Harrison Farm

For last week:

Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld - about perceptions; simple and funny

Spot It!: Find the Hidden Creatures by Delphine Chedru - these hidden creatures your three year old can find.  Mine was delighted.

The Big Blue Bowl: Sign Language for Food by Dawn Babb Prochovnic, illustrated by Stephanie Bauer - cute and pretty clear.  My little ones loved it, and I saw one of the older ones checking out the signs.

It’s a Snap!: George Eastman’s First Photograph by Monica Kulling, illustrated by Bill Slavin - great story and great illustrations.  (I enjoyed this the most.  It will be most appreciated by adults.)

Have you discovered some literary delights for your littles?  Please share.

Commenter and fellow Ralph Moody fan Patrick Garrett shared these links with me. The first is a bio at the Littleton, CO website. It tells more about Ralph’s life than I have covered in the books, so I had to stop reading about 3/4 of the way into it. I don’t want to spoil his stories for myself.

The second is a delightful glimpse of some correspondence between Moody and the Nebraska Public Library Commission in 1965. I love the 2nd paragraph in Moody’s March 19 letter that states,

As to topic and title:   I presume you know that my formal education terminated at the eighth grade.  It did, and from that time to this public libraries have been my school, and scores of dedicated librarians the faculty.  At a very early age I learned to read from the viewpoint of the author, and when I first tried writing, at the age of fifty, I found little difficulty, for I had learned to write from reading.  And because of the guidance given me by public librarians, I’ve had the best teachers in the English Speaking World — the authors of the classics.  How about calling the talk [that I'll be giving], “My Alma Mater: The Public Library”?

The photo above is from the “Official Nebraska Government Website” from a clipping from 1965. Moody died in 1982.

Fellow Ralph Moody fans, you won’t believe what we (actually my sleuthing husband) found!  We just finished reading The Fields of Home, the 5th book in Moody’s autobiographical series.  At this point in Ralph’s young teen-age years, he goes to spend some time with his abrasive maternal grandfather after getting kicked out of Medford, Massachusetts by the town sheriff.   His grandfather lived just outside Lisbon Falls, Maine.

This book is full of trials of a different sort than what we’ve seen in the previous books.  Here, Ralph’s trials are primarily relational ones - trials with an old, stubborn, prideful relative.  There are lots of golden nuggets within the pages.

So what’s the “find”?  » Read the rest of this entry «

Not long ago I wrote about how much we enjoyed reading Ralph Moody’s Little Britches. We’ve since read the 2nd book, Man of the Family, and we’re now in the middle of The Home Ranch. This series has been, hands down, everyone’s favorite. » Read the rest of this entry «

I’m reading Booker T. Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery and took note of an interesting section where Washington contrasts 2 different schools.  He notes » Read the rest of this entry «

I couldn’t pass up reading a book called “Man’s Search for Meaning,” knowing it was written by a holocaust survivor. Viktor Frankl went into the concentration camps as a psychiarist with a book in the works. When he came out, having lost his wife and parents, as well as his book manuscript, he went on to found logotherapy, a school of psychotherpy, that focuses on finding meaning in one’s life. » Read the rest of this entry «

We finished reading Little Britches by Ralph Moody a couple of weeks ago. I was familiar with the title but that was all. I’ll start by saying that after reading this memoir of the author’s boyhood, I’ve searched our library for more books by the author.

Little Britches is about Moody’s family adjusting to life on a Colorado ranch after having to leave New England city life so that his father could avoid the working conditions that aggravated his cough, a hangover symptom from tuberculosis. It’s a coming of age story, as Ralph works along side his father, finds his place in the local schoolhouse, and picks up odd jobs to help the family make ends meet. He learns about honesty, animals, and hard work. It’s a touching story about family life in the early 1900’s, highlighting a boy’s relationship with his father.

The latest read-aloud that we completed was The Great Turkey Walk by Kathleen Karr. At first I thought this book was a joke. At least, we used to joke about herding chickens when we would move them from paddock to paddock on our small farm several years ago.

But this book is about some serious poultry herding: 1000 bronze turkeys walking from Missouri to Denver in pre-Civil War America. Such turkey herding actually took place years ago. » Read the rest of this entry «

The kids and I recently read The Great Wheel by Robert Lawson about the building of the first Ferris wheel. The Ferris wheels I have seen and ridden are tiny in comparison to the first one, built to a whopping 264 feet (or 25 stories) in 1893 by Pittsburgh bridge-builder, George Ferris. The wheel was meant to rival the Eiffel Tower and was showcased at the World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago.

To give you an idea of how grandiose it was, each “car” on a typical Ferris wheel can hold 2 people. The cars on the Great Wheel, however, » Read the rest of this entry «

This review is by Sudoku.

I just finished reading Lumber Camp Library by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock. It is about Ruby Sawyer who is the oldest of 11 children. She loves to follow her dad, who is a lumberjack, and she loves to read books. The story is sad when » Read the rest of this entry «