I remember the lazy days of summer when I was still school-aged. I'd wander outside to my favorite spot and settle in with a good book. I'd dip into different worlds, pretend to be different people, and sink into the story as bees buzzed nearby and the sun poured down through the lightly blowing leaves above me. It really didn't matter if the book was one of my own choosing or one off of my required summer reading list, I just loved the reading. So it's a little sad to me that two of my three kids no longer have summer reading to do. Don't get me wrong, I am lucky enough to have good readers who will read for pleasure but without a directed reading list, they may never venture out of their own comfort zone because no one is pushing them to do so.On the plus side, the rising fifth grader does have a reading list. Again, sadly, it is simply recommended reading rather than required reading so there's no reason he *has* to read anything on the list. I might have to come up with a
The list
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (we listened to this one on CD last year)
A Young Patriot: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy by Jim Murphy
Appalachia: The Voices of Sleeping Birds by Cynthia Rylant
Black Cowboy Wild Horse by Julius Lester & Jerry Pinkney
By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischmann
Earth's Fiery Fury by Sandra Downs
Going Back Home: An Artist Returns to the South by Michelle Wood
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Betty Bao Lord
Martin Luther King, Jr.: I Have a Dream by Jacqueline D'Adamo
Mr. Revere and I by Robert Lawson (we already own this one since Lawson wrote my favorite kid book of all time: The Fabulous Flight)
Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius by Carol Dommermuth-Costa
Nory Ryan's Song by Patricia Reilly Giff
Phoebe the Spy by Judith Berry Griffin
Pueblo Storyteller by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
Tales of the Shimmering Sky by Susan Milford
The Planets by Gail Gibbons
The True Adventures of Grizzly Adams by Robert McClung
Thomas Edison: Inventor of the Age of Electricity by Linda Tagliaferro
Walk Across the Sea by Susan Fletcher
I've read the L'Engle, the Lord (I've forgotten it completely), the Lawson, and the Fletcher. They were all OK-to-good. Wait, I've read Phoebe the Spy as well.
ReplyDeleteOf authors, I've liked books by Lester, Rylant, Fleischmann, Giff, and Gibbons. I thought Gibbons wrote mostly picture books. I know my boys like the Tesla-Edison controversy, so reading those two in combination might entertain him.
Most of them look really short. You should bribe him with a trip to an amusement park if he reads them all. How's that for parenting literary advice :-)