CCBC-Net Archives
Reading Old and New
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Megan Schliesman <Schliesman>
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 08:36:15 -0500
Like others, I always find myself reading several things at once, and for several purposes: trying to keep up with new children's and young adult books; trying to get a few adult titles into my head each month; and reading to my daughter. And then, when I can find the time, I always like to revisit old favorites--both adult and youth titles. Here are the new and old children's and young adult titles occupying my mind, my time, and my nightstand....
New Books: Like Ginny, Louise Erdrich's The Game of Silence is among my favorite new children's titles. And Markus Zusak's I Am the Messenger is my personal ya favorite to?te.
Reading aloud: Among our current at-home favorites are Shirley Hughes's Trotter Street books, especially The Big Concrete Lorry, which my CCBC colleague Merri Lindgren and her family gave to my daughter as a Christmas gift this year. Since we are big do-it-yourselfers with regard to home projects, it strikes a chord with all of us in my family.
We've been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy over the past week or so. I had read Little House in the Big Woods to my daughter last fall and she loved it. It was the first time I had read it since my own childhood, and I was struck by the wonderful descriptions. A few weeks after we finished it, I brought home Little House on the Prairie, and we never got beyond chapter 2 or 3. I was struck by how much my daughter's reaction to that book differed from Little House in the Big Woods
(at the time she was not quite 5). My own analysis of this is that the second book took her out of the cozy world of that small house in the woods into a much wider and more threatening environment. I think at the point Jack was lost in the river, she had had enough. She showed no interest in continuing and so we stopped.
Farmer Boy is much more to her liking. Again, there are the wonderful descriptions, especially of the bountiful food. I've been craving donoughts, and applie pie for breakfast, for almost a week!
I'm also struck by some of the mediation I provide between her and the text as I read Farmer Boy, and as I read Little House in the Big Woods-?cause of how much has changed, from our way of living to our attitudes. The first chapter of Farmer Boy is set in the school room, with Almanzo remembering the prior school master, and his brother's swollen palms from the switchings when he didn't know an answer. And then there is the scene wiht the current school master besting the big boys with a whip. And so I find myself saying, to this child on the verge of starting kindergarten,
"Schools are much much different today than they were back then." And we talk about that. And we talked about Indians, and how people once hunted and preserved almost all of their food. (Necessitated by the opening chapters of Little House in the Big Woods, with the detailed descriptions of preparing the animals that had been hunted or killed for food--I hadn't remembered that from my childhood reading!)
Old favorites: Just for the fun of it, I recently reread Dear Genius, the collection of Harper editor Ursula Nordstrom's letters edited by Leonard Marcus.
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, UW-Madison 600 N. Park St., Room 4290 Madison, WI 53706
ph: 608&2?03 fax: 608&2I33 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Thu 12 May 2005 08:36:15 AM CDT
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 08:36:15 -0500
Like others, I always find myself reading several things at once, and for several purposes: trying to keep up with new children's and young adult books; trying to get a few adult titles into my head each month; and reading to my daughter. And then, when I can find the time, I always like to revisit old favorites--both adult and youth titles. Here are the new and old children's and young adult titles occupying my mind, my time, and my nightstand....
New Books: Like Ginny, Louise Erdrich's The Game of Silence is among my favorite new children's titles. And Markus Zusak's I Am the Messenger is my personal ya favorite to?te.
Reading aloud: Among our current at-home favorites are Shirley Hughes's Trotter Street books, especially The Big Concrete Lorry, which my CCBC colleague Merri Lindgren and her family gave to my daughter as a Christmas gift this year. Since we are big do-it-yourselfers with regard to home projects, it strikes a chord with all of us in my family.
We've been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy over the past week or so. I had read Little House in the Big Woods to my daughter last fall and she loved it. It was the first time I had read it since my own childhood, and I was struck by the wonderful descriptions. A few weeks after we finished it, I brought home Little House on the Prairie, and we never got beyond chapter 2 or 3. I was struck by how much my daughter's reaction to that book differed from Little House in the Big Woods
(at the time she was not quite 5). My own analysis of this is that the second book took her out of the cozy world of that small house in the woods into a much wider and more threatening environment. I think at the point Jack was lost in the river, she had had enough. She showed no interest in continuing and so we stopped.
Farmer Boy is much more to her liking. Again, there are the wonderful descriptions, especially of the bountiful food. I've been craving donoughts, and applie pie for breakfast, for almost a week!
I'm also struck by some of the mediation I provide between her and the text as I read Farmer Boy, and as I read Little House in the Big Woods-?cause of how much has changed, from our way of living to our attitudes. The first chapter of Farmer Boy is set in the school room, with Almanzo remembering the prior school master, and his brother's swollen palms from the switchings when he didn't know an answer. And then there is the scene wiht the current school master besting the big boys with a whip. And so I find myself saying, to this child on the verge of starting kindergarten,
"Schools are much much different today than they were back then." And we talk about that. And we talked about Indians, and how people once hunted and preserved almost all of their food. (Necessitated by the opening chapters of Little House in the Big Woods, with the detailed descriptions of preparing the animals that had been hunted or killed for food--I hadn't remembered that from my childhood reading!)
Old favorites: Just for the fun of it, I recently reread Dear Genius, the collection of Harper editor Ursula Nordstrom's letters edited by Leonard Marcus.
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, UW-Madison 600 N. Park St., Room 4290 Madison, WI 53706
ph: 608&2?03 fax: 608&2I33 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Thu 12 May 2005 08:36:15 AM CDT
