You know you're a homeschooler when...they HAVE to hear the Real Thing

Someone on another board asked what we're currently reading aloud with our children.

Crayons and I are reading The Water Babies.

We read a very short version of it in My Bookhouse, and I told her that that version left most of the real story out of it (Mrs. Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By hardly comes into it at all), so she wanted me to read her the real thing. I do skip a few pages here and there whenever Kingsley goes on and on about something (like the periods of architecture that made up The Place--we just agreed that it was a Very Big House). I skip his satirical bits as well-- references to people like Huxley--and four pages of philosophical meanderings on why there might or might not be water babies at all.

I don't know how far we'll get with it--Crayons is a bit young for some of it, but it's what she asked for--and I've never had ANY of mine ASK to be read The Water Babies. The Apprentice thought it was cruel and unusual punishment.