In the spirit of Island of the Blue dolphins and Sing down the moon, I decided to try another native american novel. this time I chose the newberry honor book, anpao by jamake highwater. I don't remember how many pages I read, I know it was past 50, but I still have no idea what this book was trying to do. I got from what I read that it's about two brothers who want to marry a girl who claims she is married to the moon. the two brothers set out to find the moon and ask if they can marry the girl. in the process, one of the brothers ends up making the moon angry and things get bad. there was something about a swan who gives anpao a ride across a lake to find the cave where the moon lives. now, I love literature. I love analogies and symbolism, but somehow I couldn't see beyond what was actually happening in this story to get the underlying meaning. I'm pretty sure that there is more meaning to this book than I was able to glean from it. Maybe in a literature class with discussion help from others, it might mean more, but in my busy life of children and gardening and housework, I needed to read something not quite so complicated. Or maybe this book really is confusing and the critics who read it just gave it an honor because they too felt that there must be more to it than what they themselves were understanding. either way, I did not finish reading this book and I don't plan on it.
on a good note, after such a good experience with reading Patty Reed's Doll, I decided to read another story where the heroine is a doll, namely "Hitty, Her First hundred years" by Rachel Field, author of calico bush. hitty is a doll who writes her own memoirs and tells of the adventures that she has over one hundred years. I loved this book from beginning to end. her adventures begin when she is crafted out of mountain ash wood from a peddler in colonial new england. she enjoys her life and little mishaps there, but after a time she finds herself on a whaling boat, and then on an island being worshipped by natives, and then in the basket of a snake charmer in India, and then and then. you just wouldn't believe the people and places that one small wooden doll could visit in one hundred years. This is a story that will delight both young and old alike. Another thing I like about the story is that it eludes to several events in history, without divulging too much information, which could then prompt the reader to do some personal research into those historical moments that have defined our lives. Last, but not least, not only have I found a friend in Hitty herself, but I now have another new favorite children's author to add to the list of scott o'dell and clyde robert bulla.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Little Britches
I finished this book a couple months ago and loved it so much that I suggested that Chris should read it to Jared after the girls go to bed. This started a new tradition in our house that will not quickly fade. Growing up in a house full a girls, Jared often feels left out and misunderstood. He has always loved golfing because that was something he could do with Dad, but golfing isn't always convenient. Reading a good book, that's convenient. And this book is more than good.
Little Britches was written by Ralph Moody and it is an autobiography. Unlike many autobiographies, it is riveting. From the first line to the last I was interested in this story about a young boy and his adventures and trials while living on a ranch in Colorado. It's not so much the context the story is set in, but the lessons that are learned that make this timeless. Early in the book, Ralph learns about building character in a way that is unforgettable. After lying to his mother and doing a very dangerous thing, his father is left to discipline him. This is a little of what he says, "A man's character is like a house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn't do but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin."
This true story teaches lessons such as earning trust, earning respect, and giving a good day's work. A review on the book's cover reads, "Ralph Moody's books should be read aloud in every family circle in America," and I would have to agree. I will consider this a classic on our bookshelf and read and re-read it. I think our future generations would be full of strong leaders, parents and teachers if they could be raised with the same character and morals of Ralph Moody.
Little Britches was written by Ralph Moody and it is an autobiography. Unlike many autobiographies, it is riveting. From the first line to the last I was interested in this story about a young boy and his adventures and trials while living on a ranch in Colorado. It's not so much the context the story is set in, but the lessons that are learned that make this timeless. Early in the book, Ralph learns about building character in a way that is unforgettable. After lying to his mother and doing a very dangerous thing, his father is left to discipline him. This is a little of what he says, "A man's character is like a house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn't do but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin."
This true story teaches lessons such as earning trust, earning respect, and giving a good day's work. A review on the book's cover reads, "Ralph Moody's books should be read aloud in every family circle in America," and I would have to agree. I will consider this a classic on our bookshelf and read and re-read it. I think our future generations would be full of strong leaders, parents and teachers if they could be raised with the same character and morals of Ralph Moody.
Friday, May 22, 2009
The Liberation of Gabriel King
I finished this book a while ago and just loved it. It was a real quick read that really struck home with me. It's about a boy and girl growing up in the 70's in a small southern town. They are best friends, against all odds considering that he's white and she's black. Together they devise a way to help him overcome all his fears, the worst one of which is attending the fifth grade. They spend their summer conquering bullies, spiders, and the KKK. It is a wonderful story of friendship, morals, and strength. What I most enjoyed about it though was that I felt like I'd been transported back to that time in my life when I was enjoying similar adventures with my brother Jonathan, albeit at a younger age.
Before I went to Kindergarten, my family moved from Simi Valley, California (which is a city much like you imagine when you think of southern California; you know...the palm trees, big houses, important jobs, etc.) to a very small community in central California called Greenfield. Greenfield is on the outskirts of the San Joaquin Valley. It is, or at least was back then, a farming community. My grandparents lived nearby and owned a tire yard (I think my Dad was working for my grandfather and that's why we moved there). To the mind of an adventurous five year old, a tire yard is almost as magical as a fairytale castle. On this huge piece of cemented property that my grandparents owned were hundreds of rows of every size of tires imaginable. The rows were stacked so high that to my eye, they reached the clouds. Jonathan and I spent countless hours running in and out of the stacks, playing hide-and-go-seek and looking for 'treasures'. I remember one particularly exciting time when we found a barrel of some sort of acid that would disintegrate anything we put in it. Now that was fun. To this day, I cannot think of what sort of liquid would actually be lying around in an open barrel that would have such a chemical property, but would not melt the container it was in.
Some of the other adventures we enjoyed were running through the cotton fields that were close to our house and particularly looking for crop dusters. Crop dusters are the low flying aircraft that spray chemical pesticides on crops, but we called them 'our friends' because whenever we would be running through the cotton fields and they would come, we would eagerly wave to them and they would always wave back. We also called tumbleweeds 'our friends', I guess because they were always blowing in to say "Hi". I remember many times that we took Mom's kitchen spoons down to the irrigation ditches to catch tadpoles. We discovered that if we bent the spoons where the handle meets the spoon part, it was easier to hold. I don't remember if Mom ever found out what we were using the spoons for, but I remember her being upset that all of her spoons were bent.
It's not like we had a KKK clan in our small community like they did in the story of Gabriel King, but I do remember some prejudices. One night as Jonathan and I were coming home from some adventure, we saw the wild lights from ambulances parked across the street from our house. We were small and crept into the dark corners of the neighbors yard for a better view of what was going on. To my recollection what we witnessed was the aftermath of a bloody fight, most likely alcohol induced. I remember seeing blood and thinking there was a gun involved, but I can't be sure. The part that I remember most was knowing (or being told) that they were Mexicans and for some reason that seemed to explain everything. I am grateful to have matured and outgrown such feelings and beliefs, but it just goes to show that even though southern California may not be "the south," prejudices still abound there as well as in many other parts of the world.
Ultimately, I think that "The Liberation of Gabriel King" would ring familiar to most of us were we to examine the recesses of our minds for those sometimes fun, sometimes scary, and sometimes wrong moments in our childhoods.
Before I went to Kindergarten, my family moved from Simi Valley, California (which is a city much like you imagine when you think of southern California; you know...the palm trees, big houses, important jobs, etc.) to a very small community in central California called Greenfield. Greenfield is on the outskirts of the San Joaquin Valley. It is, or at least was back then, a farming community. My grandparents lived nearby and owned a tire yard (I think my Dad was working for my grandfather and that's why we moved there). To the mind of an adventurous five year old, a tire yard is almost as magical as a fairytale castle. On this huge piece of cemented property that my grandparents owned were hundreds of rows of every size of tires imaginable. The rows were stacked so high that to my eye, they reached the clouds. Jonathan and I spent countless hours running in and out of the stacks, playing hide-and-go-seek and looking for 'treasures'. I remember one particularly exciting time when we found a barrel of some sort of acid that would disintegrate anything we put in it. Now that was fun. To this day, I cannot think of what sort of liquid would actually be lying around in an open barrel that would have such a chemical property, but would not melt the container it was in.
Some of the other adventures we enjoyed were running through the cotton fields that were close to our house and particularly looking for crop dusters. Crop dusters are the low flying aircraft that spray chemical pesticides on crops, but we called them 'our friends' because whenever we would be running through the cotton fields and they would come, we would eagerly wave to them and they would always wave back. We also called tumbleweeds 'our friends', I guess because they were always blowing in to say "Hi". I remember many times that we took Mom's kitchen spoons down to the irrigation ditches to catch tadpoles. We discovered that if we bent the spoons where the handle meets the spoon part, it was easier to hold. I don't remember if Mom ever found out what we were using the spoons for, but I remember her being upset that all of her spoons were bent.
It's not like we had a KKK clan in our small community like they did in the story of Gabriel King, but I do remember some prejudices. One night as Jonathan and I were coming home from some adventure, we saw the wild lights from ambulances parked across the street from our house. We were small and crept into the dark corners of the neighbors yard for a better view of what was going on. To my recollection what we witnessed was the aftermath of a bloody fight, most likely alcohol induced. I remember seeing blood and thinking there was a gun involved, but I can't be sure. The part that I remember most was knowing (or being told) that they were Mexicans and for some reason that seemed to explain everything. I am grateful to have matured and outgrown such feelings and beliefs, but it just goes to show that even though southern California may not be "the south," prejudices still abound there as well as in many other parts of the world.
Ultimately, I think that "The Liberation of Gabriel King" would ring familiar to most of us were we to examine the recesses of our minds for those sometimes fun, sometimes scary, and sometimes wrong moments in our childhoods.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Cabin Faced West
Our history book club book for the month of March was The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz. It is the story of a girl named Ann Hamilton whose family has moved into the frontier and she isn't very happy about it. Through some unexpected events, Ann begins to see the value of the land that her family and even General George Washington are so interested in. This was an easy and enjoyable read.
Jared made a diorama for his book report. He chose to portray the scene where George Washington comes down the road and surprises Ann by asking what her mother is cooking for dinner. Jared used sticks and painted cotton balls to make trees. He used playdough to create the grass and road as well as the gardens around the cabin. The cabin was built with pretzel sticks and frosting. We later tried to do the cabin building with the whole book group. It was fun and yummy all at once.
A memorable part of the story is when a storm comes and Ann chooses to rescue the peas from the garden. She shows surprising courage as she continually fills her apron with peas, brings them to the cabin, then heads back into the storm to save the remaining pods. We re-enacted this scene with a relay race. Each of the kids had on aprons and had to pass an apronfull of dried peas to the next kid. In the end, there weren't many peas left, but there were a lot of laughs.
Jared made a diorama for his book report. He chose to portray the scene where George Washington comes down the road and surprises Ann by asking what her mother is cooking for dinner. Jared used sticks and painted cotton balls to make trees. He used playdough to create the grass and road as well as the gardens around the cabin. The cabin was built with pretzel sticks and frosting. We later tried to do the cabin building with the whole book group. It was fun and yummy all at once.
A memorable part of the story is when a storm comes and Ann chooses to rescue the peas from the garden. She shows surprising courage as she continually fills her apron with peas, brings them to the cabin, then heads back into the storm to save the remaining pods. We re-enacted this scene with a relay race. Each of the kids had on aprons and had to pass an apronfull of dried peas to the next kid. In the end, there weren't many peas left, but there were a lot of laughs. Friday, March 13, 2009
Scott O'Dell
After reading "The Matchlock Gun" a Newberry Medalist, and being slightly disappointed...I have decided to try to read more Newberry Medalist and Honor books to see which ones are really worth studying or having my kids read when they get there. I just finished "The Island of the Blue Dolphins" and "Sing Down the Moon." They are both written by Scott O'Dell (the same author that wrote Sarah Bishop).
I had tried to read "The Island of the Blue Dolphins" a few years ago and never got past the first couple pages. I'm not sure why because it was a very interesting book. It is about an Indian girl who lives with her tribe on an island off the coast of California (which I found very intriguing, since I looked for these islands every time we drove to my grandparents house in Santa Barbara). Her tribe leaves on a ship with white men, but she is left behind and has to learn how to live by herself on the island for 18 years until she is recued. That part of the story is true, the rest of the story - how she manages to survive - is the author's creativity. I love stories about girl's or women who are strong and even a little wild. Maybe somewhere underneath my outer shell of living the typical 'good' life, there is a part of me that imagines myself living alone in a forest with nothing but animals to keep me company (actually, I used to write stories about that as a kid). I guess I should just picture my house as a forest and my children as animals (not too hard to do) and I'm good. I definately liked this book and thought it worthy of the Newberry Medal.
I read "Sing Down the Moon" in three nights of reading before bed. This one is also about an Indian girl. This time it's the Navaho tribe in Arizona. The mood in this story is definately darker as it deals with the hardships the Navaho tribe faced as they were forced to march into captivity by the white man. I was continually surprised at how matter of fact the wording was. Not once did I find myself overcome with emotion as these horrible events were described. It was as though I myself became like the Old Men in the book, beyond caring or feeling. I found myself just reading the pages with not much hope of a better future for the characters in the story. But, lest you think that this book is depressing and therefore not worth reading, it actually does have a happy ending and in doing so the book mirrors the lives of the Navahos as they struggled through this oppressiveness to eventually be released from the white man to return to their homes. So yes, I think it is well deserving of it's Newberry honor and look forward to reading some more works of Scott O'Dell.
I had tried to read "The Island of the Blue Dolphins" a few years ago and never got past the first couple pages. I'm not sure why because it was a very interesting book. It is about an Indian girl who lives with her tribe on an island off the coast of California (which I found very intriguing, since I looked for these islands every time we drove to my grandparents house in Santa Barbara). Her tribe leaves on a ship with white men, but she is left behind and has to learn how to live by herself on the island for 18 years until she is recued. That part of the story is true, the rest of the story - how she manages to survive - is the author's creativity. I love stories about girl's or women who are strong and even a little wild. Maybe somewhere underneath my outer shell of living the typical 'good' life, there is a part of me that imagines myself living alone in a forest with nothing but animals to keep me company (actually, I used to write stories about that as a kid). I guess I should just picture my house as a forest and my children as animals (not too hard to do) and I'm good. I definately liked this book and thought it worthy of the Newberry Medal.
I read "Sing Down the Moon" in three nights of reading before bed. This one is also about an Indian girl. This time it's the Navaho tribe in Arizona. The mood in this story is definately darker as it deals with the hardships the Navaho tribe faced as they were forced to march into captivity by the white man. I was continually surprised at how matter of fact the wording was. Not once did I find myself overcome with emotion as these horrible events were described. It was as though I myself became like the Old Men in the book, beyond caring or feeling. I found myself just reading the pages with not much hope of a better future for the characters in the story. But, lest you think that this book is depressing and therefore not worth reading, it actually does have a happy ending and in doing so the book mirrors the lives of the Navahos as they struggled through this oppressiveness to eventually be released from the white man to return to their homes. So yes, I think it is well deserving of it's Newberry honor and look forward to reading some more works of Scott O'Dell.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Scarlet Pimpernel
I realized that I finished this book a couple weeks ago, but haven't written my review yet. This was another one of those books that took me a while to get into. After I'd been reading it for a couple nights, Chris asked which page I was on, and I was only on page 16. In my defense, I do all my reading right before bed and sometimes my eyes close pretty fast. But, I did eventually get into the book and even stayed up late a few nights, unable to put it down. This book is set during the French Revolution when the citizens of France were capturing all the "aristos" and sending them to Madame Guillotine. Other than the styles, dress and culture of the time, that is the only history included in the novel. The rest of the story is a romance/adventure novel. I read something that said The Scarlet Pimpernel was the first masked superhero story, preceding zorro, the lone ranger, even batman and superman. So, overall it was adventurous and kept me reading. However, I do have a couple of criticisms. The first is that the author uses a few words in extreme excess. These words being: peremtory, and imperturbable. Maybe this is another manifestation of French culture during the Revolution, but personally I found it annoying that all of the Scarlet Pimpernel's actions were either peremtory or imperturbable. My next criticism is that each time there was a secret identity to be uncovered, (and this too happens often) I had guessed the true identity chapters in advance. This left me just reading to get to the point that the secret identity would be revealed and not so much concentrating on what was happening in the meantime. I would however recommend this book to others, if for nothing else, than to say that you've read one of the classics. Having said that, the next time that I want to read a book set during the French Revolution, I think I'll choose Les Miserables and just watch the movie of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I am looking forward to seeing now that I've finished the book.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Patty Reed's Doll
We just finished reading Patty Reed's Doll for our history book club. It is a story about the Donner party and their trek to California. The kids enjoyed it and were happy that I only cried twice while reading it to them. The book brought up many topics for discussion like: the continental divide, whether or not to trust strangers, the inner strenth of individuals, is salt water good for drinking, which objects are really important, etc. For book club we did a lot of fun activities including following the path they took on a relief map, making our own relief maps with modeling clay, packing doll house items into a mini covered wagon, and making our own wooden dolls. 
Clarissa's, Krystal's, and Jared's wooden dolls.
Krystal with her doll.
Clarissa's, Krystal's, and Jared's wooden dolls.
Krystal with her doll.
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