Family Read Alouds {Sept-Dec 2020}
This season of reading saw us revisiting some old favorites and meeting some new classics as well. In particular, the My Side of the Mountain series captured my boys’ hearts and led to a deep dive into the world of raptors and birds of prey. I just love when books are springboards into deeper learning!
I can’t wait to see how they rate our 2020 reads! I’ll be reviewing all of our blog posts from the previous year on New Year’s Eve and asking them to rank their top picks! Stay tuned… I’ll post here and on Instagram and Facebook.
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Books
Logan Pryce Makes a Mess (Tales from Maple Ridge series) by Grace Gilmore. I read the Tales from Maple Ridge series to my older son when he was 5, two years ago. He remembers them only vaguely. Now he is an independent reader, so I “reintroduced” them to him and they’re a huge hit. I read the first aloud to both my boys but big brother snatched the series to keep in his room. Illustrations on every page, moderately short chapters, and simple plot lines make these great books for young independent readers. Set in 1890s Illinois, the series focuses on the adventures of 8 year old Logan around his family farm and one room schoolhouse. Logan loves to tinker and build and invent in his little workshop in the barn. That fact has predictably transformed our garage into a fix-it-shop this week. 😉
Toaff’s Way by Cynthia Voigt. “We have about 30 pages left, I bet we’ll finish this tomorrow!” I said
“But I don’t want to finish it tomorrow! I don’t ever want to finish it,” replied the 5yo, followed by, “but read another chapter so we know what happens to Toaff next.” 💕 #bookwormproblems
This book has the most inviting autumnal cover, but it is told through the entirety of a year, following the adventures of gray squirrel Toaff. It’s not sentimentalized– it shows the harshness of the natural world, but in a way that is palatable to even my sensitive one. We see the challenges that creatures have to survive, how they interact with their environment and each other, how the seasons impact them. Characters come in and out of view frequently, with Toaff the only steady player. There is much room for inference skill practice as we read the clues described in squirrel point of view, and interpret what he’s talking about: describing the humans and animals of the farm/forest, the “machines” like cars, lawn mowers, chain saws. Our favorite was the description of the human “taking off his orange head” (helmet). And, it ends with the sweetest chapter- “Can a Tree Grow Lights?” 🎄
All in all, a beautiful read for nature minded kiddos. It’s taken us probably a month to read through this- 260 pages with very infrequent illustrations, primarily at the start of each season.
The Blizzard Challenge (Bear Grylls Adventures series). We read the first of this series together, and my 8yo eagerly completed the rest independently. I often do this with new series, if you’ve noticed that theme 🙂 My kids insist that this is NOT like Magic Tree House, in any way. But, it does have a magical traveling element to it. In this installment, Olly is transported via a mysterious compass from summer camp to a winter survival expedition. In the course of the adventure, readers learn many survival tips and information about blizzards, hypothermia, snow, and ice. (Afteword: said 8yo cried actual tears when he saw these books in the library book return bin. We renewed them to the max after that.)
Audiobooks
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney. Published in 1880, this is a sweet, tame tale of a hardworking, poor family with 5 siblings and a single mother. My kids were always anxious to turn this audiobook on in the car. It wasn’t terribly exciting, but they enjoyed the storyline and the characters. (Truthfully, I tuned it out in dribs and drabs while driving…)
On The Far Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. After listening to and then reading in paperback format the first of the series (My Side of the Mountain, 1960 Newbery Honor) several times over, we discovered the second in the series. In this case, the sequel was published 30 years after the original, which truthfully made me a tad skeptical. For naught though. It was as beautiful as the first and captured our hearts just as well. I had literal tears in my eyes at the conclusion of the final paragraph. And now my 7 yo wants to be a falconer when he grows up.
Frightful’s Mountain by Jean Craighead George. Predictably, we finished out the series. The third installment veers away from focusing on Sam Gribley and instead focuses on Frightful, the peregrine falcon. Their stories intersect and it’s a really lovely conclusion to the series.
The Vanderbeekers: Lost and Found by Karina Yan Glaser. We have loved this series so much; jumping into the latest installment felt like visiting old friends. This book deals with some difficult topics, including grief, homelessness, and foster care, but in typical fashion all is handled beautifully– without leaving readers despairing. I am grateful for this deeper dive to open my kids’ hearts to these topics they will have to grapple with in time.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea- Classic Starts abridgement. We’ve listened to several in the Classic Starts series. This one we begun as a family and I couldn’t hang… the narration and plot felt too dry for my taste. Lo and behold, my kids asked for it during their quiet time, so they finished the second half on their own. 🙂 I do like that they’re learning the plots of classic novels so that they have those mental pegs ready when they read the “real thing” later in their education.
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien. I remember reading this book as a kid, and liking it, but that was all I could recall. My kids LOVED it, and I was glad we revisited this together. A Newbery Award winner, this exciting book kept us looking for places to go in the car so we could listen to our story! It begins as a standard woodland creature story of a poor mouse whose house is about to be demolished by a tractor. But it explodes into a “story-within-a-story” as Mrs. Frisby’s path intersects with the Rats of NIMH, an extraordinary breed of highly intelligent creatures, former lab rats who were injected with a serum that caused them to be able to read and solve complex problems.
Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry. Narrated by Edward Herrmann! (If you’re a Gilmore Girls fan, you know this voice well- Richard Gilmore.) My boys were split on this one- one really liked it and the other kind of just tolerated it. A classic, though, and I’m glad we listened to it. I think it helped that we had read a picture book story of Assateague and Chincoteague recently.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. I know this is a Christmas classic, but we didn’t love it. We laughed a few times, but mostly didn’t mind when it was over.
The Nutcracker Mice by Kristin Kladsrup. We adored this! My 6yo in particular is obsessed with the Nutcracker, and he’s been asking so many questions about the “backstory” of the mice… So, this story was a treat for him! We enjoyed the imaginative plot as well as the creative reworking of the Nutcracker ballet which made the mice the good guys. We all wished we could watch the alternate story as a ballet in person!
And that’s a wrap! 2020 in the books!
