Summer Reading

For many families, reading over the summer is a tradition through the ages.  I just returned 24 books to the library today, so I'd say reading is a year round tradition in our family.  However, summer does have a special pull.  

My oldest son, Lance (9) and his best friend Matthew (10) usually read a book together each summer. Some of their favorites from years past have been "The Trumpet of the Swan" by E. B. White and "The Wheel on the School" by Meindert De Jong.

This year they are going to read "Sign of the Beaver" by Elizabeth George Speare.  However, instead of just reading a book together this summer, we are going to incorporate some of the ideas from my friend Brandy's "Sign of the Beaver" Book Club. 

For my younger son, Jared (7),  I think we are going to read "The Courage of Sarah Noble". He was pretty young when I read it aloud to Lance.  We are going to try and do some of the activities Brandy posted a while back for him also. 

My friend Cheryl posted an interesting list of "Inventor" books that would finish off CC Cycle 3 nicely.

As a family, we have started reading "Hurlbut's Story of the Bible".  I got it as part of a bundle of 225 EPUB/Kindle books from Yesterday's Classics about a year ago (the collection is full of Ancient Books) and just got around to looking at it.  It's just what I've been looking for family Bible time.  The introduction explains that the author wrote the book for children about age 10.  It takes the Bible and breaks it into 160 continuous stories.  The author has taken care not to add to the Bible any fictional aspects.  He said he didn't want the readers to someday read the Bible and find it was totally different from what he'd been read as a child.  The boys are really enjoying these readings.  Lance summarized it with "I like it because its more of a story and not so authoritative".  If it makes them love to read the Bible I couldn't ask for more.

For more ideas of what to read this summer, check out these two books:

The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease

Books Children Love by Elizabeth Wilson

These are more than book lists, they categorize the books by genre and reading level and provide a nice synopsis with pros and cons to reading each book.  I found myself checking them out so much from the library I just bought them both.