martinzoo

GB is having a Spring Break this week. So I thought I’d post an un-homeshool-ish post.

We talk a lot about ratings in this family. GB is sorta obsessed with tv and movie ratings. He always wants to know WHY a movie or tv show has a certain rating. So it gets discussed a lot. Everything is rated these days. Even our music has ratings.

So, when I was composing an email to my book club this evening, I had to pause and ponder about whether books should have ratings too. One of the ladies in my club was curious as to whether her students (high school English) would find the book, ‘Water for Elephants’ objectionable.

I believe that I am of two minds on the topic. As a mother, I sure would like to know any thing that could be interpreted as objectionable. Especially if I’m going to recommend it.

A good example of one such occasion occurred a few months ago during one of our book club meetings.  One mom had just spent a glorious week in NYC with her husband and kids. They had all gone to see the play, ‘Wicked’. And her twelve year old daughter was now obsessed with the music from the play. At the time of our meeting, that mom was deciding whether she should get the book for her daughter’s birthday. I’m not sure how many of you have read this book. I loved it! BUT (huge BUT) I would never let my 12 yo read that book. Just about every depraved thing that occurs in our society is hidden within the many layers of this book. Stress the word ‘depraved.’

On the other hand, sometimes it’s just so daggum hard to get kids to read. And it would be a shame to discourage them from reading. Don’t you think? So I worry that  rating books would involve some sort of censorship. And to me, that just means lost opportunities for reading.

I remember when the Harry Potter books came out. So many parents were depriving their kids from reading these wonderful books because they believed them to be anti-Christian and full of paganism. And lets face it, there is an awful lot of darkness and adult themes in the HP books. I just read online this morning that JK Rowling suffered from depression in her twenties, to the point of suicidal thoughts. She included aspects of this part of her life within her books by creating the dementors - creatures who literally suck the joy and happiness out of you.

But on the flip side, just look at what JK Rowling has done for reading. More kids read now than they did before. And there is a lot more selection for boys at the bookstore. If we were to rate HP books, we’d have to include child abuse, cursing, extreme violence, and many others.

Would the HP books have been as successful if they had included ratings?

Is it possible that by putting ratings on books you would be encouraging kids to read books that they are not ready for? I know that sometimes that forbidden fruit seems awfully enticing!

Questions for pondering …. How do you feel about a rating system? Do you all have any thoughts on the subject?

Have you ever read a book and loved it so much that you wanted to read slower? You know, make it last?

I can usually whip out a book in a couple of days if I’m really interested. But this past two weeks I have *slowly* been reading The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth. My daughter gave me this book a while ago. It was required reading in her World Lit class, and she had really enjoyed it. Well, my bedside stack of books is quite high, so it took me a while to get to this book. But, oh, it was so worth it.

The entire book is written in verse.

Each sonnet is rhymed in an a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d-e-f-f-e-g-g  pattern. And each sentence  required such a high quality of thought process, that you must appreciate the talent it took to create such a masterpiece. I normally love poetry in the traditional way. This was the first time I’ve ever read an entire book, 307 pages, of verse in story format. And it was very modern, which is what made it so intriguing.

It’s about four California yuppies and their loves and losses. These are my two favorite stanzas. The first involves John, a silicon valley executive, who had realized how lonely he had become, and in desperation confides in his friend/ex-lover. She in turn puts an ad in the singles section of the newspaper for him. Through the ad he finds Liz. This is the first morning after he and Liz have moved in together, and he is surveying his new life and love. The second stanza immediately follows the first and shows you that his newfound happiness is not going to last.

John looks about him with enjoyment.

What a man needs, he thinks, is health;

Well-paid, congenial employment;

A house; a modicum of wealth;

Some sunlight; coffee and the papers;

Artichoke hearts adorned with capers;

A Burberry trench coat; a Peugeot;

And in the evening, some Rameau

Or Couperin; a home-cooked dinner;

A Stilton, and a little port;

And so to a duvet. In short,

In life’s brief game to be a winner

A man must have… oh yes, above

All else, of course, someone to love.

*

Ah, John, don’t take it all for granted.

Perhaps you think Liz loves you best.

The snooker table has been slanted.

A cuckoo’s bomb lies in the nest.

Be warned. Be warned. Just as in poker

The wildness of that card, the joker,

Disturbs the best-laid plans of men,

So too it happens, now and then,

That a furred beast with feral features

(Little imagined in the days

When, cute and twee, the kitten plays),

Of that familiar brood of creatures

The world denominates a cat,

Enters the game, and knocks it flat.

 

Last night, after finishing this book, I found myself thinking in the bouncy pattern of rhyme. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the ending, which didn’t end at all the way I thought it would. Please don’t let the fact that the entire book is in verse stop you from reading this masterpiece. I’m fairly picky and this book went straight to my top ten list.

Desperately!

Calling all family and friends within loaning distance….

I am missing << gasp! >> this book. Seriously folks, this is my favorite book of all time.

If I have loaned it out to you, I need it back. My collection is incomplete.

If I don’t get it back soon, I’m going to write to The Poisoned Pen bookstore, because they will sell me one of her books and have her autograph it, which would be cool.

I am needing to read this again….. oh, yeah, it is a need!

And just in time for Thanksgiving.

We started by reading a couple of chapters in Kris’s book, Great Colonial American Projects You Can Build Yourself. We’ve already covered this information, but it was good review, and it made GB feel very knowledgeable.

Then we wanted to do one of the early projects in the book, so we decided to make the wampum. The Native Americans used wampum as a unit of trade. The word ‘wampum’ is short for wampumpeag or wampumpeake, which is an Algonquian Indian word meaning a “string of white shell beads.”

We started with a clean meat tray. We used a soda cap to twist the circle shape into the Styrofoam. Then we cut out all the little circles.

Then GB colored them all with magic markers. We were supposed to use a hole punch to make a nice little hole in the center, but my meat try was a little too thick for the hole punch, so I just jabbed a pen through each circle. Worked great.

Then we put the colored circles on a foil covered cookie sheet and baked them in the oven for about six minutes.

They shrunk down to about half their original sizes and got much harder.

Next, GB strung the beads on some embroidery string.

They kind of have a fruit loop appeal, don’t they? I just love that face!

Tomorrow I think we’ll crack open the cd I got from Homeschool in the Woods.

So, Kris, did we do you proud?

Ok, how bad is this?

I have been reading Jabem’s required reading for his first college English class…

And guess what? I like it… Weird, huh?

He certainly thinks so.

I just knew when I heard the subject matter that I would want to read it. It’s called Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America.  Because of welfare reforms, many people have had to go into the low income labor market, making minimum wage or barely above. At the writing of this book, minimum wage was only $5.15….which is not much, imo. At lunch with her publisher one day, the author wonders at the feasibility of living and surviving in such meager circumstances. So her publisher encourages her to experiment with the idea and publish what she finds out. During the next months she moves to a new town, gets some cheap housing and a minimum wage job. If at the end of each month, she has not earned enough to make the next month’s rent, she would consider the experiment in THAT town a failure. Then she would move to another town and give it a try again. At the point in the book that I am now, she has been in the Key West area, Portland, Maine, and the Twin Cities, in Minnesota with many different jobs (waitressing, housekeeping, nursing home attendant, and Walmart employee). The only way she can make it is to work two jobs, seven days a week, and she still almost winds up in a homeless shelter.Many of her experiences are harrowing, to say the least. And I was very sympathetic to her plight.

Being a hairstylist since I was seventeen years old, and never making more than $14,000 a year until I opened my own salon, I understood where she was coming from in many instances. If I had not had a husband who made decent money, there was no way I could have kept my independence without going into deep debt.

So while Jabem has not yet finished his required reading, I’m going to finish it. And he’s going to find a lot of post-it notes with Mom’s opinions, and observations about what the author is revealing. Sometimes I think my kids think that we’ve always been this “comfortable,” but I can remember many months, especially when dh was still in school, where we worried ourselves sick that we would not make it with out an embarrassing phone call to the folks.

I can’t wait for him to finish, now. Because it will be interesting to see where his mind goes with this topic. I’m glad VCU chose this book. Each of the incoming freshmen must read it so that they will all have something in common during discussion group meetings. And maybe, because I’ve read it also, he’ll have more insightful thoughts than he would have if I hadn’t read it.

I have severe asthma. When I was a little child we would go visit my grandparents. Everybody goes to visit their grandparents, right? Well, my grandparents raised show dogs (my grandfather was a dog show judge, so he knew what to look for) ~ Golden Retrievers. These were the most beautiful dogs, and I really wanted to hug them so badly. But long-haired dogs, and cats, are treacherous for me.

So when we visited, I was “banished” to the third floor of their house (where the dogs were not allowed). My poor grandmother would spend days before I came, cleaning and trying desperately to get rid of the dog hair, but it was probably a waste of time. I couldn’t last 15 minutes before my breathing was a struggle. So up to the third floor I went, while everyone else enjoyed a visit. Everyone felt bad for me, I think. Having to be on my own, up in a refurbished attic space. But I LOVED it up there. It was the most delightful space on Earth. It was all wooden; the floors, the ceiling, the walls, and built-in beds and dressers. I felt like I was a captain on a boat, out to sea, and this was my cabin. The room had two closets that were filled with tons of children’s books that my grandmother would buy from the library in bulk.

I honestly don’t remember learning to read. I don’t remember ever sounding out words or being taught sight words. But I do remember sitting up in my “boat,” as a very little child, reading to my heart’s content. At first, it was literally the “Dick and Jane” books. She had them all! Then I would read fables and fairy tales, which led to lots of daydreaming. Then I would read all those wonderful chapter books.

My grandmother was an avid reader. And I’m not sure if she was trying to get me to love reading. But she provided such a rich resource, that I’m sure my love of reading traces it’s origins back to those moments in her third floor “boat.”

As an adult, with three children of my own, I have a huge weakness for books. We have books on every reading level and I have a very hard time parting with them. I have wonderful memories of reading those words. My shelves are crammed with books, and I’ve probably loaned out many more that I’ll never see, because I can’t remember what I’ve loaned out.

I will read ANYTHING; fiction, non-fiction, biographies, self-help books, magazines, and my latest obsession is other people’s blogs. It’s all interesting to me. My dh thinks I spend way too much on books. In fact when he is paying the bills, and he gets to the Doubleday Book Club bill, he refers to it as the *Double-pay Book Club.*

One of the joys of my parenthood, was teaching my children to read. I taught them all. By the time they went off to school, they were each begining to read. We read each day and it was a fun time of day for us. Of my three children, only two seem to be passionate for reading. But I’m still working on Jabem. Maybe someday a book will spark a passion in him. Oftentimes, it only takes one book.

Currently, I am reading Everything’s Eventual, by Steven King. And next on my list is A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. I am also rereading Too Loud Too Bright Too Fast Too Tight, by Sharon Heller, because many in my family struggle with the issue of sensory defensiveness, including me.

As long as there is something to read in this world, I will never be bored. And for that I thank my Grandma, whom I loved very, very much!

I caught GB engrossed in his Star Wars book. Reading and eating, now that’s what I call good multi-tasking!