Archive | August 2006

Best Crazies

Aug30


THE BEST CRAZIES (according to the Penguin List)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey. This book made a pretty good movie, but I think it was because Jack Nicholson is a good and crazy actor.
The Diary of a Madman
Nikolai Gogol
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys. I didn’t much care for this one, but I did read it. Click on the title to read my thoughts when I read it.
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes From Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

BEST CRAZIES (according to Semicolon)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Yes, I’ll agree on this one. Russian crazies are the best, anyway. It may make me sound xenophobic, but I think after reading several Russian novels and watching Russian current events for most of my life that maybe Russians themselves are half crazy. Or maybe, to paraphrase Bilbo, only half of them are half crazy, and the other half are half sane.

Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel Cervantes. Don Quixote is the Most Lovable Crazy. Of course, there is some debate as whether he was crazy or whether he was sane and the rest of us are crazy. Take your pick.

Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Here we have several choices. Most of Poe’s protagonists are a bit mad. Think: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum. All insane–or at least driven into madness.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Toad is a bit of a megalomaniac, isn’t he? But he’s loveable, like Don Quixote.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green. Climb inside the head of a schitzophrenic girl who hears voices and has an imaginary life you wouldn’t believe. The treatment practices in this book are bit dated as far as I am aware, but the symptoms of mental illness are described accurately and vividly, I think.

Best Minxes

Aug29

I’m back to the Penguin list of 100 Best Classics in twenty categories. Today, we choose the Best Minxes.

minx: an impudent, cunning, or boldly flirtacious girl or young woman.


THE BEST MINXES (according to the Penguin List)

Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray. Yes, Becky Tharp is a minx if there ever was one.
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov. I haven’t read anything by Nabakov.
Baby Doll
Tennessee Williams. I’m not familiar with this play (?) either.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Truman Capote. Miss Holly Golightly is a sort of a minx, but I am philosophically opposed to including Capote on a list of best anything. And I’ve not read the book, only seen the movie.
Emma
Jane Austen. Emma isn’t really a minx, just a bad matchmaker.

Best Minxes (according to Semicolon)

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Now Marianne is a minx, until she learns to be more sensible.

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Scarlett, the minx of all minxes. I read that Ms. Mitchell was highly influenced by Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. Lilly isn’t very good at being a minx. She either goes too far or not far enough, which is the point of the book.

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. Bathsheba Everdene is a bold minx, juggling three men and keeping them and her readers guessing.

Whom do you nominate for Best Minx in Literature?

Week 3 of World Geography: The Arctic and the Antarctic

Aug28


Music:
George Frederic Handel—Water Music

Mission Study:
1. Window on the World: Madagascar
2. WotW: Zulus
3. WotW; Animism
4. WotW: Hinduism
5. WotW: Islam

Poems:
It’s About Time—Lee Bennett Hopkins

Science:
Scientists and Inventors

Nonfiction Read Alouds:
Trial by Ice; A Photobiography of Sir Ernest Shackleton–Kostyol

Fiction Read Alouds:
And the Word Came With Power–Shetler
Ice Drift–Taylor. I’m looking forward to reading this Arctic adventure story with the urchins. Taylor is also the author of The Cay, a wonderful story about adventure and racial reconciliation and intergenerational friendship that takes place on a Caribbean island.

Picture Books:
Antarctica—Bagley
Anarctic Ice—Mastro and Wu
Little Penguin—Benson We read this picture book about a three year old Adelie penguin.
Little Penguin’s Tale—Wood Betsy-Bee read this story to me and to Z-baby.
Take a Trip to the Antarctic—Lye
Little Polar Bear and the Brave Little Hare—de Beer Betsy-Bee read this easy reader to me, too. It’s a simple story about a polar bear who gets trapped in an arctic research station, and his friend the snow hare who rescues him.

Elementary Readers:
Julie of the Wolves—George
Woodsong—Paulsen. Karate Kid is reading this adventure/nature story.
Trapped in Ice—Walters
How Did We Find Out About Antarctica—Asimov
Amazing Penguins and Other Polar Creatures—Johnson
Torches of Joy—Dekker. Brown Bear Daughter is reading this missionary story about the Dani tribe and missions in the South Pacific.

Other Books:
Wheeler, Opal. Handel at the Court of Kings. Again, I wish I could find this series of biographies of famous composers at my library or at a used bookstore.

Movies:
Shackleton. Actually, we watched this dramatizatization of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic on Friday night, and it was great. Kenneth Branagh made a convincingly strong explorer/leader, and we learned a lot about the dangers and beauties of the Antarctic and about the courage of some of the men who explored it. There was a subplot about two women in Sir Ernest Shackleton’s life, one his wife and the other his mistress, I suppose. I couldn’t figure out what having both of them in drama added to the story, nor did I even figure out who the second woman was until three-fourths of the way through the movie. Why, oh why, do film makers add in such extraneous stuff and confuse the issues?

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born August 28th

Aug28

Roger Antoine Duvoisin, author of Petunia and Veronica.

“When Veronica reached the streets of the city, she knew she was different. THERE WAS NOT ANOTHER HIPPOPOTAMUS IN SIGHT.
Only people, and more people, and still more people —people who stared at her, bumped into her, and shouted angrily at her when she stepped on their toes.
She was gloriously conspicuous.”

Phyllis Krasilovsky, author of The Cow Who Fell in the Canal and The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes.

“Well, as the days went by he got hungrier and hungrier, and more and more tired, and so he never washed his dishes. After a while there were so MANY dirty dishes that they didn’t all fit in the sink. So he began to pile them on the table.”

Allen Say, Japanese-American author of The Bicycle Man and Grandfather’s Journey

“When I was a small boy I went to a school in the south island of Japan. The schoolhouse stood halfway up a tall green mountain. It was made of wood and the wood was gray with age. When a strong wind blew, the trees made the sound of waves and the building creaked like an old sailing ship. From the playground, we could see the town, the ships in the harbor, the shining sea.”

Tasha Tudor, illustrator of so many beautiful books for children and creator of a beautiful life in rural New England.

“Life isn’t long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a privilege even to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors, how beautiful this world is. Supposing you only saw the stars once every year. Think what you would think. The wonder of it!”

Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

“Pierre’s madness consisted in not waiting, as he had formerly done, to discover personal attributes which he called ‘good qualities’ in people before loving them; his heart overflowed with love, and by loving without cause he never failed to discover undeniable reasons for loving.”

Picture Book Preschool Book of the Week: Week 36 American Folk Tales

Aug27

Peter Spier and Tasha Tudor must be about my favorite author illustrators. Today it’s a Peter Spier book that I’m featuring: The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night. This book was one of his earlier efforts, published in 1961 well before he won the Caldecott Medal in 1978 for Noah’s Ark. Fox was a Caldecott Honor book, however, early recognition for this talented artist.

We love to sing this book together in our family. The fox is such a villain, and the farmer is such a klutz, and the fox family is so cute, and we just like it. If you don’t know the tune, there is music in the back of the book, or I suppose you could make up your own. The words are all printed on one page in the back of the book, too, so that you could make copies and pass them out for everyone to sing along. However you read it or sing it or look at the pictures together, I think you’ll enjoy the book. The illustrations evoke autumn and farm life and New England. The song itself is folksy and catchy, fun to repeat over and over. The pictures will bear scrutinizing over and over, too, with lots of details to catch as you go through the book a second or third time.

By the way, one of my discerning preschoolers once asked me why the fox “prayed to the moon to give him light.”

“We don’t pray to the moon, Mommy. We pray to God.”

“Right,” I answered. “But foxes don’t know much. Maybe they think the moon gives us light all by itself.”

So, I commend to you foxes who pray to the moon or for the moon to give them light, and I recommend this book and any others written or illlustrated by Peter Spier.

Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase a downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.

Saturday REVIEW OF BOOKS: August 26, 2006

Aug26

For the uninitiated, here’s how it works. Find a review on your blog posted sometime this week of a book you’re reading or a book you’ve read. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Now post a link here to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. Please add only one book review per customer per week. (However, if your children, friends, or other family members have their own blogs and have written on a book, they are welcome to add their own link.) In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’ve written about. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

Thanks to everyone for reviewing, blogging, and linking.

1. Brown Bear (Open Your Eyes)
2. Semicolon (Glittering Images)
3. MotherReader (Edwina)
4. Karla (Under the Overpass)
5. Martin LeBar(Speed of Dark)		 6. MFS (Envy)
7. The Autumn Rain (Time Out for Happiness)
8. Jennifer, Snapshot (Cook Off!)
9. Girl Detective (Olivia Forms a Band and Lilly\’s Big Day)
10. Jen Robinson (The Goose Girl)		 11. kimbofo
12. Kelly
13. Melissa Wiley (Please Say Please)

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You Are Who We Say You Are

Aug25

A Malaysian woman who was born into a Muslim family wishes to become a Catholic and marry a Catholic man. So what’s the problem? According to sharia law, she’s just not allowed to disavow Islam, even if she’s been baptized as a Catholic. So my question is: in their world would I be allowed to submit to Islam? If so, why, since I was “born Christian”? If not, how can Islam be true for all people?

“In rulings in her case, civil courts said Malays could not renounce Islam because the Constitution defined Malays to be Muslims.

They also ruled that a request to change her identity card from Muslim to Christian had to be decided by the Shariah courts. There she would be considered an apostate, and if she did not repent she surely would be sentenced to several years in an Islamic center for rehabilitation.”
From the NY TImes article on the case.

New York Times: Once Muslim, Now Christian and Caught in the Çourts.

Read more about this story at Michelle Malkin’s blog.

Friday’s Center of the Blogosphere

Aug25

Krakovianka is an American Christian living in Krakow, Poland. She’s also a homeschooler, and she’s been invited to peak to a small group of pioneering new Polish homeschooling parents. Go over and encourage her.

Sarah at Reading the Past on The 50-Page Rule. Before last year, I almost always finished any book I started, hoping that it would get better. I have, in the past couple of years, given myself permission to give up on a book that I’m not enjoying. However, I just finished a wonderful book, Kristen Lavransdatter: The Bridal Wreath (actually part 1 of a three part novel), and I couldn’t get interested or get used to the style until I was about a third of the way through this first part. I stuck with it because a good friend highly recommended the book. So, sometimes you should give up, and sometimes you need to keep trying, and who can tell the difference?

Tonia at Intent has a challenge: 30 Days of Nothing. The idea is refrain as a family from buying any non-essential things for an entire month. I honestly don’t think I could talk my family into restricting our buying to only essentials for a month. And I’m not sure how to define “essentials”? The things that Tonia mentions– lattes, movies, books, clothes, fancy hair gel– are already fairly scarce in our family, not that we don’t have our luxuries. (We get most of the books from the library and from the used bookstore.) We buy fast food or pizza occasionally. We spend a great deal of money on classes: dance, karate, outside academic classes for the high schoolers, college classes. I don’t see how we could quit these for a month, but it might be that we ought to consider cutting down on the outside classes in the long term. Nonetheless, I’m intrigued by the idea of a month long fast from materialism. What do you think?