On the Bookshelf

 The Bookshelf:

Chloe is reading:

  
*Stellaluna
*Chicky Chicky Chook Chook -- sort a baby-ish book but she loves memorizing the rhymes and "reading" it
*Miss Rumphius -- she and Evan constantly pretend they are planting lupines everywhere... in their imagination my yard is a field of flowers!
*Barbaro -- this is our second round with this race-horse chapter book
*Roxaboxen
*Kermit the Hermit and lots of other Bill Peet books

Topics she is interested in:

*still the Life-Size Zoo books
*birds and feathers
*cheetahs, rhinos, elephants... the usual animal obsession
*bats

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 Evan is reading:

*How Much is a Million 
*Grandaddy's Place
*a variety of Superman and Star Wars books
*Classic Fairy Tales -- this carries over from last month
*Tangled Storybook
*I tried to get him interested in reading Peter Pan but he wants nothing to do with Captain Hook just yet.  So instead he asked me to get Farmer Boy again.  That's a bit more his style.

Topics he is interested in:

*counting everything
*BMX riding and racing
*robots and how things work
*the movie Tangled which has inspired all kinds of new vocabulary interests:  smolder, catapult, dimented
*I Spy and other search-type books

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I am reading:

 

*Big-Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell -- Todd has actually been reading this so when he's done I plan on getting into it.  It's about how big chain stores destroy local economies.

*Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver -- This is a really well-written book about a family's goal to eat local and in-season and grow a lot of their own food.  It's my second time checking this one out and I love it.

*This Life is in Your Hands by Melissa Coleman -- A fly-on-the-wall read about homesteaders in the 70's. 

*Tasha Tudor's Garden by Tovah Martin -- acres and acres of flowers... fascinating and beautiful

*Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn -- Maybe the best book I've ever read.  It was like coming home.

*Roots, Shoots, Buckets, Boots by Sharon Lovejoy -- This is about gardening with children, but it is practical and beautiful too.  We are so building the sunflower house when we have land to do it.

*The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto -- hundreds of pages to go, but I am locked in.  His writings are a lot of why we will never have our kids in public schools.... *shudder*

*What Does It Mean to Be Well Educated by Alfie Kohn -- I love Alfie Kohn books.  This one is a bunch of short essays about public education and our thoughts about learning in general.

*The Complete Book of Marvels by Richard Halliburton -- This book is about a man who spent his young adult life traveling the world and exploring every fascinating thing he could.  He climbed mountains and swam the Panama Canal.  He sat on the Golden Gate Bridge as it was in construction and slept in the Taj Mahal.  Incredible.  The is one of my favorite books at the library.  I just wish the pictures could be in color.