It Only Took A Year...

It only took a year, but we did it!  My daughter and I finished reading all 8 books in the Anne of Green Gables series.  I gave her the first book last year, in early June, for her 9th birthday, and I was determined that we should finish before her 10th, as more literary gifts await her.  Thankfully, we met the deadline with over a week to spare.  I had visions of us staying up late in the night before her birthday in an effort to reach my self-imposed deadline.

No, we did not read Anne every night.   My younger daughter is too young for Anne, so if I only had time for joint reading, Anne didn't make the cut.  And there were times when we needed a break, a palate cleanser, when my daughter was in the mood for picture books (which she still loves, much to my delight), or something else entirely.

At times it was tough going.  The language is flowery and old-fashioned.  The middle books tend to be gossipy stories about people Anne interacts with and less about Anne herself.  And the final book, set during World War I, has lots of arcane (to my 9-year-old) references to military personnel, politicians, and battles.

But it was worth it.  There's a kind of satisfaction in finishing a series.  The other series we have done this with are the Betsy-Tacy books, the Ramona books (multiple times, but a much quicker read) and the All-of-a-Kind Family books (ditto, and sadly, the last book was quite disappointing).

I know lots of people have done the same with Harry Potter.  What other series have you read aloud to your children in their entirety?  How long did it take you?

Whatever We Talk About, We Talk About Books

On days when the children fight with each other, talk back, and generally misbehave (that is, every day), it is nice to get a reminder that at least I'm doing something right - I'm raising readers.  In the last few days, these reminders have come frequently, as my daughters have been using books as their reference point - to describe themselves, events, toys, and relationships.

My five-year-old and I were discussing Mrs. Mind-Your-Own-Business, a character in the Riverside Kids books, and I pointed out how she sees the negative in everything.  My daughter responded, "Like Eeyore." and then went on to say, "I'm the opposite of Eeyore.  I see the funny in everything."  (This is true!)

A few days later, as she and I worked on a project together (or rather, I did the project - an addition chart, and she acted as my gofer), she said, "Whenever I do art projects with H [her older sister], I'm Tib.  She always makes me do things for her [just as Betsy and Tacy make Tib do things for them]."  True again!

Another evening my 8-year-old was placing a disproportionately large doll into a small dollhouse.  "She's Alice in Wonderland!," my daughter exclaimed, referring to when Alice grew and was similarly disproportionate to her surroundings.

I have written before about our love of the book My Side of the Car and how we use it as an inside joke.   Well, the other day it actually rained on only one side of a train I was in.  My girls were delighted when I came home to report this and knew, without my mentioning it, that it was a reference to a book.

And how could I forget the North-going Zax and the South-going Zax, included here, neither of whom will budge an inch to the east or west so the other can pass?  My kids love to assert that they are Zax when they meet head-on in our hallway!

What about you and your kids?  Do you frequently use literary frames of reference?

A Hairy Situation

Betsy, Tacy, and Tib's Lopsided Haircuts

The other morning, as I was cutting my daughter's hair to remove it from a comb she had tangled it in in a misguided attempt to curl her straight hair, I started thinking about children, real and fictional, and hair.  Almost every kid has cut her own hair, or cut a sibling's or a doll's hair, or had her hair cut by a sibling.  Not to mention the chewing-gum-in-the-hair-type incidents.

Ella and Her Hair

In the delightful, rhyming Ella Kazoo Will Not Brush Her Hair, Ella lets her hair reach extreme proportions before succumbing to a haircut.

Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, in the second book in the series go overboard when they cut their hair to put in lockets to remember each other by (in case they die) and end up with very lopsided 'dos (see photo above).

In Russell and Elisa, the children take their pretend game of haircut to a new level when they actually cut first Elisa's doll Airmail's hair and then Elisa's friend's hair.

Ramona and Her Crown of Burrs

And of course, in Ramona and Her Father, Ramona makes herself a crown out of burrs, which, predictably to us, but apparently surprisingly to Ramona, gets stuck in her hair, forcing her father to cut it.  This is the scene to which my mind immediately flashed as I dealt with my own daughter's hairtastrophe (yes, I just made that word up) that morning.

Can you think of other fictional characters who get themselves into such hairy situations or do you have a story about yourself or your own child's hairtastrpohe?

Bullying Is Not New and Neither Are Books About It

There has been a lot in the news and in educational circles about bullying lately, and in book circles about books addressing the issue.  But bullying is not new and neither are books about it.

In the classic The Hundred Dresses, Maddie joins in with her friend Peggy and their classmates in teasing Wanda, a poor immigrant girl for wearing the same dress every day.  Wanda leaves school before Maddie can make amends and Maddie's guilt haunts her.  She finally resolves that "She was never going to stand by and say nothing again.  If she ever heard anybody picking on someone because they were funny looking or because they had strange names, she'd speak up.  Even if it meant losing [her best friend's] friendship."  This is an admirable resolution but the book would be stronger if author Eleanor Estes had actually put Maddie's resolve to the test.

In the third Betsy Tacy book, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Betsy, Tacy and Tib do come to the rescue of their new friend Naima, a Syrian immigrant.  They stand up to a group of boys, even as Tib's dress is torn in the process.

In Molly's Pilgrim, an immigrant girl is again the victim of bullying.  Molly's classmates tease her for her old-world Russian-Jewish ways.  When she brings in a clothespin doll dressed in traditional garb for a homework assignment to make a pilgrim doll, the children sneer that the doll doesn't look like a pilgrim at all.  But just as Molly's mother explained she was a pilgrim - someone who came to this country for religious freedom - Molly's teacher gives the same explanation, adding that Thanksgiving is based on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, as described in the Old Testament.

Finally, in Bernard Waber's funny picture book, But Names Will Never Hurt Me, Alison Wonderland (whose ancestors' last name was changed from Voonterlant at Ellis Island) learns to live with her name and withstand the teasing she gets for it.

These books obviously don't address cyberbullying and social media.  But the message is the same.  Not only should you not bully other children, you should actually step up and defend them.

Can you think of any other older books that address bullying?

What Mothers in Books Do

The other day I fulfilled my children's fantasies by saying to them when they came home from school ("alone" - they waited in the hallway while I entered the apartment and then they came in without me), "Welcome home.  Would you like some milk and cookies?  I just baked some."  I even donned an apron for some June-Cleaver-esque authenticity. They had recently asked me why I didn't do this, saying it is "what mothers in books do."

That got me thinking.  What books had they seen this in?  Granted, we read a lot of classics, many of which are old-fashioned, even dated in certain ways.  In the Betsy-Tacy series, the mothers are constantly offering the children homemade baked goods (although sometimes they've been baked by the "hired girl").  In the Ramona books, I think Ramona mentions that she'll miss the afterschool cookies when her mother starts working (and becomes "liberated" as Beezus says)... but I don't remember any scene before that where her mother actually gave her homemade cookies as an afterschool snack.  I don't remember the B is for Betsy books well enough but certainly one could imagine Betsy's mother baking cookies.  When asked, my 5-year-old cited the families in the Riverside Kids books.  Of course, none of those mothers (except for Ramona's, at times), worked. But when I asked the girls what was different, why those mothers baked cookies, they said, "Because they didn't know then that they weren't healthy."  So there I was, making a feminist mountain out of a nutritional molehill.

I also found it interesting that they said this is "what mothers in books do," not "what mothers do."  So they instinctively differentiated... between what exactly?  Fact and fiction?  The past and the present?

What's funny too is that I bake.  A lot.  But they were fixated on three things: the baked item had to be cookies (preferably chocolate chip), they had to be offered with milk, and they had to be offered after school.  I even let them each have an unprecedented-in-our-house two on the grounds that the saying is "milk and cookies" not "milk and cookie."

In any event, those mothers in books, whoever they are, knew what they were doing.  Our milk and cookies were delicious.

When the Character Ages Faster Than the Reader

A friend recently mentioned that she and her daughter stopped reading the Anne of Green Gables books because her 7-year-old was not interested in Anne's courtship by Gilbert, her career, marriage, or motherhood.  That comment got me thinking about series that follow a character from early childhood through to adulthood.  In addition to Anne, Betsy-Tacy and the Little House books came immediately to mind.  While, Type-A personality that I am,  I am a big believer in reading a series start to finish, it is hard when the character ages faster than the reader!  We are reading Little Town on the Prairie right now, in which Laura is 15, just meeting her future husband, and planning for her career as a teacher (which back then could start at age 16!).  So far my daughter still seems interested, but I wonder if and when that interest will wane.

Did you/your child read these series straight through or return to them later?  Can you think of any other series that present the same issue?