Recent Family Read Alouds (Winter 2024, age 11 & 9)
What a disappointing list this is. We have gotten out of our routine of reading together, partly due to having a toddler who really dislikes my attention being on a book and not HER, and partly because the older boys are reading independently themselves. But I truly miss it, and I notice a change in my connection with the boys. I’m hopeful for a better list this spring.
Here’s what we managed to complete (besides our homeschool co-op reading of Story of the World).
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Mooses with Bazookas by S.D. Smith. The boys absolutely loved this book, and it accomplished my goal of giving us a light, fun story to bond over in the dreary days of early January. This book is exceptionally silly, and I know it will not be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s certainly not classic lit. But it’s a pun-filled book that has stuck with my kids, creating inside jokes we still giggle over weeks later. (My son snatched it after our read aloud and re-read it several times on his own, insisting we renew it from the library twice.)
Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children by Conn Iggulden. My older boy loves Iggulden’s Dangerous Book for Boys series, so I thought we’d try his fiction story. It was meh. We felt like it was trying too hard and we really ended up slogging through it, hoping it would get better (it didn’t). We’ll stick with the author’s collection of miscellany, quotes, historical facts, etc. in his other series.
Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling Clancy Holling. We read this lenghty picture book in tandem with our geography studies of the Great Lakes. It’s a re-read for the older boy but he had forgotten it. I loved it and it was a perfect way to learn about the region. The boys said it was “fine” (but they now understand the industries of the area, the flow of the lakes into the St. Lawrence River, the names and locations of each lake, and an assortment of other facts. #winning)
We’re also part way through a new audiobook that we are liking but too soon to share a review of: The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry (which takes place at a lighthouse on Lake Superior).
