Archive for September, 2007

September 17, 2007 @ 7:43 pm | Filed under: Books

This arrangement would drive me crazy on a practical level, but it sure is pretty.

We have a loose system for shelving our books…probably wouldn’t make much sense to anyone else, but works for me. I am usually able to lay hands on the book I want—not always, because if one of the kids was reading it recently, it’s probably under a bed.

Laurie loaned me her CueCat and Jane & I have been slooowly working our way through the bookcases. (Where "slowly" means "did it obsessively for the first week and then forgot about it for the next two months, but remembered again and keep meaning to finish before Laurie needs it back.") We’ve entered around 300 books at LibraryThing so far. And then I started getting invites to GoodReads, so I imported the library to there. Anyone have thoughts about the one vs. the other?

There are two bookcases in our living room and two in our dining area, which is the short leg of the L-shape that makes our main living area. The shelves in the living room hold—just as they did when I wrote about "The Living-Room Shelf" so long ago for Cay Gibson’s book, Literature Alive!—some of our most beloved books, the ones we turn to over and over again. Fred Chappell is there, and E. Nesbit, and Hilda Van Stockum, and George MacDonald, and lots of Penguin Classics. Most of our poetry books. The big Macauley books—The Way Things Work, Ship, Cathedral, City.

(Speaking of Macauley! I’m going to be hosting his Robert’s Snow snowflake here during the Blogging for a Cure event. Go read all about it at the amazing Seven Impossible Things. I’m also hosting illustrator Timothy Bush, whose hilarious and perfect James in the House of Aunt Prudence is one of our family’s favorite picture books, and thus rates a spot on the living-room shelf.)

Scott has a zillion composer biographies, and most of those are in the living room, too. Also my beloved Charlotte Mason series. The rest of my education books are on the bookcase behind the kitchen table. Above that shelf is non-U.S. historical fiction for children, and below it are all the nature study books, field guides, Linnea, One Small Square, and so on. Then come a couple of shelves of miscellaneous educationally-useful things. The other dining-area bookcase holds all my religion books. (C.S. Lewis and Chesterton take up a whole shelf of their own.) There are puzzles and games on the top shelves, and I keep my pretty Small Meadow Press binders there too, because I like to look at them.

I keep thinking it would make an interesting (to me, at least) series of posts to talk about what’s on each shelf in the house, one at a time, and who has read it, and what we think about it, and why it made the cut when we were purging for the move. There’s no dead weight in our book collection now, that’s for sure.

If I scanned barcodes as I blogged, I could maybe get that CueCat back to Laurie sometime before our kids grow up.

(Seriously, Laurie. If you need it back anytime soon, just holler.)

September 17, 2007 @ 12:52 pm | Filed under: Funny

Rilla is playing with the toy phone. Wonderboy wants it.

WB: I have pone?

Rilla: Nuh.

WB: Gib pone!

Rilla: Nuh. NUH!!

WB (offers remote control in exchange): You hab?

Rilla: Nuh.

A brief silence. Wonderboy is deflated. Then, for no visible reason, Rilla holds out the phone to her brother.

Mom, coaching Wonderboy: That was so nice! She gave you the phone. What do you say?

Wonderboy: Dat MY pone.

September 16, 2007 @ 8:43 pm | Filed under: Blog

Charlotte of Charlotte’s Library is now accepting submissions for the September Carnival of Children’s Literature. Send your best post about children’s books to this address by Sept. 21st, and be ready to Take a Ride on the Reading Railroad on the 26th!

Whoo-whoo!

September 16, 2007 @ 9:30 am | Filed under: Uncategorized

The Martha Years books are a series of four novels written by Melissa Wiley about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s great-grandmother, Martha Morse Tucker.

Martha was born in Scotland; her father was a small landowner, a laird. She emigrated to America and was married to a Scotsman named Lewis Tucker in Boston on January 1, 1799. Among their children was a girl named Charlotte, who would grow up to marry Henry Quiner and give birth to Laura Ingalls WIlder’s mother, Caroline.

Charlotte’s story is told in the Charlotte Years books.

Books about Martha Morse:

Little House in the Highlands
The Far Side of the Loch
Down to the Bonny Glen
Beyond the Heather Hills

Resources and activities for exploring Scotland with Martha

Books about Charlotte Tucker:

Little House by Boston Bay

On Tide Mill Lane

The Road from Roxbury

Across the Puddingstone Dam

Charlotte Years resource and activity page

         

 
     

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is it true the Martha and Charlotte books have been abridged by the publisher? Why?

Yes. Here is a Bonny Glen post explaining the publisher’s decision, as well as my decision not to continue writing books in the series. There are more details in the follow-up post, here.

How can I tell the difference between the original editions and the abridged ones?

The originals have painted covers, as shown above. The abridged versions have photographic covers.

Oh no! Is The Road from Roxbury (unabridged) already out of print? I can’t find it at Amazon.

Try smaller booksellers such as those affiliated with the various Little House museum sites around the country. Whenever I hear about a source, I post a link in the Little House category at Bonny Glen.

Is it true they are getting rid of the Garth Williams illustrations in Laura’s books?

Only in the new paperback editions with the photographic covers. The Garth Williams art will still appear in the hardcover editions of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, as well as the colorized paperback editions.

Are Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books being abridged?

No, only the Martha, Charlotte, Caroline, and Rose books are being abridged.

How did you get started writing the Martha and Charlotte books?

I tell that story here.

Will there be any more books about Martha and Charlotte?

I don’t know. The publisher may decide to find another writer to continue the stories. I have decided not to continue working on the series in light of the publisher’s decision to abridge. I explain in more depth in this post, excerpted here:

One important point is that HarperCollins doesn’t think of the
abridgements as dumbed-down. I do, and that I am strongly opposed to
the dumbing-down of children’s literature must be obvious from my
decision to walk away from a series of books that has been my heart’s
work for the past decade. Although I came to the decision many months
ago, the shock of it still takes my breath away sometimes. I love
Martha and Charlotte, really love them. Like daughters. I
have written certain scenes between Martha and Lew in my mind a hundred
times. I’m sorry that I will not be sharing them with you, more sorry
than I can express.

My decision to quit also had serious ramifications for my family.
Had I continued with the series, we would still be living in Virginia;
Scott would still be a work-at-home freelancer. So quitting was not a
decision I made lightly; it had teeth.

And yet, if you read this blog then you know my stance on giving
children the highest caliber of literature—not a slimmed-down version
of what had been a carefully crafted novel. And so, when it became
clear that my publishers were committed to their decision to abridge, I
made what I believe to be the right decision—the only decision I could
have made. Doing the right thing, I tell my children, is almost never
the easy thing.

Certainly, this was a very hard thing to do.

But as I said, while I see the abridgement as dumbing-down, I must
say in all fairness that I don’t believe my publishers see it that way
at all. They see this as an opportunity to bring the books to a younger
audience, a way to keep the series in print. The decision was presented
to me with excitement and enthusiasm; I really think they were
surprised that I was dismayed by it.

I bear them no ill will; indeed, I shall be sorry not to be working
with my wonderful HarperCollins editor anymore. She is a gem. I simply
disagree, quite gravely, with this publishing decision.

Will you be writing more books (not about Martha or Charlotte)?

Oh yes! In fact, there is a new novel in the works…Watch this site for more details!

For more information about my source material and inspiration for the Martha and Charlotte books, explore the Little House archive here at Here in the Bonny Glen.

Martha illustration by Renee Graef. Charlotte illustration by Dan Andreasen.

September 15, 2007 @ 9:10 am | Filed under: Blog

Over there on the right, see the new widget?

I posted about nearcircle over at Lilting House, but I’ll add a psst here to my kidlitosphere friends…go check it out and join my circle!

September 15, 2007 @ 12:55 am | Filed under: Photos

The two older girls were out of the house for a little while, and Beanie was delighted to have me all to herself (where "all to herself" = "sharing mom with only the two toddlers"). I was filling my dishpan with soapy water and left the tap running too long, so we had a Mt. Everest of suds.

Beanie scooped some into her hand; they had a stiffness, a sort of crunch to them, and she said, "It’s like a Wall of Jericho."

I smashed them flat with my palm. "The wall came tumblin’ down!"

She burst out into her bellylaugh, the deep guffaw that has melted us since she was a baby. No one is readier to laugh than Miss Bean.

She caught another handful of bubbles. "Look, Mommy, it’s like a cloud."

I leaned close, pretending to peer at them. "I think I see…a mermaid, riding on a unicorn…" This was a quote from one of her favorite songs on the Snoopy soundtrack. Charlie Brown is forever on the verge of telling what he sees in the clouds, and the rest of the Peanuts gang keeps interrupting with their own grand, spectacular visions: the sack of Carthage, the fall of Rome.

Beanie rewarded my silly joke with another guffaw. There is nothing in the world more satsifying, let me tell you.

September 14, 2007 @ 7:34 am | Filed under: Little House, Poetry

One of the books I read during my research for the Martha Books was Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland in A.D. 1803. The time period was just about right; Little House in the Highlands is set in 1795, and change came slowly to those remote glens.

Dorothy traveled with her brother, William, and their friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (Ooh! Now there’s an idea for a novel!) In her journal she wrote,

"It was harvest-time, and the fields were quietly (might I be allowed to say pensively?) enlivened by small companies of reapers. It is not uncommon in the more lonely parts of the Highlands to see a single person so employed. The following poem was suggested to Wm. by a beautiful sentence in Thomas Wilkinson’s Tour in Scotland."

And then she copied out William’s poem (written two years later), "The Solitary Reaper."

A note in my Wm. Wordsworth collection tells me that the line from Thomas Wilkinson is this:

"Passed a female who was reaping alone; she sung in Erse, as she bended over her sickle; the sweetest human voice I ever heard: her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious, long after they were heard no more."

I love to know the story behind a poem, a novel, a painting. Here is William’s poem, all the lovelier to me for knowing what sparked it in his mind.

The Solitary Reaper
by William Wordsworth

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt,

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so shrilling ne’er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o’er the sickle bending;—

I listen’d, motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

This week’s Poetry Friday round-up can be found at Hip Writer Mama.

What’s Poetry Friday? Susan Thomsen explains at PoetryFoundation.org.

September 13, 2007 @ 8:46 pm | Filed under: Language Arts

One of the homeschooling questions I am asked most frequently is "What do you use to teach your kids to read?"

I usually explain that I haven’t yet had to do any formal reading instruction with any of my kids. I have three fluent, eager readers now, and every one of them learned pretty much the same way:

1) (And so very important, it should be numbers 1-50.) Lots and lots and lots of read-alouds from the time they are teeny tiny. Poetry, picture books, novels, magazine articles, fairy tales, biographies, all sorts of very good, high-quality, literary writing. We read and read and read and read.

51) When at some point I notice the child is beginning to recognize her name and other simple, common words, I pull out our trusty Bob Books.

Read-alouds and Bob, that’s how we’ve done it three times in a row.

The Bob Books, if you don’t know them, come in sets of twelve: a dozen small paperback booklings (I just made that up; it means more than a booklet but smaller than a regular book), each focusing on a phonetic sound. Each book in the series builds on the sounds mastered in the one before. But "mastered" makes it sound so formal. We haven’t used them in a formal "now you will learn to read" manner at all. We’ve just read the books together, and it’s like the kids can’t help but start decoding the text. The format makes sense.

Jane was reading at a crazy-early age, but you have to remember that she spent her toddler years in a hospital bed. We read all day long, for weeks and months on end. Couldn’t take her to the playground, not with her low platelet and white cell counts. Couldn’t go much of anywhere. But by golly, we could read. Scott would come home from work to find a stack of picture books as high as the sofa we were curled up on: the evidence of what we’d done that day. Lucky for Jane I had connections in the children’s publishing world…I don’t know how we’d have fed our habit otherwise.

Rose took off at around 4 1/2. Same process: a bajillion read-alouds, and then, in a casual, relaxed manner, the Bob Books. She loved Bob and his pals: that wacky Mac who sometimes sat on Sam for reasons impossible to explain in one-syllable words. And later, the cat and the dog, and that pig! What was her name? Jig? Man, we giggled over that pig.

My mom bought Beanie a whole new set of Bob Books when her turn came around, because Rose had scattered the others. They’re such a nice comfy size for tucking into little purses, you know.

Beanie was, I think, about the same age when she got into Bob: four going on five. She was reading quite well by last summer (whew, just in time for the cross-country trip), so that would have been age 5 1/2.

That really is all I’ve done: read-alouds and Bob. The Bob Books have been the bridge for all three of my girls, an easy, friendly bridge with funny, quaint pictures and silly storylines. They didn’t know they were learning phonics. We didn’t do any writing or spelling or workbooks at all. We just read the Bob Books together. First I read them to the child, then she read them to me.

It’s been so exciting, every time! The thinking behind the concept is that a child builds confidence by being able to read a "real book" all by himself. This has absolutely been the case for my three girls. "Daddy, I read a book all by myself!" Beanie said, I recall, sounding like a commercial. I probably sound like a commercial myself, but I’m being sincere. The amount of text on a page, the number of pages in a book—they were the perfect stepping stones for my kids.

So there you go, that’s my answer. We read, read, read, read: read really good books, not Disney fluff. Beautifully written books, books you’d think were over their heads. As long as there was good story in those noble words, the kids have gulped them down.

And then, when the time felt right—which is to say, when it felt fun, not stressful to the child in any way, with no sense of expectation to make them feel anxious or pressured—I introduced them to Bob.

September 13, 2007 @ 7:45 pm | Filed under: Books, Family Adventures, These People Crack Me Up

I’m washing dishes, and I pick up a spoon that looks, at first half-attending glance, like it’s covered with applesauce. I begin to wipe it off in my sudsy water, but it isn’t applesauce after all; it’s gooey and greasy and clings to my fingers, rather like…Vaseline?

"What’s on this spoon?" I ask the three girls at at the breakfast table.

"Vaseline," confirms Rose, all nonchalance.

"And why, may I ask?"

She is matter of fact, as if anyone with sense ought to have known without asking. "I was playing Rowan of Rin,* and I needed to make an antidote to Death Sleep. The Vaseline was supposed to be Silver Deep."

Well, okay then.

(*Technically, I think the Death Sleep bit comes into Rowan and the Keeper of the Crystal. Darn good books, by the way: a fantasy series by Emily Rodda. Big hit with all the 9-and-ups in this house.)

 

(I miss the old covers, the ones with young Rowan on them.)

September 11, 2007 @ 8:58 pm | Filed under: Special Needs Children, Wonderboy

Wonderboy had an appointment with a genetics specialist yesterday. This was an appointment his neurosurgeon had urged me to set up, even though I explained that the genetics department at our former hospital had done extensive testing and ruled out chromosomal reasons for my boy’s many "abnormalities." Their best guess was that Wonderboy’s issues are the result of a developmental glitch early on in utero, some influential cells marching to the beat of their own peculiar drum. Much as everyone would like a name to attach to Wonderboy’s collection of atypical physical characteristics, a name with a nice clear road map to show us the best route to take in nurturing this odd little man, the consensus was that no such name, no predefined syndrome, exists.

Wonderboy, I’ve been told by many a specialist, is a one of a kind.

But this neurosurgeon was insistent, and the geneticist he wanted us to see is, he declared, one of the most esteemed in the world. I set up the appointment, and I’m glad I did.

I loved her, loved her warm and easy manner, the instant camaraderie she struck up with my son. I loved the gleam of understanding in her eyes, and the shrewdness of her questions.

During the course of the appointment, I realized something about genetics specialists, something that was as true of our experience with that department back in Virginia as it was in Dr. J.’s office yesterday. All the other specialists we see—and don’t get me wrong, I am a very big fan of your specialty doctors, your surgeons, neurosurgeons, cardiologists, otolaryngologists, developmental pediatricians and the rest of the lot—though honesty compels me to admit I have yet to meet a neurologist who didn’t treat me like a pest, and my child like an interruption to his research—all those other specialists, I was saying, focus by definition on one little piece of the puzzle.

The genetics doctors are looking at how all the pieces fit together. What I realized during yesterday’s appointment is that Dr. J. was not just taking a history, she was eliciting a narration about my son. She wants his story, two or three generations back, if you please.

A doctor whose passion is story is a doctor I can relate to. A great deal of my life revolves around interpreting the cryptic, adorable, worrisome text that is my son. I study the pages of his life like a scholar, with a scholar’s passion for his subject. Dr. J. took a look at this book and found it every bit as compelling as I do.

And she surprised me. I raised the question I’d discussed with the neurologist: hadn’t Genetics already ruled out genetics as the explanation for Wonderboy’s alphabet soup of issues?

Not necessarily, says Dr. Jones. I told her what tests had been done in three years ago, and she nodded and said that yes, that sounds about right in regard to what processes were available in 2004.

"The thing is," she explained, "we’re good at reading chromosomes. But we’re not so good at reading genes."

But there’s a new test that decodes a bit more of the genetic cipher, and it’s possible—not likely, but possible—that cracking that code could tell us more about Wonderboy.

Something else about Dr. J.: delightful sense of humor. She didn’t even mind when I said, begging her pardon, that we see so many specialists it sometimes feels like trying to walk a bunch of dogs all pulling in different directions. "Forgive the analogy," I hastened to add, but she laughed and said that oh, no, it’s the perfect description.

I walked out of her office feeling like I’d found someone who could lend a hand with all those leashes.