Books We've Hauled In This Week

Wednesday turned out to be one of those exceptionally beautiful, wonderful, soul-delighting days. Why? Kiddo and I had the good fortune to go book-hunting that's why!

First, we had to quench his thirst for more Calvin and Hobbes so we headed to Borders. He had earned some money from selling his old bike (more about this in a post to come) and also as a reward for some recent hard work. So the boy had real cash to spend! (Errr, I know I should know better and think seriously about steering him away from inheriting my spendthrift ways, but it's hard to resist you know?)

With his hard-earned money he bought Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat and It's A Magical World:

   

With DH's hard-earned money I bought The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking:

 which I thought would pair well with our  

and because I was feeling especially generous (yes, with DH's hard-earned money), I also bought Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd (edited by Martin Gardner, no less) but only because kiddo asked oh so nicely.

So you would think we'd stop there right? Oh no we didn't. We happened to visit Half Price Books afterwards. I know I shouldn't walk into these places but the spirit is just too weak and who am I to fight such a powerful force? We ended up leaving the store with a bag full of goodies, and I wanted to bring special attention to:

The Crossword Obsession: The History and Lore of the World's Most Popular Pastime by Coral Amende helps your crossword puzzle lover understand what goes into constructing those mind-boggling puzzles. That's about all I could get out of kiddo because he's hogging the book.

It's Raining Frogs and Fishes: Four Seasons of Natural Phenomena and Oddities of the Sky by Jerry Dennis with beautiful illustrations by Glenn Wolff is such a fun-looking book on seasons and their little quirks and habits. Kiddo and I are still so ignorant about weather, climate and much of the earth sciences so I'm hoping this very "living"-looking book will fill part of that gap. The prose is easy to read, the drawings are gorgeous and the overall tone is charming and even funny in places.

A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush and Gold Dust will hopefully hold well as our state history curriculum.

I don't plan to steer kiddo's Year 4 history towards CA History as state standards require so I'm hoping we'll reach for these at some time or other in the future. For now, they remain untouched on the shelf lol.

And oh, oh I also found a hopefully enticing way to get the kiddo to write more! I'm hoping he won't be able to resist the tales and teachings and tricks of well-known writers in their quest to get published while also clutching his sides laughing over Snoopy's Guide To The Writing Life. One has to use one's kiddo's weaknesses as well as strengths in homeschooling don't you agree?