Reader's Odyssey

Welcome to our high school library.  The bookshelves from Target haven't arrived yet, so we are in stacking mode.  The books above represent just the beginning.  Over the last several weeks I've been scouring used book stores and hunting the Internet for used volumes.  We had a pretty good selection to start out with, but dare I say it?  Adding more books is FUN!  I love books.  I want the teenager to love books, too.  Heck, I want everyone to love books.  The world's best ideas are found in books.

My guide in this adventure has been Dena Luchsinger in her book below:

The Reader's Odyssey

Now that I have had to type or write "odyssey" on a few occasions, I think I may be able to spell it correctly from here on out!  It's one of those words.  Do you experience those?  Try Albuquerque.  Or intermittent.  Or awesome sauce.  I swear, "television" once looked strange to me.  

I have read this guide cover to cover twice and still go back to reference it when needed.  She has presented a terrific literary program for the middle and high school years that is easy to tailor to your child's favorite genres, interests, and reading abilities, all with a hefty dose of classics and modern classics sprinkled in.  I highly recommend this guide if you are hovering in the middle/high school years of homeschooling.   

Why classics?  Because they have withstood the test of time and they harbor the great ideas of the deep thinkers, the flowing conversation over time that builds upon itself and in turn makes us better thinkers and problem solvers, if not at least more attuned to the human condition.  I wasn't exposed to many classics while growing up and wish I had been.  I really do believe they lead to a better understanding of life.

After assessing the teenager's favorite genres (science fiction, mystery, action/adventure, fantasy, humor, how-to, coming of age, dystopia, and psychological thriller), I asked him about his interests.  Those are animals, outdoor adventure, music, friends, reading, writing, food, movies, military, technology, engineering, construction, politics.  It is not much of a challenge to blend the genres and interests into a giant Venn diagram and figure out which books past muster.  Ms. Luchsinger stresses building a large library over time containing the the genres and interests that suit your child, but also to reach out beyond those parameters and cover more territory. 

The idea is to ask your child to read from the library at least an hour each day.  You can set up expectations such that they will read a certain number of classics, short stories, essays, dramas, nonfiction, etc. over the semester.  Perhaps this has been the most challenging part so far, determining a reasonable expectation over a semester for number of books to read.  The beauty of this program is that the child can choose books he or she likes, often trying on a few for size before hopefully finding one that sparks some zeal.  He or she can re-read books to a heart's content, as long as the baseline expectations for number of books is met. 

For the first semester of ninth grade I'll ask him to write a short, paragraph-long summary of each book and keep a log and rating of what has been read.  Gradually over his high school career, we will move into more literary analyses and writing.  I appreciate the author's take on literary criticism; she feels that criticism for the sake of criticism is nonsense.  What IS important is how the book impacts the reader and on what level.  That's plenty of fodder for some deeper exploration as the books get absorbed and we'll have a lot of material to play with.

She does provide helpful tips and worksheets on analyzing literary terms and themes toward the end of the book.  She also has catalogued many classics as to their genre and difficulty level, which helped me tremendously in selecting books.  

So far I've amassed the following books, short stories, novellas and essays, typed in rather cryptic form:

Essays of E.B. White

Mila 18

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Tarzan of the Apes

Murder on the Orient Express

The Uncommon Reader

Heart of Darkness

Short stories of Mark Twain

The Outsiders

Omnivore's Dilemma (young reader's edition)

Three Musketeers

Apollo 13

Biography of Malcolm X

The Time Machine

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

The Education of Little Tree

Where the Red Fern Grows (tissues ready!)

Brave New World

1984

Animal Farm

Watership Down

Enter Jeeves

Cheaper by the Dozen

The Hunt for Red October

Speaker for the Dead

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Ghandi's autobiography

Beowulf

Autobiography of Ben Franklin

Starship Troopers

Strong Poison

Catch Me if You Can

Pudd'nhead Wilson

As I Lay Dying

Dracula

Frankenstein

Packing for Mars

Lots of Isaac Asimov

A Tale of Two Cities

The Oxbow Incident

Flowers for Algernon

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Healthy Eating Healthy World

Personal Best by George Sheehan

The Jungle Book

Johnny Tremain

The Incredible Journey

Death Comes for the Archbishop

A Passage to India

Criminal Poverty (plight of the homeless in America)

Traffic

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Princess Bride

The Animal Dialogues

All Creatures Great and Small

Life of Pi

Gorillas in the Mist

A Farwell to Arms

The Book Thief (one of my favorite books ever)

Night

Man's Search for Meaning

Dune (series)

The Stand

The Good Earth

All Quiet on the Western Front

Wizard of Oz

Alice in Wonderland

The Naked Ape

I Capture the Castle

To Kill a Mockingbird

Hiroshima

Winterdance by Gary Paulsen (hilarious)

Winnie the Pooh

Out of the Silent Planet

Midsummer Night's Dream

White Fang

The Dark is Rising

Of Mice and Men

Martian Chronicles

O'Pioneers

Boy by Roald Dahl

The Little Prince

Old Yeller (more tissues)

The Secret Garden

Freakonomics

What the Dog Saw

There are many more on the wishlist, so the hunt will continue at yard sales, used book stores, etc.  The reason I am not using the library for this undertaking is one of having access to all of these at once so he can choose what he wants to read by handling them, flipping through them, reading the first few pages.  Managing books on this scale at the library seems like a daunting task for me, so I decided to make the investment of time and dollars, although if you plan for this ahead of time, you can keep a running list with you and choose gently used books at much cheaper prices, or borrow from friends and family. 

Another level of wonderful here is that we can apply these books toward credit for other subjects.  Pretty much all the subjects!  Lots of history, social science, science present and accounted for!  To say I am stoked is a mild understatement.  I am looking forward to joining him on this reading adventure.

If you have any great book suggestions, please comment!  Share this list with others, too.  Spread the book love far and wide! 

Current Reads with Retells

Retells, or narrations, are trending in our house lately.  Charlotte Mason, through her writings from the late 1800's, has convinced me of the value of asking a child to retell something in his own words.  These narrations are sprinkled throughout the week now and the fit seems to be a good one for Max.  It's his natural inclination to explain things anyway (in great detail sometimes) - many children like to do this!  Is your child one of them?  So why not open up that door and let him or her happily explain something to the nth degree as you listen attentively in bursts of focused attention?

Retells come in many shapes and sizes.  Some kids practically write their own novel on paper as they narrate a chapter or two from a good book.  Others fill sketch books with drawings from their imaginings about what the story told them.  Children like to speak into a microphone to narrate and then hear their voices played back to them, too.  What better way to record their precious voices before, during and after the maelstrom of hormones hits?  Max prefers to speak his narrations, but encouraging him to draw it out or put it on paper in words is worthwhile for him, too.  Sometimes he dictates and I type.  Other times he will transfer this flow of words that tumble so forthrightly out of his mouth onto paper, but it is frustrating for him since his hand does not transfer to paper nearly quick enough what he is thinking.  In an instance like this, listening to a dictated recording of his retell might prove useful because he can stop the recording as needed.

The main objective is to help him organize his thought process and learn to focus on a story line from an author worth focusing upon.  Ms. Mason championed this task in helping the child to own the information, to really take it in, to KNOW it.  I really do resonate with many of her philosophies and it will be fun applying them to our current world in a secular fashion.

Here are some books we are using for retells at the moment.  I don't ask Max for a narration every time we read or he reads; it is more random than that and after awhile you'll get a feel for the flow of it.

Beautifully written.  We are deep in the jungle with Mowgli, Baloo and Bagheera, too.  

This particular edition contains the many drawings of Mr. Seton's that are so cherished by readers of his work.  Not for the faint-of-heart.  This is Mother Nature in raw form at times.  Warning: please see a more recent post that may nix this book from your list or possibly give you some potent material to work with discussion-wise.  Remember, my opinion.  Others see this book differently than I do.

  

Stumbled upon this in the library and it was the orangutan that got my attention, truth be told.  Turned out to be a quirky book written with humor and weirdness and accurate history, too.  Max ate it up, but he won't do a narration on it because he thinks I should read it first.  To avoid spoilers, I guess.

Began this one today with a retell of the first chapter about Thales, the Greek mathematician who figured out how tall the Great Pyramid is in Egypt.  I'm assigning chapters and asking for retells now and then.  Today he drew a stick figure Thales next to the pyramid and explained to me how to determine the height of the pyramid with the information that was available.  Smart guy, that Thales.

This will likely be a continued theme for us.  Max seems to be taking to it naturally; it's my job to continue to provide him with good, if not grand, reading material and to encourage him to know the information and decide for himself if it works in Max's world.

If you are curious about Charlotte Mason's philosophies, please Google her.  Keep in mind that the words straight from her pen are the most helpful, albeit a bit archaic as you have to slog through some Victorian writings; there are many people who seem to put their own agenda stamp over her ideas and thus a myriad of websites and blogs have sprung up which attempt to harness her voice. Her ideas speak for themselves - if you can get your hands on some good and fair summations of her ideas and then work your way over to her original words and slowly digest them, you'll be off to a good start.  Hers is a gentle, kind and wonderful approach that can be tailored to fit your needs.

Keep in mind, too, that Charlotte had time to sit and think.  She did not have children of her own and she  probably had help with tasks like cleaning and cooking, so her expectations of mothers in her writing can be daunting. If you're a mom who doesn't have a governess, a cook and a gardener and who is homeschooling - be kind to yourself!!  Put her words in context.   

If you are interested in viewing her philosophies through a secular lens, it will take some work on your part; you can begin by accessing this blog for help:  http://secularcm.com/.  I also read Penny Gardner's secular handbook about the Charlotte Mason method of schooling.