Tag Archives: roald dahl

Summer Reading, Part II: Feelings and Classics

Picking up where we left off, it’s time to talk about what I assigned my new fourth grader to read this summer. I started the summer with just one book I wanted her to read, figuring one book plus the typing program I wanted her to do and the Italian language lessons she wanted to do (via Mango, free through the library!) would be plenty. But she asked for books and book projects so I obliged.

Feelings

Why feelings? Because tweens have a LOT of them. I worked through this book with my oldest the year I homeschooled the kids, which was also fourth grade. Truth be told, we haven’t quite finished but we’re almost through it. We read some together, she read some on her own, and she did the exercises in a notebook. I’m not sure whether it’s helped her, but it’s helped me understand what she thinks about and how she sees herself and that is useful info as a parent. At the very least it’s opened up some conversation. The book:

Classics

As a starting point, we got out the literature curriculum I used with my oldest when I homeschooled fourth grade and looked through the book list. We ended up with:

I had all kinds of activities we could’ve done, but we mostly didn’t. What we did do: she did some of the homeschool curriculum reading comprehension questions for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so I could gauge what she retained/understood, we (mostly she) made cabbage soup for dinner one night (like the Buckets ate for every meal), and she watched the movies for each book. I think there was some drawing of spiders and maybe Templeton the rat in there too. I had the idea of making donuts because it seems like everyone in Charlotte’s Web is eating donuts for breakfast all the time but we just ran out of summer before I had the energy envelope to do anything like that. We did have some informal conversations about the differences between the movies (particularly for Charlie and Chocolate Factory) and the books; Charlotte’s Web actually is very very close to the book.

Though I’ve seen both movies (the Gene Wilder as Wonka version, of course) many times, I’m not sure I had actually read either book all the way through so I welcomed the opportunity to do so. Then I learned a little about E. B. White (did you know he’s the same White as The Elements of Style?) and read The Trumpet of the Swan to myself in honor of his birthday (July 11). I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as good as Charlotte’s Web or Stuart Little.

That was it. Next time we’re gonna talk about CHICKENS. UNUSUAL chickens…

Book Review: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl

Earlier this year I picked up The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl to read with my daughter (who is now 8), having been under the mistaken impression that it is a children’s book. Eek – it is NOT. It’s a good book, and I’m glad I read it, but I’m equally glad that she lost interest after a couple of stories.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

The book is an interesting mix of stories, including several fictional stories as well as an autobiographical story and one true narrative. Overall, though, my feeling about the book is that it’s pretty dark. One story in particular follows young boys as they strap another child to a train track and watch as the train passes over him (!) – this story prompted my daughter to ask, “Mom, why would someone write that story?” My response was something along the lines of how there are bad people in the world, like those mean characters, and sometimes writers will write those stories to help them understand the bad things in the world. I told her that all stories present some truth from the world and have something to teach us, but that we don’t have to read those stories if we don’t like them. That was the last story we read together in the book, but I went on to finish it myself.

I give the book three stars, because it was well-written, engaging, and interesting…but not amazing and slightly disturbing. The autobiographical story is illuminating as to the author’s life though repetitive if you’ve read part of his autobiography (as I have). I do think it should be clearly advertised as NOT A CHILDREN’S BOOK, though!

Book Review: St. George, Rusty Knight and Monster Tamer by John Powell

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When I requested John Powell’s Saint George: Rusty Knight and Monster Tamer from NetGalley sometime last year, I confess I totally thought it was going to be a story of the legend of St. George, who is often portrayed as a slayer of dragons. That, of course, wasn’t the case at all (ha, oops!), but it was a really enjoyable read. Part of the novelty for my daughter was reading together on my Kindle (ooohhh! exciting!), but she really did enjoy the book and so did I.

The Goodreads synopsis is super short:

Humorous tales about an impoverished knight in old England who discovers a way to tame the great variety of monsters that roam the land in the days of Good King Freddie the Umteenth and his prime minister Merlin the Whirlin.

“Humorous” is the perfect word to describe the story. If I remember correctly, Powell says in the beginning of the book that he originally came up with these stories as bedtime stories for his kids – and you can tell! They’re just funny and perfectly geared toward little kids. They follow a predictable structure (all of them start with “Now it was in the days of Good King Freddie…”) and in each story Saint George has to take on some ridiculous monster problem or another – which usually can be solved by providing the monsters with the magical, monster-taming marmorguglehupf cake (my daughter thought that word was hilarious).

The stories are full of all sorts of absurdities with names just as outlandish as marmorguglehupf cake, ideas like George’s “armor-on week” and “armor-off week” (during which he sleeps – for the whole week!), and other silly, non-sensical things (like a king who can’t read!). The crazy names and nonsense action reminded me a good deal of Roald Dahl, and prompted the same kind of laughter from my daughter as did The BFG. There were only two drawbacks for me with the books: 1) each story was a little too long to be a bedtime read-aloud but it didn’t work to break them up so we just pushed through a whole story in each sitting; and 2) there was one entire story that REALLY is not suited for American kids – or their parents! We just couldn’t follow the thread on playing cricket (our loss, though – I’m sure to a British kid the story would’ve been as hilarious as the rest).

All in all, I’d give it 4 stars and definitely recommend it! I think it’ll be another year or two before my next daughter is ready for it, but I’ll look forward to rereading the silliness with her when she’s ready!