Five for February

And here we go again with another year of Five for February, which I started back in 2011 as a way of instilling some gratitude into my bleak winter days. :-)

1) Tonight while Neil & the girls were at the church for Scouts/Activity Days, I had a peaceful hour reading stories with all four of the boys. Lovely! I reflected on how different storytime is with the computer-in-the-pocket era here to stay, as we ended up watching four YouTube videos when the shark book we were reading left us with lots of unanswered questions about the different swimming styles and leaping abilities of various sharks. Is it possible that my random shark facts obsession is passing to another generation? :-)

2) On the reading note, a new book arrived today! This is such a silly one that we all loved, but it's never checked in to the library so I finally just ordered our own. Luke giggles like crazy whenever we read it.

3) And speaking of which, Luke is a reading superstar! He's progressing so well (right now he's reading at a second-grade level). I love watching that world of words open up. We're getting close to the magical point where I start having him read Harry Potter to me and from there it just explodes. (Sidenote: Isaac finished the 7th Harry Potter book over Christmas break and Abigail just read Anne of Green Gables a couple weeks back. Good golly I love how reading takes us on such fantastic journeys!)

4) We had some great news today about Neil's research. I'll blog about it more in a few weeks, but things are looking really good for him these days.

5) Tonight's dinner was met with much acclaim from the kids, which is always so great to hear (Neil got home late enough that I didn't even hear his reaction to dinner, poor guy). It was not the dinner I'd planned to make, mostly because the last 3 days I've been too tired to go to the grocery store and get all the stuff on my list (Matthew is totally killing me with the 4-6 wakeups a night!!!). But the broccoli was SO good and got so many rave reviews that it made me feel like I'd pulled off some amazing feat overall. ;-)

So I was scrounging for dinner stuff tonight and this is what I ended up making: broiled chicken and apple sausages, garlic mashed potatoes (combo of russets and red potatoes because I didn't have enough of either), rice pilaf (with jasmine rice, which was a little odd but it tasted okay if you like rice pilaf, which 2/5 kids did), and the REAL hit--broccoli sauteed so that it was crisp in spots and tender in others (such good flavor with slightly blackened broccoli!!) and then tossed with lemon zest, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and pink Himalayan salt. I've roasted broccoli quite a few times but this was the first time I've tried to replicate it on the stovetop. And Luke, who was my dinner helper tonight, was SO proud because he chopped the potatoes and broccoli, then squeezed the lemon juice. (I have this juicer-thingie and it is a total game-changer. AMAZING.)

Fall Books

I'm pretty sure that there is no better way to spend an afternoon than curled up reading stories with my favorite little people. I'm working on updating all our favorites lists {here} but I thought I'd feature my four favorite fall books today! In the past I've just made lists but so many people have asked me which ones I REALLY love and why that I thought some posts like these were warranted...especially because I really love these books so much. I'm going to try to start doing posts like this with the books that I think are must-haves. :-)

First up is A Turkey for Thanksgiving. This one is so charming--Mr. Moose sets out to ensure that his wife has a turkey at the table for Thanksgiving dinner. Other guests come along on the hunt, but Turkey doesn't want to come! (It turns out happily for all involved.) The illustrations in this book are beautiful (all the animals are bedecked in their Scandinavian finest), but it's the words that really evoke the stark beauty of November: "The earth smelled of ice and moss as they crunched along. Above them a crow hung, black as a puff of wood smoke."

After you read Applesauce Season, you're definitely going to want to make homemade applesauce--good thing there's a recipe in the back! (It's a good one...we've used it lots of times!) I love all the family traditions that are apparent in this book--a little boy, his mother, and his grandmother make applesauce together every week after selecting apples in the farmer's market, while his father makes all kinds of "good things" to eat with the applesauce--latkes, crepes, applesauce cake...

Fair warning--after reading Sophie's Squash, your children may insist (as mine do) on naming every squash you ever buy or grow. (My back porch currently has 5 named butternut friends lined up waiting for their pals to get home from school.) This book is absolutely charming--little Sophie falls in love with a squash, names her Bernice, and they go everywhere together until one day Bernice starts to show her age! She's spotty! Her somersaults lack their usual style! Fortunately, Sophie knows just how to ensure that their friendship can last forever. 

One of the books I recall most strongly from my own childhood, Sarah Morton's Day describes life for an 8-year-old Pilgrim girl. It was photographed in the recreated Plimouth Plantation, and my kids love all the details about how many petticoats Sarah puts on every morning, or the fact that she has to work "muck" into the garden as one of her chores. This doesn't gloss over the hardships of Pilgrim life (Sarah's father died during a hard winter and her mother has remarried), but it's optimistic overall and absolutely fascinating. Don't miss the sequels describing life for a Pilgrim boy and a Wampanoag boy.

And there you have it--our four favorites. Happy reading!

2/23

Today's five good things:

• Neil did an A+ mopping job on the kitchen floor last night after dinner. It was the first thing I noticed about the kitchen this morning and all day every time I swept something up I felt so loved because of that sparkling-clean kitchen floor, thanks to my thoughtful husband. 
• Luke and I finished On the Banks of Plum Creek today. Man oh man do I love reading the Little House books to the current four-year-old! We read about forty pages today because how could we possibly stop during the blizzard to end all blizzards? (Just wait, Ingalls family, just wait...you have no idea what De Smet has in store for you.)
• We have a crazy winter storm on its way--the kind where the weather alerts keep breaking through radio programming. I am a) excited that we might get ONE decent snow storm this year (we haven't had a single snow day, and that's kind of criminal) and b) really pleased that I went to the grocery store this morning before everyone went all Snowmageddon crazy on the shelves. 
• Speaking of which, if you go to the store at 8:30 AM, you may have two grumpy kids with you who have not fully acclimated to the day, but you can also score individual Chobani cups for 55 cents each. I was pretty excited about that. Nathan ate two for lunch and I was even MORE excited about that. :-)
• I am done with both grading and running for the day, so after I hit publish on this post I am going to bed. With a book. And I will be asleep very very soon. I have been sleeping SO much ever since we left for skiing and I'm still not caught up and feeling energized again yet!

Chapter books for elementary-aged children

Oh, this seems like such an impossible task to start narrowing these down, but try I shall! Please note that this is certainly not an exhaustive list and is based solely on books that I actually own--there are a gazillion amazing books out there, but these are just the ones I love enough to have searched them out and purchased them and made space for them on our shelves.

Something really important: most of these are books that I still love enough to reread as an adult. I pre-read as much as I can of the books my kids are reading, but I also feel like when you read a book, you are making a lifelong friend of that book, and so I want my children to be introduced to MY friends that I still love as an adult. I'm not doing the best job of explaining this, but I do not think that these are just children's books. They are classics for everyone! 

These books are all ones that my children have read or that I consider them old enough to read. As I write this, my five-year-old is reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, my seven-year-old is reading Martin the Warrior, and my ten-year-old is rereading Jurassic Park so that's where we are today in terms of interest levels and abilities (so about a second-grade reading level up through eighth grade. Give or take).

Many of these books are the first in the series or one among many by a particular author. I generally have my kids read the one listed here and then they're hooked and want to read everything by that author, so this is my gateway book, so to speak. For some authors I have listed more than one if I think they're truly exceptional and not to be missed; I have also noted some books about which I have reservations by an author that I otherwise love.

I have also tried to list these by level of difficulty. This is an awesome site which tells you the reading grade level of a specific book, and I have gone through most of our books and noted the level inside the front cover. Keep in mind that most of these increase in complexity and difficulty as the series progresses--so, for instance, five-year-old Isaac can happily read the first few Harry Potter books, but I don't anticipate that I'll find him curled up with Deathly Hallows anytime soon.

Please note that my kids also read their fair share of Magic Treehouse, Warriors, etc., and their list of must-read books would probably look very different from mine! I do require that they read a certain number of books from MY list every so often (depending on what time of year we are in and how busy they are with school--often I require them to read the first three chapters of the book I've picked before they start anything else, and then they're hooked and they're ten chapters in and they've forgotten about the other book). We talk quite a bit about junk-food fun books vs. feast-for-your-mind books, and how it's good to maintain a balance that will nurture your mind. And I do still reserve the right to refuse to let particularly gory, rude, or gross books into our home.

Over the summer, the older children are each reading ten books from my list in addition to everything else they are picking on their own; at this point, they're almost done with my lists, but have added a lot to it by reading everything else that author has written after they finish my picks.



Absolute must-read series to be a human being walking this planet: 

• the Little House books (the ones by Laura Ingalls Wilder are far superior to those written later)
• Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)
• The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
• The Dark is Rising sequence (Susan Cooper)
• The Chronicles of Prydain (Lloyd Alexander--I read The Castle of Llyr first and was utterly hooked, so that's how I've started my kids. I think The Book of Three is a little less accessible.)
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
• The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkein)
• Anne of Green Gables & Emily of New Moon (L.M. Montgomery)

Fun series that you and your children should read at some point, but your life will not be over if you don't get around to them...

• Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief and the Kane Chronicles (note: not the same level of gorgeous writing as many of these others, but they got my kids completely and utterly hooked on Greco/Roman & Egyptian mythology, so I think they're worth it! Authored by Rick Riordan)
• Fablehaven (Brandon Mull)
• The Enchanted Forest Chronicles--Dealing with Dragons, etc. (Patricia Wrede)
• Redwall books--they get a little repetitive, but kids love them (Brian Jacques)
• Inkheart trilogy (Cornelia Funke)
• The Thief (Attolia quartet) (Megan Whalen Turner)
• A Wrinkle in Time, etc. (Madeleine L'Engle)

General books that everyone should read:

• From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Koningsbury)
• The Girl Who Owned a City (O.T. Nelson)
• Holes (Louis Sachar)
• Indian in the Cupboard (Lynne Reid Banks)
• Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh) 
• Misty of Chincoteague (Marguerite Henry)
• Matilda (Roald Dahl--I know a lot of people love Roald Dahl but I think he's very macabre. I have my kids read this one and if they want to read more, fine, but I don't push Dahl)
• Caddie Woodlawn (Carol Ryrie Brink; look for the Trina Schart Hyman illustrations!)
• Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O'Dell)
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Elizabeth George Speare)
• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Howard Pyle)
• King Arthur and His Knights (Knowles)
• Where the Red Fern Grows (Wilson Rawls)--bawling your eyes out to this one is a childhood rite of passage
• The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (Avi)
• Catherine Called Birdy (Karen Cushman)
• The Giver and Number the Stars (Lois Lowry)
• Shadow Spinner (Susan Fletcher)
• Banner in the Sky (James Ramsey Ullman--I literally read this book a dozen times one year)
• Johnny Tremain (Esther Forbes)
• James Herriot books--start with All Things Bright and Beautiful
• Cheaper by the Dozen & Belles on Their Toes (Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth--these are some of my absolute all-time favorites)
• The Story Girl  (L.M. Montgomery)
• Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (Margaret Sidney)
• Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum)
• Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie; look for the version illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman!)
• Watership Down (Richard Adams)
• Heidi (Johanna Spyri)
• Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
• Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)
• The Jungle Book, etc.  (Kipling)

Fairytales/mythology/fantasy:

• Princess of the Midnight Ball, my girls also love the Dragon Slippers and Castle Glower series (Jessica Day George)
• The Hobbit (Tolkein)
• The Goose Girl, Princess Academy (Shannon Hale)
• Vodnik (Bryce Moore)--one of my close friends from grad school but I'd still say it was good even if I didn't know him personally. I also went to grad school with Brandon Sanderson--it was a talented bunch down there in the carrels! This book is an absolute favorite with both of my girls. 
• Charmed Life, Howl's Moving Castle, Dalemark Quartet, Dark Lord of Derkholm (Dianna Wynne Jones--basically you can't go wrong with anything by Wynne Jones)
• Ella Enchanted (Gail Carson Levine)
• Five Children and It (E. Nesbit)
• Entwined (Heather Dixon)
• Tuck Everlasting (Natalie Babbitt)
• Puck of Pook's Hill (Kipling)
• Wildwood Dancing (Juliet Marillier)
• Tamora Pierce (note: her first quartet [Alanna books] are more risque than later stuff. So I would start with the Keladry books, then Daine, then Tricksters, then Alanna. The Circle of Magic books are also intended for a younger audience and age with the characters. I really like Pierce for her heroine-centric books, but just do the later books first). 
• The Hero and the Crown, The Blue Sword, Outlaws of Sherwood, Beauty, Rose Daughter, Spindle's End (Robin McKinley--I LOVE McKinley, but her earlier stuff is definitely better than her later stuff. Deerskin and Sunshine are absolutely not appropriate for younger readers; Dragonhaven is terrible, and Pegasus, Shadows, and Chalice are sadly weak when compared with early McKinley)

So there's some of my favorites--what are yours? What ones have I left off that you would absolutely add to this list?