Her Bi-Weekly Book Collection

We go to the public library usually twice a week. Before we leave, I ask Willow to sort through her chapter books and stack the ones that she's read by the door. Here's her stack for today, about the same size as usual:

Will does read many books cover to cover in one sitting, but she also has an assortment of half-read books all over the house, picked up and reshelved by any passing parent, and she doesn't seem to mind losing track of and then re-finding and re-finding her place in books, either, so any particular book in the stack may have been read in hours or weeks.

Returning books to the library is generally one of Matt's homeschool chores, as is picking up held items from the library's drive-up window. You can go online and request that any library item be held for you to pick up at the library drive-up, so this is generally how I choose all of our non-fiction and homeschool books, from dinosaurs to Pompeii to how peanut butter is made, as well as related software programs and audiobooks and music CDs and DVDS, as well as my own novels and cookbooks and craft books and parenting books and homeschooling idea books, as well as all of Matt's stuff. Just this morning I taught Willow how to use the online catalogue, too, sooooo.... Yeah, it's Matt's chore.

At the library, Syd picks her own picture books, and she's permitted to choose one DVD, too, and I might check out some of the magazines that I've grabbed to read while the girls play, and Will and I both work to choose her next huge stack of books. She looks through the shelves of first chapter books while I look in the regular juvenile fiction section for longer books. It's a challenge, often, to find regular juvenile fiction that's appropriate for a six-year-old--just because she can read a more sophisticated book doesn't mean that she's interested in (or ready for!) more sophisticated themes. We've had good luck with Nancy Drew so far, and the Black Stallion series, and the Misty of Chincoteague series, and the Little House series, and the Moffetts series, and sometimes the Boxcar Children books, although those get a bit repetitive (the number of times that the children speak the word "boxcar" really gets on my nerves). So far Roald Dahl, Beverly Cleary, and E.B. White are no-gos. Someday soon, we'll all have the pleasure of their company, I hope.



Right this second, Sydney is already in bed, listening to a Magic Tree House audiobook. It's later than usual, so it sounds like Matt skipped the night-night books and poetry in favor of just getting the kids in bed with their eyes closed, but she and I had an extra-long time this morning with Magic School Bus and That's Good! That's Bad! and Robert Frost and Eyewitness Skeleton, not to mention the Readable Feasts program at the library this evening in which Ms. Janet read books about Alaska to the children and then they all made baked Alaska together, so Syd's happy to simply lie down for a change. As I write this, Matt's telling Willow, for the fifth time, to put down her book and get into bed, and his voice just got lower, which means that firm speaking is afoot.

After the girls are in bed I'll sew for a while (I'd like to get Will's pants patched with their heart appliques tonight, because I know she'd like to wear them to our tour of the fire station tomorrow morning), and then I'll close up shop, turn out the lights in the study, hop into bed, and read for a while.

Runs in the family, this book thing.