Tag Archives: books

Books?

I’ve got great news!

No, really, it is great – my kind of great.

Ivy is reading books!Ivy reading

While Ivy has been reading all sorts for the last months, it wasn’t until very recently that she realized that if it was the right kind of book she could read the whole thing,  by herself, the first time, with only a little help on the extra tricky words.

It’s awesome! Ivy’s reading confidence has grown exponentially in the last two weeks as she picks up book after book and reads them out loud to us.

All of course providing that the reading happens in a proper setting. A proper setting according to Ivy is one where nothing is too hot, or cold, or soft, or hard, or there are too many sisters, or dogs, or box elder bugs, or she is too tired, or too awake, or too bored, or too interested in something else… If any of that is the case, all bets are off and she will forget how to read the word “the” and everything else she has learned. At that point it’s better to smile and put away the books until another day before you end up contemplating selling her to the gypsies.

But that’s not my problem.

My problem is that my girl is too smart.

(It’s a pretty good problem, I admit.)

Ivy reads a book once.

All further “readings” are just memorized recitations using the pictures and occasionally, checking out a word for a beginning sound.

While this is impressive it’s causing us to go through a lot of early reader books.  A LOT of early reader books.

We need more books.

This is where you come in.

For almost three years now I’ve been letting you know what my book recommendations are, now it’s your turn. I need help!

For all the talk I’ve heard about having a hard time finding books for boys there are a seriously lack of girly early reader books at our library. As you may or may not know, Ivy is girly. We need books with cute things, girls, princesses, silly stuff and fuzzy animals!

Right now Ivy has been reading the early reader Dr. Seuss books, Puppy Mudge, Biscuit, and a smattering of random things involving bugs and trains that she doesn’t enjoy near so much. So, my wonderful readers can you help?

What’s your best early reader recommendation? Ivy and Danny the Dinosaur

-Also, I’d like to note before anyone see’s fit to unnecessarily reprimand me that she rereads the books, practicing and gaining confidence many times before they head back to the library. I’m not a book reading, slave master that won’t let her succeed we just need some new material to mix in!

Edible Books

I’m joining a new online book club this month called Edible Books. They choose food related books and discuss them on twitter throughout the month. Novembers book is White Truffles in Winter by N.M. Kelby it looks like it will be fun.
If you’re interested you can find all the details at http://ediblebookclub.com

(In other exciting news the internet people claim they will have our internet fixed by tomorrow and our new computer is scheduled to arrive before the weekend! I’m crossing my fingers it all works out!)

Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy

Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy

These are a few of the things that made me happy this Wednesday.

Clara got an ant farm for her birthday. John thinks I’m obsessed with it. I think looking at the ants makes me happy!
My husband. Not only does he make me happy but I intended that he be featured in the MINE photo challenge. Sadly I didn’t manage to get a picture of him last week.
Decorating cakes
Oh, Diet Coke, how you make me happy. When combined with chocolate and a good book – bliss. On second thought ignore that book, that book is not making me happy!
Kids and Dogs playing outside together
Flowers from John
Beautiful fall days!

Notable absences are:

Trip – Who is with my brother in Montana happily hunting without me.

Ivy  – Sadly I missed the photo of her and Clara collecting eggs together. Kids playing together while doing chores makes me happy, happy, happy!

And the Ducks  -I challenge you to watch a line of duck walk around and not be just a little bit happier. I also challenge you to get within photographing distance of my ducks without panicking them out of there cute little ducky line.

Hope you also had a happy day!

Update:

In terrible mothering moments of the week I forgot to include Jane in my post. Of course she is a part of my daily happiness – she smiles lots, she giggles, she’s easy going, content and oh so easily overlooked in the chaos of the rest of the house.

On a positive note I haven’t forgotten her anywhere – yet – but I do take roll call when we get in the truck!

Winnie-the-Pooh

I learned something recently.

Disney messed it up.

Shocking isn’t it?

Before you start stoning me for slander let me be clear that I do like Disney’s Winnie-the-Pooh.  It is just that Eeyore is always so obnoxiously slow talking and all “woe is me” that I dodn’t even care what he is saying and Tigger… well Tigger is just a little odd.  Everyone else in the Hundred Acre wood is fairly grounded and then you have Tigger running around like an extra dumb, over excitable, dog chasing a tennis ball. I’ve never understood it.  Even when reading the original stories Disney s versions had taken up residence in my head and I never really shook them.

Then one day before a long car trip with the girls, we got The Hundred Acre wood on CD . And before I could tear my hair out because piglet was snorting between words Tigger showed up, and it all became clear.

Tigger is not an overactive, excited, lovable, dog.

Tigger is the disreputable drunk of the family come home. He even shows up in the middle of the night, attacks a table cloth and demands food. How could I never have noticed before?

Then for Ivy’s birthday she got both Winnie-The-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner on CD, thankfully it was a different snort-less production that we had never heard before.

We did a lot of driving last week and listened to all four and a half hours of it and I learned something else.

I love Eeyore.

I thought I hated him, but that was back when I thought he was slow and gloomy. Change that slow and gloomy donkey into a pompous, know it all and Eeyore becomes an ass. Personally I thought the change was all for the better.

While I can understand Disney’s reluctance to have an ass and a friendly drunk roaming though the stories when you put them back it sure increases the amount of pleasure an adult gets out of listening.  Ivy doesn’t get the humor that comes with Eeyore, but I do!

Here is a link for the new CD’s with the wonderful reading of Eeyore.  Unfortunately I can’t figure out/find the reading with the great Tigger, but if I do I’ll be sure to post an update.

How about you, do you have a favorite kid and adult friendly music/audio book to share?

My personal favorite lines from The Hundred Acre Wood:

“We’ll see,” said Kanga.

“You’re always seeing, and nothing ever happens,” said Roo sadly.

Don’t Forget to Pack Your Straw!

This past weekend we went up to the Superior area for a long weekend full of: train rides, birthdays, fathers day, swimming, fishing, boating and friends.

We’d love to visit the area more often except for the tiny problem of the 6 hour drive. And that is only the driving.  Peeing, eating, diaper changes, leg stretching, and waiting out a large thunderstorm with lots of tornadoes that just happens to be hanging out over the road you need to follow to get home, are all extra.  Once we added those in our drive home was about nine hours!

Now before someone says, how its not so bad , “just jump in the car pop a movie in and you’ll be set,” lets just set something straight.

We do not have a TV in our home.

We do not have a DVD player or anything like it in our car.

It is likely to stay that way indefinitely.

I like to think this is a good thing.  I might be wrong, it may be unreasonable, but I’ve been known to cling stubbornly to unreasonable ideas before. I have kept up my own personal ban of the Harry Potter movies for many years now, and lived most of my life in a TV-less environment.  I think I can swing keeping movies out of my vehicles.

For now both of our girls are very good in the car, and really the only problem is I keep forgetting to pack my earplugs…

Have I ever mentioned my oldest daughter’s ability to talk?

Have I mentioned that she LOVES the captive audience a car creates?

So, knowing that we had a big car ride, and that if a certain someone uttered the phrases “What?” or “What kind of…” or “Hold it on it’s BACK Mom!”  too many times I’d lose the last of the sanity I had remaining after a frantic day of packing, I tried to be well prepared.

We  had a bag of toys:

We had a pile of books:

And then we had the most sought after item, the most played with item, the item that literally kept Ivy busy for two hours, the item that made all the rest of the things I brought along pale in comparison….

the straw.

Who needs a princess movie when you can play the trumpet with a McDonald’s straw?

The Books Behind the Willows

Starting this blog kicked off a  series of events and feelings that went like this:

-“I have a blog, I’m so embarrassed.”

-“I have a blog, but I think it’s kind of fun.”

-“I have a blog and people actually read it, cool!”

-“I have a blog and the format is annoying me.”

-“Sarah thanks for helping me get a new cooler blog!”

-“I love my new cooler blog!”

-“I have a blog and you should read it!”

-“I’m having so much fun I think I should start another!”

And so I started The Books Behind the Willows. I have never actually come out and mentioned it because it is a site of book reviews. Since I have only reviewed books that I have read since starting it it seemed foolish to say “OO OOO look at my new blog… with one lame book review on it”. But now I have thirteen reviews that I think are not so lame, so now I’m saying “OOO OOO look at my new(ish) blog!”

It just so happened that today’s post morphed into a bit of an explanation of why I write what I write in the reviews which made me think this might be a  good opportunity to formally introduce it. So, say hello to The Books Behind the Willows.  You can reach it by either clicking on my nicely highlighted links here or on the text at the top of the page. There you will find books I have read in the last two months and a few children’s books as well. I’m always looking for reading suggestions for myself and the girls and so would love comments with any suggestions or with your thoughts on any of the books!

Ivy and I, July '07

Stay tuned, the last event in my series of thoughts was like this…

“If two is good three is better right?”

Pick a Good One, O Best Beloved

I just got off the phone with my Dad and in the course of the discussion we were talking about how much Ivy liked hearing my dad read her The Elephants Child by Rudyard Kipling last weekend.  This was the original scalesome flailsome tail version, O Best Beloved,  with one measly black and white illustration for the whole story, and Ivy loved it.  She is after all a child full of  ‘satiable curiosity! It’s no surprise that my Dad and I agreed that challenging books are great for kids,  after all I grew up listing to my Dad read the same stories to me!

A few observations, and beliefs of mine:

People talk down to kids.

Kids of all ages understand far more than they are ever given credit for.

We create and read books to kids that are far below their comprehension level.

These books are boring, for everyone adult and child.

If you don’t challenge a vocabulary it will not grow.

You don’t need to understand every word in a book to understand the book.

My Dad seems to be holding a grudge against Dick and Jane.

Older books have great stories and vocabulary, think Beatrix Potter, Kipling, A.A. Milne.

If a picture book has one paragraph of words or less per page throw it back.

Unless the illustrations are gorgeous then take it home anyway.

And so every time we go to the library I make sure at least one book is a challenging one. Sometimes those are Ivy’s favorites and sometimes they are not but  every time she gets to learn a little more.

And sometimes all this learning it causes a bit of a problem . Today a speech therapist told me Ivy’s language skills were advanced beyond her motor skills which was causing her to have fluency problems (in plain speak a nice lady played with Ivy, she stutters but she’ll grow out of it), but that’s a problem a parent can be proud of!

We Like Books!

I like books! Note the two I’m currently reading to your left.

John likes books! He reads pieces of about five at a time and still manages to remember more of what happened in all of them than I’ll ever be able to do even reading one at a time!

Clara likes books! Believe it or not she wasn’t even trying to get this one into her mouth she was just looking at it!
And Ivy likes books! Especially on a day like today when she was a bit under the weather. We went to the library and got Blueberries for Sal and then proceeded to read it four times before John came home and took over the reading!Wonderful! Great! A family that reads!

But let’s not forget to factor in the darker side of book lovers. You know the part that has you reading when you should be making dinner/cleaning/pulling thistles/playing with kids. The part that says “I have to use the bathroom.” (ie the only place in the house relatively free of other people because you NEED to finish that last chapter) Don’t tell me John and I are the only ones guilty of that!? And of course the infamous, staying up far too late reading. I’ve done it forever. I have not gotten any smarter as the years go by. And even though at one in the morning I tell myself laying in bed motionless is kind of like sleeping it will sort of count, that hasn’t yet turned out to be true come morning.

And so now almost two hours after I have put my three year old to bed I struggle. Should I be praising her love of books or cursing it, because she is still up, reading by the light of the hall, very quietly, in hopes no one will find out. And yes Mom and Dad I can hear you laughing from here!