[work] As part of an ongoing enhancement to the literature curriculum, I have taken it upon myself to read a chapter or two from an appropriate novel to the small humans before nap time. The current book: Howl's Moving Castle
So far we have read: The Trumpet of the Swan Charlotte's Web Stuart Little Dealing With Dragons The Last Unicorn Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Fantastic Mr. Fox Matilda Babe the Gallant Pig Mr. Popper's Penguins
Mary Poppins
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Phantom Tollbooth
It was between Howl's Moving Castle and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for our current book, and I couldn't find my narnia boxed set anywheres, so it's time for kids to learn about feckless welsh fools I guess
but as time went on, and I asked them to recall details, they started gaining more and more sophisticated understandings of the stories, holding onto memories of the serialized adventures from one day to the next
Now every goose or duck we meet must be called "Louis" and every time someone is smart in some small way they must be called "clever like a fox" and their little vocabularies have these odd pockets of interesting phrases
One mother reported that her kid didn't want to go to bed and so declared with a sigh that she "had a great sorrow" because that line was in The Last Unicorn and we had a discussion on the meaning of the word sorrow
I'd just gotten to the bit in HMC where Martha reveals that she and Lettie have swapped lives in order to get the fortunes they most wanted instead of the ones dictated to them by ingary custom according to their birth-order
this was a constant struggle i had with my dad as a kid; i loved reading and was good at it, his response to that was "she shouldn't be reading books written for children because naturally, books written for children are unchallenging meaningless drivel"
It's hard enough to hit that balance with people who will give you the aforementioned rope with which to hang yourself, but kids will execute your work with an axe and not a noose.
People like to think that certain things are easy, because they have done them and they doubt their own capacity for greatness. But children are difficult in a way that a grown person is poorly equipped to really understand.
The Wednesday Witch and The Witch and the Ring are the ones I remember best and are some of the first ~Chapter Books~ I read by myself, so sounding about right for the age tier.
The Trumpet of the Swan
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
Dealing With Dragons
The Last Unicorn
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Matilda
Babe the Gallant Pig
Mr. Popper's Penguins Mary Poppins Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH The Phantom Tollbooth