booandbunny

“You’ve been in that book every free minute this weekend,” he said this morning.

I immediately got defensive, mostly because the whole weekend had been one long free minute, a precious gift in between errands, lawn cuttings, kids’ sports and the rigors of keeping them focused these last days of school. “I barely read this weekend! I was with you guys the whole time!”

He gave an inch, admitting that there weren’t many “free minutes” but still, was it really that good that I had to keep walking around sneaking in a page when I could?

Yup, especially because I haven’t read it before.

And I’ll probably read it again. Now that I’m back to reading regular-like (more than magazines/Websites and all those many books I did before the kids could read for themselves) I’m amazed at how much I’ve consumed since the spring of last year. A quick rundown:

Six Harry Potters
Seven Chronicles of Narnia
Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza
Flora and Tiger, short stories by Eric Carle
Numerous works by several of the other authors my children love
The Van Gogh Café by Cynthia Rylant
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Old Town in the Green Groves by Cynthia Rylant (BTW, Rylant did a great job recapturing Wilder’s cadence, tone and even the emotions of my very favorite pioneer.)
The Da Vinci Code

I still read with the kids … beside the kids … near the kids. I don’t know how to say it. If I’m unfamiliar with what they have cracked open I try to share it with them, but it’s getting hard to keep up! My daughter and I have run through most of the American Girl library and I’m trying to click a switch in my brain that will carry me through the world of the Bionicles with my son. He very much enjoys the comic books that come in the mail from Lego and, thankfully, Hubby is happy to dive in here. That makes room on my plate, so to speak, to read Mr. 5 books such as A Big Cheese for the White House: The True Tale of a Tremendous Cheddar by Candace Fleming and illustrated by S.D. Schindler.

It’s the story of a community effort to ensure no cheese but Cheshire Cheddar was served at the White House and how the 1,200-pound colossus made its way via New York City to Jefferson’s White House. It took a slice of history (no pun intended) and seasoned it so it would appeal to kids, as did Thank You, Sarah, the Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving, by Laurie Halse Anderson and illustrated by Matt Faulkner. (Click on the covers for more.)

Which brings me back to THE CODE. It came out before any of my kids could read independently and so was relegated to a back burner. Author Dan Brown is the first to say it's fiction. A slice of fiction, I’ll add here, well seasoned with juicy historical morsels.

I don’t know why summer is so often associated with reading, but it is. I have two more books I’d like to tackle soon. I want to re-read the Once and Future King by T.H. White and read for the first time The Book of Merlyn: An Unpublished Conclusion to The Once Future King, which was discovered in White’s papers and became a best-seller in 1977. What’s on your summer list?

// posted by HoBess @ 5/30/2006 01:47:00 PM