I didn't mention that I didn't "let" them. I didn't notice since I was so absorbed in reading aloud Beauty: a Retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley. When I looked up to make dinner after a few hours of reading (with many complaints that I stopping), I realized how grateful I am for that set of World Books. Worth every penny. (By the way, the World Books are back out again today, and we've finished this delicious book.)
4 comments:
LOL! Hilarious. We have a set of 1995 world books but they've never been cracked.
We had World Books growing up. Dave's Mom has a set; we have dibs. We do have Childcraft and those are read all the time.
This is so clever...you are a cool mom. So, review about the book?
I wasn't sure about the World Books at first, but my friend found this set at a library sale for $65. At that price, we decided they were worth it. We love them since they have that distractibility factor that Google doesn't. When the boys read Redwall, Bill would come home to a pile of encylopedias on his chair with all the animals from the books tabbed, as well as anything else of interest they had found along the way.
Beauty: I have loved this book in a quiet, hug it to your chest and cherish it way since I first read it in middle school. It is the classic story of Beauty and the Beast but told in the first person and with background information, character development, and creative magic elements thrown in which make it a rich novel-length read. When I first saw the Disney movie, I felt like they had stolen from Robin McKinley who wrote this in the ‘70s.
I find it unusual because McKinley describes the sounds and smells of Beauty's world; the last page of the book I hear and see and never remember the words to as many times as I have read it. I always get lost in the experience. McKinley uses real words, assuming that you are an intelligent reader, and there were words I wasn't sure of how to pronounce. She also creatively blends the real world with her magical world. She does this in a more subtle way than other authors, in my opinion. She doesn't specifically place Beauty's family anywhere that we would recognize, but she does include "our world" things like Sherlock Holmes or Cicero.
I think that some people would find the author's descriptions tedious, and the scenes with dialog can be spare but full of meaning. I wasn't sure how the kids would like it so I gave the first chapter a read with Maria as the prime audience. She is just at that giggly age where girls enjoy a gentle romance. By the time we were done, Anthony was habitually reading over my shoulder, and Thomas would be sure to be very near by, and Cecilia would lie against me. This morning I heard Charles recommend it to our friends, so even though I would guess that a tween girl or older would enjoy it best, it appealed to boys and girls of a variety of ages.
Yesterday I was looking to see what other books Robin McKinley had written since I had stopped reading her. Apparently she updated this book in the '80s, and the new version, called Rose's Daughter, sounded heavy-handed to me. We aren't going to try it. But I did love The Hero and the Crown (about a girl who fights dragons) and the Blue Sword and the Outlaws of Sherwood Forest. I have to prescreen those since there were some unmarried man/woman I remember being there. She also has a novel about Sleeping Beauty which I think we’ll look for.
Oh, I'll have to check that out!
I am opposed to using Google for Gregory for a long time. It skips many steps that we had to learn...and makes the child think the answer is on the Internet, and always right.
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