Archive | December 2007

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 16th

Dec16

Jane Austen herself was born on December 16, 1775. What’s your favorite Austen novel?

Also born on December 16th: Noel Coward (1896, playwright), Arthur C. Clarke (1917, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey), and Marie Hall Ets (1895, author of many children’s picture books including Gilberto and the Wind and Nine Days to Christmas).

Today is also Beethoven’s Birthday (1770). Will you be celebrating the birth of Schroeder’s favorite composer, and if so, how? I think I’ll play some of Beethoven’s more famous compositions and play guess the composer with the urchins.

Cybils for Giving

Dec15

All of the following books were nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction. Links are to a Semicolon review of the book in question.

For the gifted child looking for special opportunities: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.

For the baseball fan: The Aurora County All-Stars by Deborah Wiles or Edward’s Eyes by Patricia Maclachan.

For the strong, silent type: No Talking by Andrew Clements.

For the spiritual seeker: Leap of Faith by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley.

For the entrepreneur: The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies.

For the wild would-be writer: The Wild Girls by Pat Murphy.

For the dog lover and the soldier: Cracker by Cynthia Kadohata.

For the prospective spy: Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now by Lauren Child or The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.

For the guide dog trainer: The Friskative Dog by Susan Straight.

For the horse-lover: Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan.

For the songwriter and the artist: Louisiana’s Song by Kerry Madden.

For the upwardly mobile shopper chick: The Secret Identity of Devon Delaney by Lauren Barnholdt.

For the girl scientist who aspires to popularity: Social Experiments of Dorie Dilts: Dumped by Popular Demand by PG Kain.

For the person with hidden talents: The Talented Clementine by Sara Pennypacker.

For the student of African-American history: Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance by Eleanora E. Tate or Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis.

For the logical and the singular (and for those who live with a logically left-brained person): Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis.

For the internet addict: Dear Jo by Christina Kilbourne.

For the bear-lover: Bearwalker by Joseph Bruchac.

For the organist/pianist: A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban.

For the ambitious adventurer: Isle of Swords by Thomas Wayne Batson or Leepike Ridge by Nathan D. Wilson.

For the chess strategist with or without anger issues: Chess Rumble by G. Neri.

For the immigrant: Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate.

For the Korean-American adoptee: Kimchi and Calamari by Rose Kent.

For the girl who would be queen: The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street by Sharon G. Flake.

For the communication specialist: Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller.

For the potential desert survivor: Camel Rider by Prue Mason.

For the scrapbooking middle schooler: Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf by Jennifer L. Holm.

For the puzzle-solver: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen by Eric Berlin.

For the gardener/poet: Reaching for Sun by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer.

For the grower of giant pumpkins (or any giant vegetable): Me and the Pumpkin Queen by Marlane Kennedy.

For the older sister with responsibilities: The Middle of Somewhere by J.B. Cheaney.

Poetry Friday: Noel and Mistletoe

Dec14

I’m still working on my Christmas spirit. I’ve seen A Christmas Carol, and that didn’t do it. So some of the time I’m all about candles, and mistletoe, and kisses underneath, and at other times, sometimes in the same day, Mr. Belloc and I share a remarkably similar outlook on life and Christmas. Take your pick.

MISTLETOE
By Walter de la Mare

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen – and kissed me there.

OR

Lines for a Christmas Card
By Hilaire Belloc

May all my enemies go to hell
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

Homeschool Weekly Report: December 14, 2007

Dec14

I got this idea from Jessica at Trivium Academy, and she’s taking sign up links in her Mister Linky for those who choose to participate. Go to Trivium Academy for more information and links to other homeschool reporters.

Our homeschooling is at “low tide” this month as Melissa Wiley would say. We’re trying to do math every day, but not much else is scheduled, school-wise. On Wednesday, Eldest Daughter, who was home sick from work, told Karate Kid (10) that instead of doing his math lesson, he could read Hamlet, the entire play. I went along with it, and it ended up with Karate Kid and Brown Bear Daughter (12) on the couch reading the play aloud while Betsty-Bee listened desultorily. They seemed to enjoy the experience, but only made it through about half of the play on Wednesday. Hamlet is a long play. I showed them this rather memorable clip from Gilligan’s island. Warning: It sticks in the memory just like those bad Chirstmas songs. I always find myself humming, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” to the tune of ? whenever I think of Polonius the advice giver.

After they read about half of Hamlet aloud, KK and Brown Bear got tired of Hamlet’s shilly-shallying around, and they decided to memorize and act a scene from Comedy of Errors. We call it the “My Gold, Quoth He” scene.

Books read to Z-baby (6) this week:
Sometimes I’m Really Happy, God by Elspeth Campbell Murphy.

Rumpelstiltskin.

Karate Kid’s been reading Elllie McDoodle and Harry Potter. (Sounds like an intriguing couple, doesn’t it?)

Brown Bear Daughter was deliriously jubilant to receive a copy of Kiki Strike: The Empress’s Tomb by Kirsten Miller in the mail on Thursday. So, she’ll spend Thursday evening and Friday reading that sequel to the first Kiki Strike book, one of her favorites from last year.

We’re reading David Copperfield aloud in the evenings. It’s going slowly, but O.K. Brown Bear Daughter and Karate Kid are following along fairly well, and the little girls are listening because it’s either that or go to bed. And no one in my house ever wants to go to bed. Family aversion to beds. (Except for me, so the bed-hostility gene must be in Engineer Husband’s gene pool.)

Organizer Daughter (age 16) is still having math class this week and next, so she still has math lessons to do. And she and a friend are studying 20th century history with me, so they’re supposed to be reading about and studying the 1920’s in preparation for a test next week. I handed Organizer Daughter a picture book about Charles Lindbergh on Thursday, and she looked at me as if I were crazy. I happen to think picture books are perfectly acceptable for 16 year olds as well as preschoolers and adults.

Z-baby also spent much of the week trying to get someone to play card games with her: War, Alligator, and Match. I figure that’s mildy educational.

On Thursday, Karate Kid, Betsy-Bee, and Z-baby went with their father to the canoeing Christmas party. They all got to ride in a canoe and explore the flora of the local creek environment.

My Grown-up Christmas List

Dec12

I hate that song “Grown-up Christmas List.” (If you feel compelled to read a list of my least favorite Christmas songs, written last year, go here. Just don’t blame me if one of the songs gets stuck in your head on infinite repeat.) Anyway, I don’t like the grown-up Christmas list in the song because it sounds like some Miss America contestant trying to impress Bert Parks or the judges or someone in the audience: “No more lives torn apart,/That wars would never start,/And time would heal all hearts./And everyone would have a friend,/And right would always win,/And love would never end.” Wow! why not just wish for “world peace” and be done with it? This is a description of heaven, not Christmas. Nevertheless, I do have my own equally unrealistic grown-up Christmas list, and because this is therapy for me, I’m going to share it with all of you out there in blogland.

WARNING: This list may sound whiny and self-indulgent. I don’t mean to sound that way, but it’s a bad day for me, and I may. So, if you want to skip my grown-up Christmas list, you have my permission to do so. My children DO NOT have permission to skip this post. In fact, I’ll probably send them a link, not that I think they are capable of working miracles. . . Still, I think they should read what I really want for Christmas.

1. One week in which I do not have to take anyone anywhere nor pick anyone up from anywhere. A month would be even better, but I know fantasy when I write it.

2. A clean, organized house. This wish is beyond impossible, and I know it, but we’re talking wishes here. It is not possible for eleven people to live in one house together and keep it both clean and organized in the United States of America in AD 2007. Why? Too much stuff. Even poor people in the U.S. tend to have too much stuff, and we’re not poor. (Yes, I’ve tried Fly Lady. It may work for some people, but she hasn’t seen my house nor met my family.) But I don’t want to get rid of the stuff. I like my stuff, especially my books, all 10,000 or so of them, which leads me to my next item:

3. Enough bookshelves for all our books. In this desire, you might think I’m coming closer to reality, but you, too, have not seen my house. We have bookshelves on almost every available wall. We have a bookcase headboard. We have tall bookshelves, and we have short bookshelves. We have bookshelves in the closets. Yet the books keep multiplying. I think they mate in the night when we’re not looking and produce offspring. (Book Crush by Nancy Pearl meets Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson, and suddenly we have all the books I’m planning to buy for Christmas. That’s right, blame the authors. Why don’t they go on strike like the television writers and ease the strain on my poor groaning bookshelves?)

4. A working combination CD/cassette player. No, not reality either. It must keep working. We have five or six of these ugly things in various rooms in our house, and I am always told that when I want to play a cassette that I can’t because none of the cassette players work. And when I want I play a CD I have to use either my computer or the DVD player connected to the TV because none of the CD players work either. And right now the DVD player is unplugged so that we have an ourlet to plug in the Christmas lights. But I can’t throw any of the non-functional uglies away because someone uses them to listen to the radio.

5. A maximum of five working computers, one for every two people in the house. We have six or seven working computers. The reason I’m not sure about the number is that it changes from day to day. A monitor went bad the other day; we found another one and hooked it back up. Nobody has a working printer except me. I know this because everyone wants to email me their schoolwork and have me print it out for them. Some of our computers are connected to the internet; some are not. Some are supposed to be devoted to educational games for the younger children, but they always want to play the games on my computer. One of them is taking up space on a counter that I want to use to serve food. I think five computers should be enough for one family. Are you beginning to see why, books aside, my house is so cluttered?

6. A garage sale. I would like for my children to sell everything that is not nailed down, split the money with me, and not bother me with the details. Just don’t sell any of my books or my bookshelves. Don’t sell your younger siblings either, no matter how tempting it may be.

7. A menu plan for the entire year that will please all eleven people in the family, including the vegetarian, the non-beef eater, the gourmand who’s been to France, the child who lives on pizza and sugar only, the one who would live on chips if we allowed it, and the gentleman who always comes to the table late and wonders why there’s no food left for him. And all the meals would be cheap, easy to prepare, and delightfully delicious.

8. The kitchen cleaned up thoroughly after every meal without my having to remind anyone —ever. We actually have a schedule for kitchen cleaning. But all my readers have a curious disability: they can’t read their own names on the kitchen clean-up schedule posted on the refrigerator. I wouild like for them to learn to do so, and then I’d like it if they actually cleaned the kitchen every time it’s their turn.

9. Light. I want the lights in every room in my house to have a full complement of working light bulbs. And I want to turn them on whenever I want light and have them glow warmly and brightly. I like lights. Lights make me happy.

10. Since all of the things on this list are either cheap or impossible or both, I’d like a month long tour of Europe for my final Christmas gift. If you can’t get the other things, I’ll take the trip. Maybe when I get back the house will be clean, the books will be shelved, the food will be made, and the lights will be glowing to welcome me back home.

I can dream, can’t I?

Children’s Fiction of 2007: When Heaven Fell by Carolyn Marsden

Dec10

Two of Carolyn Marsden’s books for middle grade readers were published this year and nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction: Bird Springs (Semicolon mini-review here) and When Heaven Fell. I liked the latter book much better than I liked Bird Springs.

When Heaven Fell is the story of nine year old Binh who lives in post-war Vietnam and sells fruit and sodas to the schoolgirls on their way to school, a school she can’t afford because her family doesn’t always have enough money for food, much less for school uniforms and books. When the family finds out that Ba Ngoai, Binh’s grandmother, had a daughter during the war, a daughter who was sent away to America to be adopted because she was half-American, and that that grown-up daughter is coming to visit her mother, Ba Ngoai, everyone in the family is excited and expecting Auntie Di Hai to bring rich presents. Maybe she’ll even take them all to America, since all Americans are rich and since Di Hai has a house big enough for the entire extended family.

The story is told from Binh’s point of view, which makes the contrast in cultural expectations and in wealth even more stark and a bit painful. The book doesn’t go for the guilt trip, however, attempting to make Americans, and indeed Westerners in general, feel guilty for their great wealth in comparison to the rest of the world. Instead, I felt Di Hai/Sharon Hughes’ quandary as she tries to understand what it is these people, her family that she doesn’t really know or remember, expect from her and what she can give. I would pair this book with Mitali Perkins’ Rickshaw Girl to start a discussion of how to help people in poverty, what our responsibilities are as “rich” people, and what family obligations and charity involve. Also, for a discussion of cross-cultural adoption, you could read this book with Kimchi and Calamari by Rose Kent, another Cybils nominee about another adopted child, this time from Korea, who tries to find his natural mother and understand his cultural heritage.

Christmas Senses

Dec10

christmas tree2007

The Christmas Senses
By Betsy

I am hearing, I am eating,
I am seeing, I am touching,
I am smelling, all on Christmas day.
I hear… Christmas bells, I eat… Christmas cookies,
I see… the Christmas lights on the house, I touch… the decorations,
and I smell… the gingerbread men, all on Christmas day.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born December 10th

Dec10

George MacDonald was born December 10, 1824. He wrote At the Back of the North Wind, The Light Princess, The Princess and the Goblin, and The Princess and Curdie, all fairy tale/fantasies for children. I’ve read all four of these, and I like best The Light Princess, the story of a princess who was cursed at birth with “no gravity,” both in the literal and the figurative sense. I tried to read one of MacDonald’s romances a long time ago, but I don’t remember finishing it. C.S. Lewis was quite fond of MacDonald’s adult fantasies, Phantastes and Lilith. I think I also tried one of these long ago but didn’t understand it (which proves that I’m not C.S. Lewis’ intellectual equal, not that I ever thought I was). MacDonald also had a long and successful marriage which produced six sons and five daughters.

Some people think it is not proper for a clergyman to dance. I mean to assert my freedom from any such law. If our Lord chose to represent, in His parable of the Prodigal Son, the joy in Heaven over a repentant sinner by the figure of ‘music and dancing’, I will hearken to Him rather than to man, be they as good as they may.” For I had long thought that the way to make indifferent things bad, was for good people not to do them.”

I wonder how many Christians there are who so thoroughly believe God made them that they can laugh in God’s name; who understand that God invented laughter and gave it to His children… The Lord of gladness delights in the laughter of a merry heart.”

Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness —the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.”

How do you cultivate “Sacred Idleness”? What does that mean to you? Or is it just blather?

Geroge MacDonald also wrote a book poetic devotionals, one devotional poem for each day of the year. The poem for December reads thus:

What makes thy being a bliss shall then make mine
For I shall love as thou and love in thee;
Then shall I have whatever I desire
My every faintest wish being all divine;
Power thou wilt give me to work mightily,
Even as my Lord, leading thy low men nigher,
With dance and song to cast their best upon thy fire.

If it helps, I believe the poem is addressed to God.

Advent: December 10th

Dec10

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Are you feeling that this time is hallowed and gracious? Are your nights wholesome, free of evil witchery? I hope you are having a blessed Advent.