Thursday, May 31, 2012

Reading and Listening To...


NON-FICTION

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, narrated by Sean Runnette
We listened to the unabridged audio book in April and I'm so glad I chose audio over print.

Prime Curios!: The Dictionary of Prime Number Trivia by Chris Caldwell could soon eclipse kiddo's previous favorite math trivia tome, Number Freak. He is also enjoying Here's Looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos. He doesn't read these in any sequence. He savors them like you would a small and exquisite piece of expensive Belgian chocolate. He runs to google a little fact every few minutes or pulls out his math notebooks to create patterns from what he reads, forgets about them for a couple of weeks and then pores over them all over again, sometimes spreading all of them out in front of him at the same time.

FICTION

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Lion's Paw by Robb White were read alouds that we both loved.

I managed a good bit of a British accent reading aloud The Secret Garden. Who says watching Downton Abbey doesn't help? The Lion's Paw is an adventure story about three children, aged 15, 12 and 9, who run, err, I mean sail away on a sloop to search for a sea shell, the lion's paw. We started every morning by reading it beside our new backyard pool and learned a bit about sailing and catching alligators! ;) 

Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat is a hoot of a tale about a boy with two pet owls, with echoes of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (only, Billy's family is not as eccentric).

Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes were free reads. He enjoyed reading about the Don much more than I thought he would and he keeps regaling me (I haven't caught up with reading DQ yet) with what the Don or Sancho did. Yes, DQ is rather PG-13 in case you are wondering but the kiddo was just so ready for the story that I closed my eyes to the various libidinous references and agreed to let kiddo have a go at reading it.

Me: I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I have read it once before in my teens but the references did not make a full impact at the time. Having read it a second time, I realize I just can't do this book justice in a few lines. It deserves an entire post of its own.

I absolutely loved it.

I am going to persuade kiddo to name our future pets (if we have any) Atticus and Boo. That is, if he doesn't choose Hobbes and Snoopy first.


CURRENTLY READING and LISTENING to...



Reading aloud The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne and a thrift store find, If Only They Could Talk by James Herriot. Listening in the car: Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery, narrated by Kate Burton.

5 comments:

  1. Great books! I loved The Secret Garden, Anne of Gables, and To Kill a Mockingbird...so much that I swore I would name my first child "Scout". :)

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  2. I just got Owl in the Family from Amazon. All your book choices are great.
    Blessings,
    Diane

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  3. Thanks Diane! It's all thanks to friends who have great taste and the good heart to recommend books to me whenever they see me. :)

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  4. I can't wait to check out The Disappearing Spoon!

    Every year I listen to the audio version of To Kill a Mockingbird, performed by Sissy Spacek. It is my favorite book. I can't wait for my DS11 to read it, but I keep putting it off, for the very reason you hint at...that book, although considered to be at a middle school reading level, is so full of depth that I worry it will be missed if the reader isn't mature enough.

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