Reading with M.

 Welcome, and welcome back! A brief update since a lot of time has passed since I regularly updated this blog (a covid project, primarily): As of June 2024, M. is seven, soon going on eight, and L., our new arrival, is six months. In less than two months, we are moving to France for the year for my work. M. will attend CE2 (the French equivalent of third grade) while we are there. L. will likely stay home full-time, as she has proven to be a more reliable napper than M. was, at least in early infancy. In January we might reevaluate the situation, but, as romantic as the crèche  sounds and how much hype it gets in anglophone circles, it is actually pretty tough to get a spot if both parents aren't working full-time in an office. We also just feel like she is very little to go to daycare, even if what is available is high quality, since we have the flexibility to keep her home for now. As far as this big transition goes for M., I began speaking to him in French on and off from w...

 It has been a while since I updated this but I wanted to provide an update on M's reading. He just finished a tough but ultimately very good second grade year. Despite his intense interest in being read to since age three, only by the end of this academic year has he mastered reading on his own. (And we still have a way to go, but we are now reading at grade level.) As far as we know, M. doesn't have dyslexia, but he did receive an ADHD diagnosis this year. We are also very lucky that our school district uses a phonics-based curriculum (Fundations), as this was key in M. learning to decode. All this said, having begun the year reading Llama Llama Red Pajama , M. finished out the year with the Dragon Masters  series and has nearly finished book five. Some of the books we read on the way: 1. The Jack Book  Series by Mac Barnett and Greg Pizzoli (this was actually at the end of first grade) 2. Grizzwold   by Syd Hoff 3. Danny and the Dinosaur  by Syd Hoff (we als...

 We've been digging into the Little House series now for almost a month and have read Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie . I would recommend these books for a number of reasons in addition to my own nostalgia from reading most or all of the series as a child (I don't remember if I got to the very last book). The language is beautiful and the description of the natural world is poetic and accessible without being overblown. There is also a sense of excitement in the quotidian, which is something we are struggling with at our house during this age of covid-19. We don't live in the woods, so our everyday is not the same, but it feels invigorating to hear about the things Laura and Mary do to pass the time. In addition, however—and here Little House on the Prairie is different from Little House in the Big Woods —there is sustained narrative engagement with Native peoples. At the beginning of  Little House on the Prairie ,   Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, an...

We recently jumped forward in the Moomins series to read Moominpappa at Sea   by Tove Jansson. We have only read three of the Moomin books thus far ( Finn Family Moomintroll , Comet in Moominland,  and Moominpappa at Sea ) but I have already noticed that each translator's text has its own feel. Picking up Moominpappa at Sea was in part colored by our recent abandonment of Moominpappa's Memoirs , which M. and I found dense and a bit hard to follow at the sentence level. I wasn't sure whether this was a fault of the original text or that of the translator. In any case, Moominpappa at Sea is translated by Kingsley Hart, and the combination of original and translation is a winning one. M. was with me on every page as we followed the Moomin family's journey from Moominvalley to an island, uninhabited but for a lone fisherman who (spoiler alert) turns out to be the lighthouse keeper. Moominpappa is having a bit of a midlife crisis, Moominmamma feels homesick and paints a gard...

 Last April M's Nonna sent us a copy of Dory Fantasmagory: The Real True Friend, and it sent us down the exciting new path of reading novels together. I knew that Max loved plot driven books with a lot of text, such as One Morning in Maine . What I didn't know was that he had the patience to sit through a novel. (And during the height of the COVID-19 stay-at-home order in our state, this was truly an amazing discovery, as we spent hours every day reading.) Here are ten of the first chapter books that we read and that we have returned to over and over again: 1. Dory Fantasmagory: The Real True Friend  by Abby Hanlon I have a soft spot for Dory , as this and the other books in the series were the books that introduced us to chapter books. Dory  and her world are both wacky in the best sense of the word. These books are about five and six year olds, so will appeal to that age group and slightly younger kids. The Real True Friend is the second book in the series, but they can...

Hello and welcome to Reading with M. I decided to start this blog after reading many similar blogs and lists of read-aloud selections for young children. However, I quickly exhausted those lists, and also found that I discovered, through family, friends, the library, and some well-curated independent bookstores, other books that I wanted to share. About us. M. is four years old and our only child. Unfortunately (as of August 2020), due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he is not currently in school, which is one of the reasons that I have been reading to him more than usual. I am a college professor teaching from home, and my spouse has a similarly flexible job. We have thus far been able to juggle childcare and work, though not without significant stress and a bit of drama. Reading together, however, has been a bright spot. M. has always loved to read, and we have been reading to him since he was about 6 weeks old. But, when we received a copy of Dory Fantasmagory: The Real True Friend  i...