Book Selection ~ Term One: Week Four

Another book post to give you a look at what we'll be reading during week four and beyond. 

I'll possibly be reading this book aloud to all three boys, but definitely to Monkey and Monster. Each chapter is about a particular part of the world. I haven't skimmed the book or looked too closely at it yet, but the library only just ordered this book and I'm thrilled about that because I've been wanting to read this book to the boys for a couple of years now I think.

Since the movie is one of my favourites, I thought it was high time we read the book. I chose this as Munchkin's current literature selection - so technically it is modern literature. William Goldman wrote the screenplay for the movie, so I trust that the movie follows pretty closely to the book but we shall see as we read it.

This is a history read aloud selection for Monster. As I've mentioned previously already, we are reviewing World War Two again this year, but with a focus on the personal stories of the time period rather than battles and such. This book is about a French village that worked together to protect and hide Jewish refugees throughout the war and it sounds absolutely fascinating.

All of our non-fiction selections for the week. I am finding that now that we do a larger chunk of reading in the mornings, we are able to read through more junior non-fiction books. We will finish all these books this week.

Rather than do two separate blog posts, I thought I would combine my personal independent reading with the read aloud selections post for the boys.

These two books above are taking me a LONG time to read. Colleen McCullough and Maeve Binchy don't really believe in chapters. So instead both of these books are written in "parts" that are 100+ pages long. Thankfully there are breaks in the writing - where the story line might change slightly for example - and therefore I have a good stopping place. But I imagine these two books are going to take me most of the year to read - because they are also both very LONG books.

I've made a decision to try to read at least one book per term that corresponds with a topic that one or more of the boys is studying. Since Monster is reviewing WWII and we are focusing on the people and the personal aspects of the war, I thought I would read a book about Hitler. This book focuses on the beginning of his political career and takes place in the early 1920s during the political uprising/revolution in Munich at the time. It should prove interesting and thought provoking.

After reading Mary Poppins aloud to the boys, and learning that the author was Australian, I decided to read a biography about her. She was an interesting character herself and strongly disliked Walt Disney's portrayal of the book(s). Therefore I was keen to read more about her and learn more about her life. I'm thankful the library had this book and I'm eager to see what I will learn about P.L. Travers.

Finally, I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but our library has a "rule" that books that are older than five years, and aren't being borrowed regularly, are subject to be culled from the system without warning. Really popular authors are not immune to this rule, especially if their older books aren't circulating well. There are a STACK of older Jackie French books that I've not read yet, so I made a list of all her books our library system has, and I'm reading them in order from the oldest publication date to the newest. This way I hopefully won't miss out if they cull any of her older books. This was the very first book Jackie published - it is a collection of short stories - and I'm very interested to see how her short stories compare to her longer novels.