Our Small Corner: book list

Showing posts with label book list. Show all posts

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Compiling a 2016-2017 List of Books...

Some read-aloud ideas for summer and beyond!

Fiction (Literature)

Our focus for the year is stories referenced in the TV series Once Upon a Time, plus a few other books just because
Journey to the Center of the Earth (currently reading this!)

Around the World in 80 Days

The Twenty-One Balloons

The Phantom Tollbooth (we quite possibly may listen to this excellent audiobook version in the car again)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Through the Looking Glass
Grimm's Fairy Tales (selected stories)
The Red Fairy Book & The Blue Fairy book (selected stories)

The Odyssey
Pinocchio
Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (selected stories)
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (selected stories)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Peter Pan
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Through the Looking Glass
The Lady of Shallot
The Story of Mulan
Beowulf: A New Telling
King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table
Rip Van Winkle

And for audiobooks, we're looking at:
The Hobbit
and The Lord of the Rings books one, two, and three
[I think I would enjoy listening to these as much as the kids would!]

Geographical books
One of the options for high school social studies in California is a year of world geography/cultures. So I'm looking at vintage books (listed first), and the more modern ones... Maybe we'll mix and match!
The Royal Road to Romance
The Glorious Adventure
The Flying Carpet
Seven League Boots

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe
Notes from a Small Island
A Walk in the Woods
In A Sunburned Country

I'll post more later, as I still have nature and science to cover!

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Bookish Thoughts...

We finally finished A Wrinkle In Time, and of course, the first thought to cross our minds was, what do we read next? The obvious answer for now is A Wind in the Door, since Wrinkle was so thoroughly liked by all.

But then, what about after that?

This morning, on my way to work, I saw a couple of hot air balloons, and immediately decided that after our adventures with the Murry family (I think the 3rd in the series, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, is more enjoyable for older kids even than mine), we should revisit one of my all-time favorite books... The Twenty-One Balloons. My husband then said, "After that, you should read Around the World in 80 Days. They'd love that book!"

So I think we're in for a summer of adventurous travel (yes, we keep up with read-alouds all year)!

Other titles that then came to mind include:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Time Machine
and The Phantom Tollbooth.

I know there are plenty more of this genre out there, but I am only looking at summer!

This will actually transition very nicely into our fall lit plans—books/stories referenced to in the series Once Upon a Time.

I think we'll start with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as that also fits with adventure travel, and then (shown here in no particular order), I hope to read:

Grimm's Fairy Tales (selected stories)
The Red Fairy Book, and The Blue Fairy book (selected stories)
Pinocchio
Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (selected stories)
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (selected stories)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Peter Pan
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Through the Looking Glass
The Lady of Shallot
The Story of Mulan
Beowulf: A New Telling
King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table
Rip Van Winkle

I think that's at least sufficient to start with!

I love book planning.

And of course, there is our own reading that is always going on...

I am currently reading The Help, on our librarian's recommendation, while waiting for The Boy to finish The Martian. The Girl is three quarters of the way through Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone! She still reads a little slowly, but hey, she reads! We're also reading The Cloud Collector's Handbook (me); Spaceflight: A Smithsonian Guide and Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide (The Boy); and Eyewitness: Mammal and Slither & Crawl (The Girl).

Other books we're thinking about, for the Afternoon Basket, include:
Frost Hollows & Other Microclimates
The Plant Hunters: True Stories of Their Daring Adventures to the Far Corners of the Earth
DNA
Random titles (and to-be-added titles) from our selection of Intriguing/Unusual History Books, such as one we have on hand right now: Outbreak! Plagues That Changed History
Death by Black Hole & Other Cosmic Quandaries
Coville's version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which we plan to see on stage in May!

I'm sure I'll come up with more... more is never the problem when it comes to me and books!

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Books to go with Our Island Story...

My kids are enthralled by British history, and Our Island Story, by H. E. Marshall, outdated though it may be, is a lovely story-like approach to said history.

Some books I think would compliment it (from the Roman invasions of Britain to the Victorian age)...

Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff (movie version perhaps?)
The Story of Siegfried, by James Baldwin
King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Beowulf the Warrior, by Ian Serrailier
The Story of Roland, by James Baldwin
Black Fox of Lorne, by Marguerite de Angeli
The Hidden Treasure of Glaston, by Eleanore M. Jewett
For Cassia: Eleanore: Crown Jewel of Aquitaine, by Kristina Gergory
Robin Hood, by Roger Lancelyn Green
The Door in the Wall, by Marguerite de Angeli
For The Boy: Castle Diary: The Journey of Tobias Burgess, Page, by Richard Platt
The Canterbury Tales, by Geraldine McCaughrean
Men of Iron, by Howard Pyle
The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain
For Cassia: Elizabeth: Red Rose of Tudor, by Kathryn Lasky
The Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen, by Geraldine McCaughrean
The Shakespeare Stealer, by Gary Blackwood
Master Cornhill, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (movie version perhaps?)
David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, etc., by Charles Dickens
For The Girl: Victoria: May Blossom of Brittania, by Anna Kirwa

There are also World Landmark books, books like A Little Princess, Horrible Histories, etc., that would make good additions!

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Bookish Thoughts...

I'm listening closely these days to my kids, to see what they are thinking about, what intrigues them, and how I can help them build on those interests. With that in mind, besides all the fun reading I have here, I'm creating possible book title lists to help them explore those interests at a deeper level...

For The Girl, the world currently revolves around princesses/queens (real ones, not fantasy), and animals. She's really enjoying the Royal Diary: Elizabeth I, Red Rose of Tudor, for example. So with all that in mind, here are some titles I am considering:

Royalty:
Various selections from the Royal Diaries series
And from the Landmark/World Landmark series:
Queen Elizabeth & the Spanish Armada, by Frances Winwar
Marie Antoinette, by Bernardine Kielty
Cleopatra of Egypt, by Leonora Hornblow
Queen Victoria, by Noel Streatfeild
Catherine the Great, by Katherine Sherman
and so forth!

Animal Related:
Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton-Porter
All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot (maybe the others in the series as well)
The Scientist in the Field series, by various authors
The Story of Dr. Doolittle, by Hugh Lofting

And for The Boy, the world is about science, inventions, Victorian times, and Steampunk. Titles under consideration include:

Fiction:
The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne

Victorianism:
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
Dodger, by Terry Pratchett (also falls under Steampunk)

Science:
A Really Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
The Magic of Reality, by Richard Dawkins
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Childhood, by Oliver Sacks

I'm sure there are other titles that will come to mind as we go, and other interests that will spring up!

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Books to Consider...

Some books I am putting on my "short-list" for 2013-2014... I will likely add to or subtract from this list, but I wanted to write it down so as not to forget titles and authors! And, for specialized lists pertaining to each child, you can look here.

Short Stories:
Gudgekin the Thistle Girl & Other Tales, by John Gardner
The King of the Hummingbirds & Other Tales, by John Gardner
Dragon, Dragon & Other Tales, by John Gardner
Nine Unlikely Tales, by E. Nesbit
The King of Ireland's Son, by Padraic Colum
Tatterhood & Other Tales, by Ethel Johnston Phelps
The Book of Dragons, by E. Nesbit
The Arabian Nights, by Sir Richard Burton, or the Andrew Lang version
Asgard Stories: Tales from Norse Mythology, by Mary H. Foster
Rip Van Winkle, by Washington Irving

Shakespeare Stories:
(All by Bruce Coville - illustrated children's versions)
King Lear
Macbeth
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hamlet
Romeo & Juliet
The Tempest
The Winter's Tale
Twelfth Night

General Read-Alouds
(some are historical, some are not. Some will be in our Afternoon Basket, some at bedtime in addition to the Harry Potter series):
Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
Questing Knights of the Faerie Queene, by Geraldine McCaughrean
The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart
Black Ships Before Troy, by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Wanderings of Odysseus, by Rosemary Sutcliff
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthu's Court, by Mark Twain
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg
King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table, by Roger Lancelyn Green
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
The Five Children & It (and sequels as desired), by E. Nesbit
The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit
The Princess Bride,by William Goldman
In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aenid, by Penelope Lively
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin
Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by L. Frank Baum
The Prince & the Pauper, by Mark Twain
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by Jacqueline Kennedy
The Story of the Treasure Seekers, by E. Nesbit
At the Back of the North Wind, by George MacDonald
A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park
Pinocchio: The Tale of a Puppet, by Carlo Collodi
The Princess & the Goblin, by George MacDonald
Summerland, by Michael Chabon
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, by Maryrose Wood
Ronia, the Robber's Daughter, by Astrid Lindgren
Homer Price, by Robert McClosky

Nature Reading:
The Thirteen Moons series, by Jean Craighead George

Mathematical Reading:
The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Tales, by Malba Tahan
The Sir Cumference series, by CindyNeuschwander
Mathematicians Are People Too: Stories from the Lives of Great Mathematicians, volumes 1 & 2

Books to Read To/With The Girl
The Girl Who Could Fly, by Victoria Forester
Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell
The School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani
A Tangle of Knots, by Lisa Graff
The Light Princess, by George MacDonald
Emily of New Moon, by L.M. Montgomery
Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field
The Seven Wise Princesses: A Medieval Persian Epic, by Wafa Tarnowska
Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield
Misty of Chincoteague, by Marguerite Henry
Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink
The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge

Books I Plan to Recommend to The Boy:
The Name of This Book is Secret, by Pseudonymous Bosch
Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery & a Very Strange Adventure, by Lissa Evans
Black and Blue Magic, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Eragon, by Christopher Paolini
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznik
Hotel Under the Sand, by Kage Baker
Dodger, by Terry Prachett
The House With a Clock In Its Walls, by John Bellairs
Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Maybe: Call of the Wild, by Jack London

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Narnia Lit List Revised

This is a revised version of my original list that focuses on fewer titles overall. It assumes a basic familiarity with Greek and Roman mythology, and perhaps a little Norse mythology as well.

King Lear (children's version)
Questing Knights of the Faerie Queene
The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
William Shakespeare's Macbeth (children's version)
William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (children's version)
The Arabian Nights
Prince Caspian
Rip Van Winkle (reminds me of the sleeping Lords in Voyage)
The Wanderings of Odysseus
King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
William Shakespeare's Hamlet (children's version)
In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aenid
Gulliver's Travels
The Silver Chair
The Seven Wise Princesses: A Medieval Persian Epic
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (children's version)
The Prince and the Pauper
The Horse and His Boy
Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories
The Story of the Treasure Seekers
The Magician's Nephew
At The Back of the North Wind
Paradise Lost for Children
Stories From Dante
Animal Farm
The Last Battle

I also think that Our Island Story would make a nice addition to this study, perhaps ead at the rate of three (very short) chapters each week.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Narnia Lit Study - Original

NARNIA LIT STUDY
Helpful Books that I Used in Planning
The Way Into Narnia: A Reader's Guide
A Field Guide to Narnia

To Be Read Beforehand (Spring 2013):
A Wonder Book for Boys & Girls and Tanglewood Tales (Greek mythology)
Asgard Stories: Tales from Norse Mythology
Roman Myths (also called The Orchard Book of Roman Myths)
The Aunt and Amabel, E. Nesbit (you can find it in this free-to-download collection)
The Snow Queen
And possibly When The Siren Wailed, to get the feeling of wartime London/England

Here are the main books, and supplemental reading in the approximate order in which I intend to go through them. Those with a * are to be read concurrently with the Narnia book at hand. SS=short story, CB=chapter book. Books in {these brackets} are optional for us...

King Lear (SS)
Questing Knights of the Faerie Queene (children's version of Spenser's Faerie Queen)
The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
William Shakespeare's Macbeth* (SS)
William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream* (SS)
Prince Caspian
Mermaid Tales from Around the World* (Book of short stories)
The Arabian Nights* (Book of short stories)
Rip Van Winkle (reminds me of the sleeping Lords in Voyage)
The Wanderings of Odysseus (CB)
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
{The Book of Dragons* (CB)}
{King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table (may read this later? Or before VDT?)}
William Shakespeare's Hamlet* (SS)
In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aenid (CB)
Gulliver's Travels (CB)
A modern translation of Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls (poem)
The Silver Chair
{The Ancient Celtic Festivals* (SS)}
The Seven Wise Princesses: A Medieval Persian Epic (SS)
A children's version of As You Like It (SS)?
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (SS)
The Prince and the Pauper (CB)
The Horse and His Boy
{Turkish Folk Tales* (SS)}
Tales from Ancient Persia* (Book of short stories)
Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories (Book of short stories)
The Story of the Treasure Seekers (CB)
{The Mystery of Atlantis or Looking for Atlantis (both SS)}
The Magician's Nephew
Daedalus and Icarus* (SS)
At The Back of the North Wind (CB)
Paradise Lost for Children
{The Narnian Suite from Poems by C.S. Lewis}
Stories From Dante (Book of short stories)
Animal Farm (CB)
The Last Battle

Other Narnia-Related Books
The Narnia Academy
The Narnia Cookbook or The Unofficial Narnia Cookbook
Art Adventures in Narnia
Chronicles of Narnia Pop-Up Book
Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia: Boxen

Other Books That Could Go Well With This Study
The Princess and the Goblin; The Princess and the Curdie
Riddle-Master
Five Children and It; The Phoenix and the Carpet; The Story of the Amulet
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Wind in the Willows
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
Tatterhood Tales
Stories from Ireland
Stories from England
The King of Ireland's Son

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Ahoy there!

Inspired by listening to Peter Pan on audio book, we are launching into a study of pirates, with books, movies, and documentaries...

In addition to reading the pirate sections in The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls, I found these books at the library:

I also have Treasure Island on my Kindle, which I think the kids are old enough to enjoy!

There are a ton of documentaries out there, many available through Netflix. So I culled the list down a bit, and we're going to try these:

And no pirate study would be complete without movies!

We are pretty excited about this study, more so than I think we have been in a while! I'm keeping it pretty low key, believe it or not with the resources above, by NOT adding in tons of extra activities. I figure we'll read a chapter or two a day from one of the books, read Treasure Island a chapter or two at a time, watch a documentary each week, and enjoy the movies on our family movie nights. Nothing spectacular... just fun exploration of a topic!

And then I realized I never posted pictures from the pirate ship (aka Tall Ship) tour that we took.

By the way, this ship was The Interceptor in Pirates of the Caribbean! Pretty cool, huh?

And so we set sail...

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

This should keep me busy for a while...

Part of the Master's program I am starting in the fall is the requirement that I take the college's version of the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) in literature. And so I have a reading list to finish by the end of 2013's summer session. I have read a fair bit of this list in the past, but I think I should re-read those that I am familiar with already. Ready? Here it is in all its glory...

British (All MA candidates):

Chaucer: from The Canterbury Tales: "General Prologue" and Prologue and Tales told by the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and the Nun's Priest
Shakespeare: Othello, Merchant of Venice
Spenser: Book I of Fairie Queene
Milton: Books 1, 2, and 9 from Paradise Lost
Swift: from Gulliver's Travels, Book 4: "Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms"
Pope: Epistle I from "An Essay on Man"
Austen: Emma
Blake: "The Lamb," "The Tyger," "The Little Vagabond," "Holy Thursday," "The Chimney Sweeper" (both from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience).
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Keats: "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear"
Wordsworth: "Tintern Abbey" and "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"
Shelley: "Ode to the West Wind" and "Defense of Poetry"
Browning: "Andrea Del Sarto"
Rossetti: "In an Artist's Studio" and "Winter my Secret"
Hardy: Jude the Obscure
G. M. Hopkins: "God's Grandeur" and "Pied Beauty"
Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
James Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

American (All MA candidates):

Selected poetry:

Anne Bradstreet, "The Prologue To Her Book," "Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of our House," "The Flesh and the Spirit," "The Author to Her Book" and Phyllis Wheatley, "On Being Brought from Africa to America," "To his Excellency G. Washington," "On Imagination"
Dickinson: selections (numbers as listed in Johnson, ed., The Complete Poems of ED):
49, 106, 165, 173, 178, 181, 216, 255, 258, 371, 426, 974, 985, 994, 84, 106, 175, 184, 185, 193, 204, 216, 280, 299, 1036, 1071, 1056, 1116, 70, 124, 185, 186, 230, 252, 284, 302, 319, 521, 1184, 1219

Whitman: Leaves of Grass
Thoreau: Walden, "Resistance to Civil Government"
Hawthorne: "Young Goodman Brown," "Rappacini's Daughter," "The Birth-mark"
Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Melville: The Piazza Tales:
- The Piazza
- Bartleby, The Scrivener
- Benito Cereno
- The Lightning-Rod Man
- The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles
- The Bell-Tower
Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom
Ellison: Invisible Man
Roth: Call It Sleep

Selected poetry, modern and contemporary (students can find most of these works online):

Modernist Poetry:

Wm. C. Williams:—“Spring and All,” entire work, parts I-XXVIII; “Young Sycamore,” “Paterson: the Falls,” and “The Dance"
Pound—“Ballad of the Goodly Fere,” “Canto I,” “Canto XIV,” “In a Station of the Metro,” “Sestina: Altaforte”
Eliot—“The Four Quartets,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
H.D.-- “’Sea Rose,” “Chance Meeting,” “White World,’ “Phaedra,” “The Shepherd,” “A Dead Priestess Speaks”
Gertrude Stein—Tender Buttons
Mina Loy—“Lunar Baedeker,” “Moreover, the Moon”

Contemporary Poetry:

Lyn Hejinian-- My Life
John Ashbery—“Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror”
Robert Creeley—“Something,” “Words,” “The Finger,” “The Act of Love,” “The Pattern,” “The Language,” “Distance”
George Oppen— “The Forms of Love,” “Boy’s Room,” “Of Being Numerous”
Alice Notley— from The Descent of Alette: [“a car” “awash with blood,”] [“I stood waiting”], [“I walked into”], [“Presently”], [“The water, of the river”], and “At Night the States”
Yusef Komunyakaa- “Facing It,” “My Father’s Love Letters,” “Believing in Iron”

For students in rhetoric/pedagogy/literacy:
From Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, Cushman, Kingten, Kroll & Rose (Eds.)

Harvey Graff, "The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Our Times"
Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole, "Unpackaging Literacy"
Luis Moll and Norma Gonzalez, "Lessons from Research with Language Minority Students"
Shirley Brice Heath, "Protean Shapes in Literacy Events: Ever-Shifting Oral and Literate Traditions" Deborah Brandt, "Sponsors of Literacy"
David Bartholomae, "Inventing the University"
James Paul Gee, "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction" and "What is Literacy?"
Lisa Delpit, "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse"

From Cross-Talk in Comp Theory, Villanueva, V. (Ed.)

Mina Shaugnessy, “Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing”
James Berlin, “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories”
Mike Rose, "Narrowing the Mind and Page: Remedial Writers and Cognitive Reductionism"
Patricia Bizzell, "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing" Victor Villanueva, "On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism"

So, you think that might keep me busy for a while? Many of the classics I found free for my Kindle already, at least the British classics. I haven't gotten any further than that yet!

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Fun Stuff...

Cyrus is building a paper world, all with free downloads from Made by Joel.

We didn't do anything remotely homeschooly yesterday, since I worked from 6 am to 1 pm, then took a nap, then tried to go to class. Thankfully the class was cancelled for the day, so I ended up with a lovely evening at home. So now we're gearing up for the week... I thought we'd just have fun with homeschooling for a while, so I put a bunch of books on hold for Cassia at the library (and Cyrus can listen in) that have to do with apples, pumpkins, etc. Kind of autumn things. This will obviously be an apple week!