I was excited to hear that my local library is offering an
Adult Summer Reading Program. I remember
the children’s programs I participated in… elaborate displays in the kids’
section of the library where I’d move my game piece along a path to show how many
books I’d read. And checking out stacks
of books and giving brief oral book reports to the librarian to prove that I’d
read the books. And the rewards of pizza
coupons and trinkets and silly little things that seemed huge.
This one’s a little different. When you become an adult, you don’t even have
to READ books to participate in the program!
All you have to do is check them out, and for each book you check out
you get to fill out a form that gets entered in a drawing for cool stuff. So, technically, this is a See Who Can Schlep
The Most Books To And From Their Car Program.
Come on, people. At least make
people turn their books back in before you let them fill out the form. Or, better yet, for this
stickler-for-punctual-returns library (50 cent fines, seriously??? $5 owed blocks my account, seriously???),
only allow patrons to fill out the form if they return their book ON
TIME. I’d never fill out a single
form.
So. I like reading
and I like a fair contest, so I don’t need no stinkin’ Adult Summer
Check-Books-Out Program. But I do like
extra motivation to read instead of spending too much time on the facebook-pinterest-google
Bermuda Triangle. So this summer I’m
going to blog about what I’m reading – books, kids books, articles, newspapers,
websites, whatever strikes my fancy.
This blog has no focus and comes and goes with my attention span and
bursts of creativity, but I think this will be a fun way to get a little focus
for the summer and hopefully read more.
First up: Magic Tree
House Books One and Two, by Mary Pope Osborne
I started reading the Magic Tree House series to Eden this
week. She’s ready for some longer
stories and loves to be read to, and I’d heard that this was a good series to
start with. We tried The Lion, The
Witch, and The Wardrobe awhile back but it was just a little too long and we
were just irregular enough with reading it that she got lost in the story. This series seems to be a good middle ground
between the Frog And Toad size story and a full length novel.
Pros:
~The characters’ names are Annie and Jack, and it really doesn’t get any cuter than that. Plus, with these kinds of stories you’ll find yourself reading “said Jack” and “Annie said” about a million times, so you want the names to be cute.
~The characters’ names are Annie and Jack, and it really doesn’t get any cuter than that. Plus, with these kinds of stories you’ll find yourself reading “said Jack” and “Annie said” about a million times, so you want the names to be cute.
~These books took about 30 minutes to read out loud, so we were able
to finish them the same day we started and Eden could remember the whole
story.
~The basic plot of each story involves the characters
looking through books in a tree house library and then time traveling to one of
the settings in one of the books. Jack
then uses the book and Annie uses her intuition to help make sense of their
surroundings and help them find their way through their adventures. I’m a big reader and a book nerd, so I love
that books are central to the plot and the kids aren’t googling with their
iphones to figure out what a Pteranodon eats.
~The siblings’ approach to life and reality is contrasted
interestingly. Annie is intuitive, imaginative,
can communicate with animals (not telepathically, but just reading body
language, nonverbals, etc.), believes easily in magic, and is trusting. Jack is scientific, skeptical, grounded in
physical proof, and needs evidence to believe.
The differences are obvious and do pigeonhole the personalities of the
characters, but it is interesting to see the contrasting approaches and how it
affects their adventures. I think it’s a
good introduction for young kids regarding how your perception of the world
affects how you interact with it.
~In the first book in the series, Dinosaurs Before Dark, Jack forgets his notebook and
shouts dramatically with bearded face, “I HAVE TO GO BACK!!” Or maybe that’s LOST. It felt like a shout out to all those adults
out there reading the book.
~The author’s middle name is Pope. How cool is that?
Cons:
~When Jack is unhappy with something Annie does, he
occasionally says, “I’m going to kill her.”
This bothers me. I realize that
Eden might be younger than the intended audience, but it still seems like a bit
much to express his mild frustration. I skipped the line or made up my
own.
~Annie is 7 and Jack is 8 ½.
In the second book in the series, The Knight at Dawn, they sneak out of
the house at 5:30am when their parents are sleeping and have an adventure, and
then sneak back in without their parents noticing. Um…
~Sentence fragments.
I’m guessing that the author was trying to use short sentences for the
benefit of early readers, but in her attempts, she uses almost more sentence fragments
than actual sentences (exaggeration, but there are a lot of them). I swear I’m not the grammar police, and I
firmly believe in breaking grammar rules if you have a good reason and IF YOU
KNOW YOU’RE DOING IT. But I think it’s
important for early readers to get a firm handle on the basics.
So, these books seem to be fun adventure stories that are a
good length to read to kids who are ready to transition to chapter books. They are definitely light reading – you won’t
find much meaningful commentary on life or people or Big Ideas, but they
capture your imagination and introduce kids to different time periods and ideas
that they might not have been exposed to.
Eden was really confused with why the Knight in the second book was nice
to the kids and took them back to the tree house, because he looked mean and
scary in his armor. I explained a tiny
bit about the code of chivalry and that was fun. I could see these books being a jumping off
point for further exploration of a topic or time period.
We’ll definitely read more of this series, and I’m also excited to try the
Little House series again and the C.S. Lewis series again. I think with more consistent reading times
built into our routine, we’d be able to get through those longer books fast
enough that she’d track with the story.
Now that summer’s here, more consistent reading times seems doable!
Next Up: How reading
a reprint of The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover changes the
way the book reads.
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