Thankful Alphabet: W

W is for Worthwhile Writing.

(Reposted and slightly edited from 2007)

I think almost every Ambleside Online user customizes the curriculum to some extent--well, at least we do. Besides adding in some Canadian content, there are books that I add in because they fit so well or they're just longtime favourites. A lot of those are out-of-print books that aren't yet in the public domain--just old enough to be hard to find, not old enough to read online, but still worth looking for.

This list doesn't include the picture books we've been collecting like the Little Tim books, the Church Mice books, or Shirley Hughes' Alfie series--I'm trying to stick mostly to school-type books or literature for the AO years.

The order is...random.

1. Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild. (Check out that link--there are photos of places from the story.) For girls around Year 3 age...and how many books (besides Roller Skates) include not only Shakespeare references but children who are more or less homeschooled? (Roller Skates--which includes Shakespeare, not homeschooling--is a book in which many parents will need to proceed with caution--there are very scary and very sad parts, enough to unsettle some children unless you do some judicious skipping.)

2. Margery Sharp's Miss Bianca/Rescuers mouse adventure books. Some are better than others, but the first two at least are must-reads...but not too young, maybe Year 3 or 4. Adventure, courage, and poetry.

3. More mice and furry/feathered heroes: William Steig's Abel's Island and The Real Thief. For around the same age, because Steig never stints on vocabulary.

"Without waiting to catch breath after his heroic skirmish, he began uttering, over these detested feathers, the most horrible imprecations imaginable. Heaven forfend that the owl should have suffered a fraction of what Abel wished it. Abel wished that its feathers would turn to lead so it could fall on its head from the world's tallest tree, that its beak would rot and become useless even for eating mush, that it should be blind as a bat and fly into a dragon's flaming mouth, that it should sink in quicksand mixed with broken bottles, very slowly, to prolong its suffering, and much more of the same sort."

4. A Toad for Tuesday, by Russell E. Erickson. I guess the owl in #3 reminded me of this one--for Year 1 or 2, and most children at that level could probably read it for themselves. No offense, but people who avoid "talking animal stories" don't know what they're missing with this one. Warton the Toad is kidnapped by a Really Mean Owl who plans to eat him--next week--for a birthday snack. But he attempts to remain calm.

"The toad dug into his pack and pulled out two beeswax candles. As soon as they were lit and began casting their warm glow about the room, he felt much better. He began to straighten his corner. And, being of a cheerful nature, he began to hum a little tune.

"The owl couldn't believe his ears.

"'Warty, you did hear me say that I was going to eat you next Tuesday, didn't you?'

"'Yes, ' said the toad.

"The owl shook his head."

5. Armed with Courage. (I had to include a serious book.) I've written about this before: it's a book of short biographies of courageous people: Florence Nightingale, Father Damien, George Washington Carver, Jane Addams, Wilfred Grenfell, Mahatma Gandhi, and Albert Schweitzer. Something like Hero Tales, not specifically Christian, but inspirational and well written. We've just finished reading this (in our Year 3 1/2).

"Nothing on earth was wasted. That was the belief of this man who seemed to have magic in his fingers. Every day he had a whole handful of new ideas, too. He searched the woods and fields and brought home plants, leaves, and roots. Then he took them to his laboratory and made them into useful products, or medicines, or food. He told his students that they must learn to "see." They must always see something good in nature. They must always look for something that would benefit mankind.

"Not even a few handfuls of dirt were too humble to interest Dr. Carver. Yet he wanted almost nothing for himself...."

Back to the Library Sale

We did go back to the library sale, and brought home another boxful. The Apprentice also filled up a bag with CDs, audio books and books of her own (including some Biochemistry software).

Still it was kind of sad leaving all the rest of those boxes behind to be euthanized recycled.

Books we didn't have:

Give the Dog a Bone, by Steven Kellogg

April's Kittens, by Clare Turlay Newberry (I got this to replace another copy which I was scolded for selling)

What Do You Do, Dear? by Sesyle Joslin, pictures by Maurice Sendak

Exploring Nature Around the Year: Fall, by David Webster (we have the Winter book in this series)

Hurry Home, Candy, by Meindert DeJong (to replace that copy that we couldn't use for school because it was missing a section)

Puppy Summer, by Meindert DeJong

Circus Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild (we do have The Circus is Coming, which is the same book, but there are a number of changes between the two, and it's uncertain whether Streatfeild herself revised it or whether someone else had a hand in it.)

The Fearless Treasure, by Noel Streatfeild

Missee Lee, by Arthur Ransome

Kaleidoscope, by Eleanor Farjeon, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone

Minnow on the Say, by A. Philippa Pearce

David Balfour, by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (really nice hardcover)

Saints: Adventures in Courage, by Mary O'Neill (rough shape, but interesting)

God's Troubadour: The Story of St. Francis of Assisi, by Sophie Jewett

Miss Bianca and the Bridesmaid, by Margery Sharp

My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett

Companion to Narnia, by Paul E. Ford

The Swans of Ballycastle, by Walter Hackett

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, by Rumer Godden

The Fairy Ring, edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Archibad Smith, revised by Ethna Sheehan

Pegeen, by Hilda van Stockum

The Carved Lions, by Mrs. Molesworth

The House of Arden, by E. Nesbit

The Wonderful Garden, by E. Nesbit

The Second Mrs. Giaconda, by E.L. Konigsburg

Emily's Runaway Imagination, by Beverly Cleary

Otto of the Silver Hand, by Howard Pyle

Underground to Canada, by Barbara Smucker

Chemistry For Every Kid: 101 Easy Experiments That Really Work



Books we already have but these are nicer copies or particular editions:

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, hardcover illustrated by Graham Percy (I like Shepard's illustrations, but these are nice too)

Rufus M., by Eleanor Estes

Little Plum, by Rumer Godden, hardcover to replace our paperback

Pilgrim's Progress (Mary Godolphin's version), illustrated by Robert Lawson


Books we already have but I got them anyway to swap or sell:

The Young Brahms, by Sybil Deucher

The Happy Orpheline, by Natalie Savage Carlson

Library sale!

I can't believe it's been a year since the last big library sale here. Seems just last week I was grousing about Crayons' predilection for pink books.

This year's sale worried me a bit--there were just too many books in the children's section. Now, granted, I don't always get there during the first few hours, so maybe it's always like that--but it seemed to me that they were getting rid of a few too many good books this year. Nice for us, but not a good sign of the times.

I bought one boxful, and wished I had time to go through more of the boxes--maybe I'll get back sometime later in the weekend.

This is what we found:

Books we didn't have:

Open the Door: Stories Collected and Arranged by Margery Fisher (with a nice jacket by Edward Ardizzone)
Stories for Nine-Year-Olds and other younger readers, edited by Sara and Stephen Corrin
Favorite Fairy Tales Told in India, retold by Virginia Haviland
Sir Gibbie, by George MacDonald
The Golden Key, by George MacDonald, pictures by Maurice Sendak
The Ordinary Princess, by M.M. Kaye
The Children of Odin, by Padraic Colum
Theras and His Town, by Caroline Dale Snedeker
With Wolfe in Canada, by G.A. Henty
The Siege and Fall of Troy, retold for young people by Robert Graves
The Light Beyond the Forest: The Quest for the Holy Grail, by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Big Six, by Arthur Ransome
Fu-Dog, by Rumer Godden
The Wandering Wombles, by Elisabeth Beresford
Tingleberries, Tuckertubs and Telephones, by Margaret Mahy (a book The Apprentice used to like)
The Five Sisters, by Margaret Mahy (this one has some wizard stuff in it)
Warton and the Contest, by Russell E. Erickson (one of the Warton and Morton Toad series)
Betsy's Busy Summer, by Carolyn Haywood
The Middle Moffat, by Eleanor Estes
The Most Wonderful Doll in the World, by Phyllis McGinley
River Winding: Poems by Charlotte Zolotow
Looking at Architecture, by Roberta M. Paine
The Young Author's Do-it-Yourself Book
The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense: Lightly Comic, Highly Humorous, and Largely Nonsensical Verse, selected and edited by Louis Untermeyer, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen
Birds, Beasts and the Third Thing: Poems by D.H. Lawrence, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen
Clever Cooks: A Concoction of Stories, Charms, Recipes & Riddles, Compiled by Ellin Greene
The Pooh Song Book
The Pooh Cook Book

Books we have but these are different editions or special:

The Worker in Sandalwood, by Marjorie Pickthall
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow & Rip Van Winkle, by Washington Irving, illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher
The Rainbow Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, illustrations by Michael Hague (not in very good shape, but I brought it home anyway)

Books we have but I picked them up to swap or sell:

The Gammage Cup, by Carol Kendall
The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
Seabird, by Holling Clancy Holling
The Light Princess, by George MacDonald, pictures by Maurice Sendak

Videos and misc. stuff: an audio book of Ramona the Pest, and some videos including Runaway Ralph, the puppet opera version of Hansel and Gretel, and The Love Bug.

It's not only about reading to them

(Edward Ardizzone's drawing of young Eleanor Farjeon reading, in The Little Bookroom)

Ragamuffin studies has a post about Becoming a Reader: The Politics and the Reality. Read it, read the comments. It's very eye-opening. Then go read something else; read something to yourself, read something to your kids that's ranked above a grade 4 reading level. Just to be subversive.

Or go do something completely different with them--because you are the parent. See? I get it.

Of mermaids and cream strudel

Ponytails and Crayons have had an interesting term so far with our composer and artist studies: Felix Mendelssohn for composer, and John Constable for artist. I had done both of them several years ago with The Apprentice (Constable was our very first-ever picture study artist), but you never do anything just the same way twice--do you? It's been somewhat patched together, but I think it's given the girls a few things that they'll remember about each of them.

Here are some of the notes and links to the pieces we've listened to and the paintings we've looked at.

Mendelssohn

We started out reading the Mendelssohn chapter in Boyhoods of Great Composers Book One, by Catherine Gough (and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone). The chapter ends at the point where he wrote the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, so I played them some of that, and also the Scherzo which I know they love (sounds like elves dancing through the woods). We have this CD of the music.

The next time around, we looked up pictures of Fingal's Cave online and I put together a short information sheet about the cave and about Mendelssohn's visit there (and about how it became a tourist attraction because of his music--even Queen Victoria made a trip there). As we listened to the music (officially called Overture: 'The Hebrides,' Op. 26 on our CD), Ponytails drew her version of the mouth of Fingal's Cave, with people in a boat rowing past it. I loved that!

I noticed that the same set of CDs also had Mendelssohn's The Fair Melusina on it, so we read the story from The Book of Legends by Horace E. Scudder, online at The Baldwin Project. The girls coloured pictures of mermaids while they listened to Scudder's version of the story, which is slightly different from the one given in the CD's liner notes. I have to admit that the music came pretty second fiddle to the story that time. Sometimes if you really want to listen to something, you should just listen--no background, no stories. For Fingal's Cave, it worked great--we had just enough notes to help everyone understand that the first part of the piece is about echoes in the cave, and the second is about going out on a choppy sea; it was easy to hear that in the music. Listening to Melusina was a lot harder--not that it was very long, but trying to connect the story with the music was more difficult.

The last pieces we did (so far) were fun: two pieces written for clarinet, piano and basset-horn (which isn't a horn at all, it's a kind of clarinet). I found them on The Art of the Clarinet, featuring Peter Schmidl, Madoka Inui, and Pierre Pichler. The liner notes for this really brought the music to life! I wish I could copy them out here; briefly, Mendelssohn had a clarinet-playing friend, Heinrich Baermann, who had a basset-horn-playing son Carl; and the Baermanns were also famous cooks. According to the story, Mendelssohn wrote the pieces as a kind of thanks for their excellent meals. Of the first "Concert Piece" he wrote: "A grand duet for steamed dumpling or cream strudel, clarinet and basset-horn, composed and humbly dedicated to Baermann senior and Baermann junior." On the second part of the second piece, he said that "I wanted to give you a memory of the last dinner, when I had to write it, the clarinet depicts my feelings of longing, while the basset-horn adds the rumbling of my stomach."

And on that note, I think the picture-study details will have to wait for another post.

Mom goes off to play, or the Thrift of it All

Mama Squirrel's idea of a fun afternoon out is taking the bus downtown to sort through the bookshelves at her favourite thrift shop. Even if it's bitter cold outside...or maybe because it's been bitter cold and it's been too hard to get out much this week, even for furry squirrels. So an afternoon of shopping was welcome...and worth it, especially because she hasn't been able to get down to this shop since before Christmas.

Mama Squirrel arrived at the thrift shop with good intentions, fueled by pretty blogs filled with vintage gingham, ladies' hats, and other imaginative decor. She dutifully trekked around the housewares but saw nothing much besides old zippers and sad-looking picture frames. The half-price deal was all on men's suits, which we don't need. So she quickly found herself in her usual back corner, happily flipping through an unusually large selection of childrens' books.

For $4.50, she brought home an armload of 18 books.  Even with bus fare, that's a pretty good deal; and it's entertainment too.

Mama Squirrel has a couple of sort-of collections going, and the Piece de Resistance of this trip was an addition to the Eleanor Farjeon/Edward Ardizzone collection: The Old Nurse's Stocking Basket (for a quarter!).  That in itself was enough to cheer up a winter day.

The other collection is strictly for fun and nostalgia: a bunch of vintage Scholastic paperbacks from the '60's and '70's. They were the staples of school libraries and classroom bookshelves, and if you follow the lost book requests at Stump the Bookseller, a lot of them are very well remembered (or not-so-well remembered). Those were the days when Scholastic Book Services published a lot of their very own semi-classic titles: everything from the Mushroom Planet books to Norman Bridwell's A Tiny Family (that's one we don't have, though) and John Peterson's The Secret Hideout, to biographies of Harriet Tubman and Marco Polo, and The Ghost of Dibble Hollow (a childhood memory of Mr. Fixit). And The Secret Language (do you remember ickenspick and leebossa?).

Anyway, we added a few to that collection today too: Casey, the Utterly Impossible Horse (do you remember that one?); The Three Dollar Mule, by Clyde Robert Bulla; and two of the above-mentioned Secret Hideout books. Oh, and a biography of Johnny Appleseed. They're fun and they can be good, non-intimidating reading practice for the eight-to-ten-year-old set.

Especially when you get them for a quarter.

And Mama Squirrel filled out the bag with a fat hardcover of the Peterkin Papers (I was pretty sure our paperback was missing some of the stories), King of the Wind, three 1950's science-made-fun books, a couple of colouring and puzzle books, Child of China, and Paddington Marches On.

Oops--no doilies today. I really did try. But I guess my lower nature just took over.

The mind of Crayons

[2008 update: Looks like Diana is being republished! Details here.] Crayons asked me tonight if I'd read her "Anna and her hippo horse." I was drawing a complete blank until I remembered...a few nights ago we had read Edward Ardizzone's Diana and her Rhinoceros. Yes, that was it! Unfortunately I cannot find even one image online of the cover or artwork of this slightly surreal but much-loved story. Other Ardizzone images are around, but Diana is unavailable. (The last edition seems to have been in 1993.) If you can find a copy, though, it's an instant winner with little girl squirrels just turned four, especially those who (like Diana) have a shed in their backyards that just might do to house a rhino. And those who (like the rhino) like hot buttered toast.

500 Copies of Pilgrim's Progress

My kids were teasing me yesterday after we came home from a book sale with yet another copy of Pilgrim's Progress. I think that makes about 5 different editions we have now, including my favourite with Edward Ardizzone illustrations. The one I found yesterday was published by Sears, probably in the 1920s, and is in amazingly solid condition except for a little chipping at the bottom of the spine.

But the kids have nothing to complain about; here's an essay by somebody who has 500 copies, or did nine years ago anyway. [Updated link]

We also found four volumes of Charlotte Mason (we dug around to see if the other two were in a box but didn't see them); Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales; a book of James Whitcomb Riley's poems (Ponytails wanted that one); a James Herriot picture book; Claire Turlay Newberry's book Smudge; and a nicely-abridged copy of Don Quixote for the Apprentice's school next year. All in all it was a successful trip.