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Home Education Magazine
January-February 1998 - Columns
So Many Books - Joan Torkildson
Cracked Corn and Snow Ice Cream; I Wonder Why; The Kingfisher Young People's Atlas of the World; I Saw a Purple Cow; Clever Letters; The Best of Shakespeare
Cracked Corn and Snow Ice Cream
Cracked Corn and Snow Ice Cream: A Family Almanac, by Nancy Willard, illus. by Jane Dyer, Harcourt Brace, Sept. 1997, ISBN 0-15-227250-X, $18.00 hardcover, all ages
"Pretend you live in the Midwest.
"Pretend you are reading The Farmer's Almanac, which tells you about weather and days to remember and how to grow a pumpkin so big you could sleep in it.
"Pretend it's 1911 or 1920, and the snow is so deep you can't even find the road.
"You're dreaming of spring.
"You turn the page."
So begins this thoroughly engaging family almanac, a 64-page feast of facts, trivia, and folklore, painstakingly compiled by Nancy Willard and charmingly illustrated with Jane Dyer's delicate watercolors and hand-lettered banners and captions.
Each monthly entry begins with a snippet of song or verse, followed by dates for festivals, feast days, and holidays, as well as weather and garden lore, trivia, home remedies, simple recipes, old photographs, and personal reminiscences from Willard's and Dyer's relatives.
Among the entries on January's pages, for instance, you'll find a passage from Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, a notation on Plow Sunday (a blessing of the plows which, in medieval England, occurred on the Sunday after Epiphany), an admonishment to take down Christmas decorations by January 6 (lest bad luck befall you), miscellaneous gardening tips, a recipe for snow ice cream, a collection of brief stories, and a listing of cow facts (How many glasses of water a day does a cow drink?).
Perfect for browsing during long, wintery afternoons (even if you don't happen to live in the Midwest), the almanac is both an engrossing read and a poignant reminder of a quieter, less complicated time not so very long ago.
I Wonder Why
I Wonder Why (series), various authors, Kingfisher, Sept. 1997, $9.95 hardcover, ages 5-8
This is a wonderful series from a publisher noted for producing reference works that are absolutely top-notch. Latest in this series are I Wonder Why Trees Have Leaves--and Other Questions about Plants (ISBN 0-7534-5094-1) and I Wonder Why Vultures Are Bald--and Other Questions about Birds (ISBN 0-7534-5093-3).
The books are an eclectic mix of bold, easy-to-read type, beautifully realistic illustrations, and humorous cartoon-like drawings. Questions range from the sensible ("Why do leaves change color in the fall?") to the quirky ("Which bird sniffs all night?"). Don't take too seriously the suggested age range; there's plenty of information in these books to intrigue even sophisticated older readers and brainy homeschooling parents. So far there are 20-plus books in this most excellent series, on such diverse topics as camels, castles, dodos, Greeks and Romans, soap, stars, triceratops, and zippers.
The Kingfisher Young People's Atlas of the World
The Kingfisher Young People's Atlas of the World, by Philip Steele, Kingfisher, Sept. 1997, ISBN 0-7534-5086-0, $19.95 hardcover, ages 9-12
Other atlases for young readers have crossed my path in the last couple of years, but I can't think of even one that comes close to the superb quality of this one. Featured here are the history, economy, government, climate, languages, foods, and religions of nearly 200 countries, from Canada to the Polar Islands. The topographic maps of each country are so clear and bright that they appear nearly three-dimensional. The text, thorough but not overwhelming, is surrounded by lots of crystal-clear photographs, flags, and full-color illustrations (there are over 275 maps and illustrations in all). Extensively indexed, the book also includes detailed charts of facts and figures for each continent.
I Saw a Purple Cow
I Saw a Purple Cow and 100 Other Recipes for Learning, by Ann Cole, Carolyn Haas, Faith Bushnell, and Betty Weinberger, illus. by True Kelley, Little, Brown, Oct. 1997, ISBN 0-316-15175-0, $10.95 paperback, ages 5-8
A classic in the field since its publication 25 years ago, this reissue of I Saw a Purple Cow is in essence a relaxed preschool curriculum-in-a-book.
Much has changed in 25 years, but kids can still have fun floating bathtub boats, making clothespin puppets and rock creatures, fashioning macaroni jewelry and paper bag costumes, humming through a comb kazoo, taking a rainy day walk in the house, or playing games such as Calendar Toss, Call the Colors, and Cats and Dogs.
The multitudinous "Recipes for Learning" fall into five basic categories: Pretending, Creating, Music and Rhythm, Learning Games, and Parties. Many of the activities listed on the contents page are flagged with little icons. A car symbol indicates that the activity would be good for car rides or waiting periods. Other activities are appropriate for those sick in bed, or for those wishing to sharpen their math or reading readiness skills.
The emphasis here is on the simple and homemade, a feature that will no doubt be appreciated by budget-minded homeschooling families. Most of the activities in the book use recycled or common household items, such as cardboard boxes and tubes, egg cartons, newspapers and magazines, cans and jar lids, old clothes and jewelry, crayons, and watercolors. Have plenty of white glue and tape on hand.
Clever Letters
Clever Letters: Fun Ways to Wiggle Your Words, by Laura Allen, illus. by Valerie Coursen, Pleasant Company Publications, Fall 1997, ISBN 1-56247-528-2, $9.95 hardcover, ages 8-up
Judging by the ever-growing pen-pal listings in HEM, homeschooled kids love to write letters. And thanks at least in part to this nifty little book, my daughters have, I'm happy to say, grown to love letter writing even more than they did before.
This colorful board book, wire bound so it lies nice and flat on a table or desk, is organized into six sections: Clever Lettering, Top Secret, Paper Capers, Writing from the Road, Super Stationery, and Signing Off with Style. In it letter writers will discover how to embellish their lettering with dots, triangles, shadowing, and doubling; make their words wiggle, splash, sparkle, or giggle; make edible messages; write in code or with invisible ink; learn what ROFLWTIME means to a computer user; write random notes (sans the crime); send "fan" mail that really keeps the recipient cool; paint pictures with sentence scenery; send "smoosh-cards" from the road; make envelopes from discarded maps; create speckled stationery; and much more.
I'd love to try some of these ideas myself, but with two kids impatiently waiting to snatch this book off my shelf, I'll just have to wait my turn.
The Best of Shakespeare
The Best of Shakespeare: Retellings of 10 Classic Plays, by E. Nesbit, Oxford Univ. Press, 1997, ISBN 0-19-511689-5, $16.95 hardcover, about 9-up
An unexpected treat from the queen of fabulists, E. Nesbit--well loved at our house for her Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and other tales. This book is part of Oxford University Press's Opie Library of Children's Literature, a series that honors Iona and Peter Opie, distinguished scholars and collectors of children's literature.
Here are concise retellings of 10 Shakespearean tales: Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, The Tempest, King Lear, Macbeth, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, and Othello. All are presented in E. Nesbit's straightforward, inimitable style. A sampling: In the beginning of Romeo and Juliet she writes, "There was an old, old quarrel between the two families, and instead of making it up like reasonable folks, they made a sort of pet of their quarrel, and would not let it die out." E. Nesbit boldly takes detours into "curious linguistic byways," according to the Afterword by Peter Hunt. Hence, Leontes in As You Like It is described as a "violent-tempered man and rather silly, and he took it into his stupid head that his wife, Hermione, liked Polixenes better than she did him, her own husband."
At times her language vacillates between dramatic speech and humorous colloquialisms, as it does in Macbeth when she writes that Lady Macbeth "with bitter words...egged him on to murder." But these curiosities in language, at least in my eyes, only add to the charm of the retellings. The tales, after all, were meant to be accessible to young readers. Nesbit seems to be saying that Shakespeare's plays don't have to be deadly serious all the time.
Interspersed throughout the book are black-and-white photographs from various modern Shakespearian productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Festival (in Ontario, Canada), and the Folger Library's Shakespeare Theatre. Well suited as a family read-aloud, the book would also be an appropriate predecessor to Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare or other similar works. After sampling these tales retold, readers of all ages will likely come away with a fresher, more lighthearted perspective on Shakespeare's plays.
(c) 1998 Joan Torkildson
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