Lance and Jared took April and May to finish their respective Independent reads, our lives were a busy and the books were a bit long. I specifically chose these two books because they were both about life in Holland which was the focus of our history studies at the time.
Lance's book was one I have been waiting a long time for him to be old enough to read; Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates by Mary Dodge. I had held it back for two reasons; its rather long and it has some romantic (though innocent) aspects to the plot. The story has a number of plots; Hans searching for the family fortune hid by his father before the injury that left him daft, Hans trying to find someone to cure his father, and Hans trying to still be a kid and find his place among his peers. I truly enjoyed reading this book, it has such depth of human character development and adventure to boot. I was pleased that Lance equally enjoyed the book. He said he liked how detailed the author was in all her descriptions because it made him feel he was a part of the book.
Jared got to read one of our family favorites; Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong I read it aloud to Lance when he was younger and was excited for Jared to finally experience the story. The plot appears very simple; a young girl is determined to put a wheel on their school, so the storks will build a nest their when they return from their African migration. However, all the people and adventures that result is this seemingly simple undertaking lead to a truly engrossing book. I was quite pleased to hear Jared excitedly narrating to me about the latest goings on in the book as he worked his way through. Jared's favorite part of the book was all the different adventures the children found themselves.
Read Aloud Historical Fiction with Chris this month was The Loyal Grenvilles by Hendry Peart. This book took me a long time to get my hands on. My motivation for finding it was that it was written by same author as Red Falcons of Tremoine and it covered England under the Cromwell/Puritan rule; a period in history rather void in historical fiction. I'm glad I took the time to find it, we were not disappointed. The boys just finished the book today and their first comment as they came down was "Jared's going to write a sequel, there is so much more that we want to know". So clearly, the boys found themselves connected to the characters in the book; many of whom provided a basis for character quality discussions. In addition, I love a book that gets brought up at dinner and discussed a each turn in the book.
Our night time read aloud this month was Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson. Once again, I can take no credit for finding this incredible book, Amber or Titus found it and shoved it on our library bag; I'm so glad they did. From a literature stand point it is absolutely superb, Charlotte Mason would definitely approve. From an entertainment standpoint it was equally outstanding. The story takes place around 1930 in rural America. It centers around they animals thoughts about a new family moving into the neighborhood and twists quite a bit from there. The best word to describe it is "charming", it just makes you happy. I have since bought this and added it to our permanent collection, and admit that I'm trying the families technique on our troublesome squirrels.
