis) is willing to read, but oftentimes we let him choose. His current favorites are Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss and any of the Babar books by Jean de Brunhoff. We own several of those, and the one he seems to gravitate toward is Babar and his Children, about the birth of King Babar and Queen Celeste’s triplets. This book is particularly relevant to him right now since we’re coming up on the birth of a baby soon.

What’s on the reading list in your family?

Blessings,