GOOD books!

oh man i am SO enjoying chapter books with maeven! we JUST finished heidi (which i thought i had read as a child, but i don’t think i did!) what a WONDERFUL read!! i cried at times!! what a wonderful wonderful story! and what a sweet child! i am so in love with heidi now! 🙂

and i’ve just adored reading so many other great classics with maeven…before heidi we read (in no particular order):
the secret garden
stuart little
charlotte’s web
my side of the mountain
the finch’s fabulous furnace
mr popper’s penguin
and a bunch of bobbsey twins and a variety of other littler, non-classic chapter books…

and that’s not anywhere near a complete list. we go through chapter books like crazy and i’m not doing so good at keeping track of them.

next we are going to read “a little princess”, which is currently waiting at the library for me to pick up…and then i think we will do “anne of green gables”. all of these wonderful stories also have wonderful movies as well…so maeven enjoys seeing the movies after we finish the book. (i INSIST we read first, watch later…not the other way around.)

many of these books i read as a child (but so long ago i’d long forgotten the plots) but some that i haven’t! its SOOOO enjoyable to me to finally get to read them! i’m really eager to read anne of green gables! that’s one i know i never read as a child, but i’ve many times seen bits and pieces of the series on pbs. what a lovable character, i cannot wait to introduce anne shirley to maeven. 🙂

but first i promised her to read “a little princess”, because she SOOOO love “the secret garden” and they are the same author. she’s excited to read it and see the movie. (BOOK FIRST, though!)

i am pretty sure the language in these books go over her head many times…but i’m ok with that. she asks questions here and there…and i figure we’ll revisit the stories again when she is older and more able to understand all the language. but for now, i believe it is still very good for her to be exposed to such a richness of language and plots and characters. she definitely gets into it…she gets all excited and hops around like a maniac when happy things happen in the stories, and buries her head when sad or mean things happen. she’s definitely getting into them. 🙂

if i do nothing else for my child, i am so very proud that she is getting these opportunities to learn to love reading good quality books like these. there is so much crap out there nowadays. and yes we do still read some of that on occasion too…well not so much crap but not as good of quality…she does so love the fairy stories that she sees in the stores, so we do read those too…they are a quick read, being mostly light and fluffy with no real depth to plot or character…but that’s ok. we still get plenty of meaty books to read daily as well.

surprisingly, the disney fairy stories are actually quite good (there’s another series maeven loves that i am referring to when i mean the lower quality fairy stories and other like it…can’t remember the name but they are rainbow fairies or something like that.) disney usually does absolute crap stories for books. picture books and chapter books. i usually avoid them like the plague. but the neverland fairy stories are amazingly good! a little dark at times…but that’s to be expected with disney. but really, i thoroughly enjoyed the first book that we read in the series “fairy dust and teh quest for the egg”…the littler, shorter books in the series are not quite so good, but man that egg book was REALLY good! so i have to find more like that. but for now, we have enough to read.

i’m feeling very much better after finishing that book. i was having a really grumpy day, with a sick child and a bored child. 3rd day stuck at home. but after finishing heidi…it really have helped my mood significantly. 🙂

now i’m off to get some lunch made! late, as usual! ah well, so we are late eaters…for ever meal. oh well.