We are cracking on and are on target to have completed our PaperTigers Reading Challenge 2009 by the end of July, though it will be tight!

For our European readaloud, we have just finished the Swiss classic Heidi by Joanna Spyri. It has lost none of its charm over the years and we delighted in the well-rounded characters – the non-saccharine goodness of Heidi herself, Peter’s spikiness and jealousy, Grandfather’s transformation from a surly recluse, even the goats! This is not a book that either of the boys would have picked up on their own to read and is just another example of the breadth of literature that children are happy to absorb when it is read aloud to them. For an interesting take on Heidi, see this post from Hungry For (mostly Japanese) Words.

Little Brother (8) has also journeyed into Europe but a little further East, with Sheep Don’t Go to School, a collection of children’s poetry from Eastern Europe, edited by Andrew Fusek Peters and illustrated by Markéta Prachatická (Bloodaxe Books, 1999). He spent a month dipping in and out of this book – and one rather gruesome poem we read aloud together with great relish! Here’s what he has to say:

Some of the poems are funny, some are plain weird, and some are to carry on and on until you’re bored, like:

A doggy stole a sausage from the big bad butcher [...]
And on the doggy’s gravestone they wrote this little tale:
A doggy stole a sausage…etc etc! ad infinitum!

I’ve recited that one over and over and now my family is begging me to stop!

Too right!!! Yes, he’s definitely got a lot of enjoyment and glee out of that book!

Older Brother (10), in the meantime, headed to the other side of the world and plunged into the Amazonian rainforest with (more…)

Although my mother taught her children to love books with a fierce and covetous passion, it was a rare occasion when she read to us. She was a woman who had five children in nine years, who lived in Alaska with no electricity or running water, who baked everything we ate from scratch and was either cooking  or washing our clothes or doing her best to keep us in a presentable state. She had time for little else.

My father read to us in the winter when the nights were long–Heidi,  The Rose and the Ring, Treasure Island,  –my earliest memories are of these books that enthralled me long before I went to school. Then he went blind.

By the time my father was no longer able to read aloud, I was hopelessly ensnared in the tradition. The minute I finished a book that I loved, I would promptly begin reading it aloud to my younger sisters and brother, my captive audience. They were, however, a strongminded group and would certainly have rebelled if necessary, but instead they would frequently ask me to read to them, even after they could read to themselves. (more…)