We’ll be adding two new Language Arts components to Alex’s curriculum in second grade. I’m pretty excited about both of them.
I heard Michael Clay Thompson speak at the Royal Fireworks Press conference last June, and ever since, I’ve been looking forward to starting his elementary-level language arts program with Alex. He designed it for gifted children in schools, but has attracted a large and devoted following among homeschoolers as well.
The program is hard to describe. There are five books: Grammar Island and Practice Island, which provide a simple introduction to parts of speech, phrases, and clauses; Building Language, an introduction to studying vocabulary through Latin roots; The Music of the Hemispheres, a startlingly complex introduction to poetry; and Sentence Island, a writing book which focuses on understanding, analyzing, and composing sentences. These are intended to be linked together, each informing and amplifying the study of the others. (An insane yet inspiring slide show describes Thompson’s grand vision here.) The books are full of word play, stories, extended metaphors, Socratic questions, and offbeat activities. It’s the furthest thing imaginable from the boring fill-in-the-blank grammar and usage lessons I had as a child. I’m totally excited.
The second thing we’ll be implementing is some assigned reading.
Looking back at my quarterly reports, I see that I’ve been dithering about whether and how to assign reading for quite some time. I knew I didn’t want a “reading program” with quizzes and assignments, but sporadically handing Alex books and then not really following through hasn’t gotten us anywhere, either. Mostly I’ve been leaving her alone to read what she wants. She’s read some good books that challenge her, but she’s also read, and re-read, and read again, a lot of easy series fiction. I don’t have a problem with that, but I want to make sure it’s not all she reads. So I decided to try a reading list for the year, with periodic “book talks” to explore the books together but no structured assignments.
Homeschoolers love reading lists. There are a lot of them out there. Among classical homeschoolers (we more-or-less identify as classical, sort of, with amendations), there is an abundance of children’s reading lists in the “great books” tradition, designed to prepare students to read the classics of the Western canon in high school and college. Here is a prime example. Not only does it not assign a single book written in Alex’s lifetime, or my lifetime – it doesn’t assign a single book written during my father’s lifetime. These may be great books (although I think some of them are questionable), but I’m not classical enough to accept that nothing worth studying has been written for children in more than seventy-five years. On the other hand, many modern school reading lists feature books which are chosen to appeal to reluctant readers, but which don’t meet my literary quality standards. So I patched together a list of my own, trying to mix styles, genres, and age. For second grade, I’m hoping to have Alex read:
The Water Horse, Dick King-Smith. (1990).
Understood Betsy, Dorothy Canfield Fisher. (1916).
All-Of-A-Kind Family, Sidney Taylor. (1951).
Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White. (1952).
The Daydreamer, Ian McEwan. (1994).
Nim’s Island, Wendy Orr. (2000).
The Door in the Wall, Marguerite di Angeli. (1949).
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin. (2010).
A Lion to Guard Us, Clyde Robert Bulla. (1981).
Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Beverly Cleary. (1981).
Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan. (1985).
On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura Ingalls Wilder. (1937).
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, Bette Bao Lord. (1984).
Paddle-to-the-Sea, Holling C. Holling. (1941).
Follow My Leader, James B. Garfield. (1957).
The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Hugh Lofting. (1920, but we’ll read the modern edition which has had racist passages removed).
I had a lot of fun coming up with this list, and with additional tentative lists for future years. If you have suggestions (additions or deletions), I’d love to hear about them!
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Thanks for pointing out your reading list. My daughters loved most of the ones you list, and I remember many from my own childhood. The lists you refer to from 70 years ago and more are hazardous, as you note regarding Dr. Dolittle. I noticed this when I created epub format books for the OLPC XO from public domain versions of Newberry Medal winners by women authors. Many great books, but some had truly appalling throw away racist lines.
One thing struck me as odd about your list — you have Little Men on your 4th grade list and Little Women on your 6th grade list. Little Men follows Little Women in time and is (IMHO) not nearly as good a book. Personally, I’d substitute Eight Cousins.
Carol: it makes sense to me to offer Little Men earlier than Little Women. As a child I tried Little Women first, couldn’t get through it, loved Little Men, and didn’t finish Little Women until years later. I don’t think there are any deaths in Little Men, although there are some difficult ideas about neglected children and people who can’t successfully be rescued, and I was really bothered by the gender role stuff in the 1970s. I guess I would agree with you about it not being as good a book, but as an adult I enjoy it a lot more. (That and Jo’s Boys, which is also kind of self-indulgent).
I’ve only read Eight Cousins from the library as an adult, but I liked it too.
Carol, the thing about Little Women is that it was originally published in two parts written at different times. The first part is more interesting and appropriate for children, but the second part gets extensively into their adult relationships and concerns: Meg’s adjustment to being a married woman, Jo trying to make it independently as a writer and her romance with Professor Bhaer, the Jo-Laurie-Amy love triangle, and of course, Beth dying. That’s why a lot of younger girls make it about halfway through Little Women and then give up.
In contrast, Little Men is about children and their concerns from beginning to end. I loved it when I was a kid. I was really interested in the whole boarding school concept and the ideas about education.
I don’t disagree with 6th grade as the age for reading Little Women, and if you’re a fan of Little Men, that’s great. I found it preachy when I read it as a kid, and so did my elder daughter when she sought it out as a sequel to LW. (I don’t think my younger one has ever mentioned reading it.) Similarly, I liked Eight Cousins a lot when I read it as a kid, but when I later found its sequel (Rose in Bloom) it really was full of homilies and not very satisfying. But of course when you have kids who love to read, they will go through tons of books whether they are the most perfect or not and enjoy critiquing the unsatisfactory ones.
At least when I was still the age for it, I always encountered Little Women as the title for the first volumne only, here in Australia, and the second volume was sold separately, entitled Good Wives, and considerably harder to get hold of. I didn’t realise they were published as one giant book in the States until encountering secondary references to Beth’s death, which at the time was actually a spoiler for me for the second volume!
It’s a shame you can’t get it as two books with independent titles because it is a huge age range it puts the characters through.
Funnily enough, I read On The Banks of Plum Creek before I read any other books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but always wondered about occasional references to earlier events. I didn’t find the first two books until quite a long time later (hurrah for the library!).
Is there a reason that is on the list before Little House in the Big Woods or Little House on the Prairie?
(and I found them again in the library this week when we were choosing the next lot of books for J so have indulged in a re-read!)
A couple of books J has recently read and enjoyed are Adolphus Tips (Michael Morpurgo) and Frogspell (CJ Busby).
Interestingly enough, I was very confused by the comments regarding the second half of Little Women until I read the comment mentioning it was Little Women AND Good Wives. For me, Little Women ended with Beth’s end. I’d be happy to get you separate UK copies of Little Women and Good Wives and post them over, if you think that would be of use to you.
I adore Paddle-to-the-Sea.
Currently, my favorite Dick King-Smith book is Puppies, because it is awesome, but I didn’t know he had more out there besides Babe: The Gallant Pig. He died not long back, and I cried a bit.
One of my favorite anecdotes about Charlotte’s Web is from Madeleine L’Engle, who said that one of her daughters had “always hated sausage” after she read it. Her mother tried to convince her that she used to like bacon and sausage, even if she was now refusing it, but the child simply could not ever remember having eaten it.
Thanks so much, I love your curriculum-related posts! You point towards all kinds of useful resources (like Beast Academy and the Michael Clay Thompson program) that I never would have heard of otherwise. Happy Birthday to Alex, and hope you both have a wonderful experience with 2nd grade!
Arky-Helen: we’ve read Little House in the Big Woods a couple of times as a read-aloud, and also the reading level for that one is lower. Little House on the Prairie requires very careful adult guidance to deal with the Native American issues. I think that when you read the text closely, it does not support the actions of the white settlers; however, it’s easy for kids – especially kids Alex’s age – to miss the subtext.
Nice list.
We’re also going to start some assigned reading in the fall (beyond what the kids already read for science and history), but probably a shorter list for us as I don’t think my boys read as voraciously as Alex and I want them to have plenty of books they’ve chosen as well. Your tentative lists remind me how many future reads I’ve robbed my kids by reading them aloud. I know my own kids wouldn’t tolerate reading them independently once they’ve already heard them.
Farrar, I don’t actually know if Alex will get through all of these, but I’m hoping. Some of them were read-alouds in the past, as well as some of the ones on future lists. I am hoping that they’ll be far enough in the past that she’ll be willing to read them herself. She certainly re-reads enough Secrets of Droon books.
I look forward to seeing what you choose for assigned reading! I always appreciate your book reviews – I know you have a pretty wide-ranging knowledge of modern children’s lit. I think of you as an ally in the “let’s read SOMETHING from the last 50 years” classical educators’ club.
If book lists work out for you, here’s what I would love to give my imaginary child-who-reads-like-I-did aged about 6-8 (not Wuthering Heights. That was a mistake):
I Am David, Anne Holm
When the Siren Wailed, Noel Streatfield
The Sheep Pig, DKS
Stig of the Dump, Clive King (I bet Alex would LOVE this one)
Almost any Dahl – Matilda?
The Borrowers, Mary Norton (has she already read them?)
Emil and the Detectives, author forgotten – Erich Kaestner?
Tom McCaughrean’s fox books
Almost anything by Eilis Dillon, srsly
Ailbhe, thank you! I don’t know several of those authors at all, so I’m excited to get the suggestions. We’ve done a fair amount of Dahl already – mostly as read-alouds, but Fantastic Mr. Fox is on her most-reread list. I tried The Borrowers as a read-aloud a while back and decided it needed to wait until she was older – but that was at least a year ago, so it may be time now.
I don’t know when I’ll assign I Am David or When the Siren Wailed, but I am TOTALLY getting them to read for myself.
Eilis Dillon is a particularly good one, from my point of view, because Irish authors for children are almost *unheard* of outside Ireland, and she’s excellent. And I know her granddaughter, it turns out.
I don’t know if Alex is ready for all of the books on my Amazon list, but many of them could be useful.