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 The Shaman’s Apprentice by Lynne Cherry (also the illustrator) and Mark J. Plotkin (Voyager Books, Harcourt, 2001). This is a visually stunning book which brings the rainforest to life. It centres on the people of Kwamala in Suriname and the importance of the plants around them not only for their own medicine, but for modern medical research. It is a wake-up call for the conservation of the Amazon. Lynne’s illustrated list of plants and their medicinal properties is superb. A few words from Older Brother:

It’s about a Tirio Indian boy called Kamanya who followed the Shaman, who is the village medicine man, in the Amazon after he had been healed from a deadly fever. He learned how to make the medicines by using leaves, herbs and bark and always believed in the medicine man’s importance.

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The pictures are very colourful and they show real people and their emotions. I would recommend this book because it shows what life is like for indigenous people who live in the Amazon rainforest and it is a very caring story.

Have you read any of these books? Have you nearly completed your PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge? Do let us know.

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.

While certainly it is a wonderful thing for parents to read to children, it is also a special act when children read to each other. Marjorie mentions that in a recent comment when she talks about the”special harmony that is engendered” when her oldest son reads aloud to his little brother. Aline tells of a class that she visited and read to where “ a young boy, who normally has trouble focusing, asked me if he could read to the class, instead, and wow!… did he capture their attention! Then they were all lining up to see who would do it next!” And one of my happiest maternal moments was when my oldest son took over our annual Christmas  Eve tradition of reading  aloud A Child’s Christmas in Wales. 

If parents don’t have time to read aloud, children do. All that’s needed is that they be infected with the joy of reading–then watch out! They will indeed pass that virus on, by reading aloud to everyone who will listen.