This is a kind of narrow question, but I figure if anyone can help, you guys can. I get a lot of questions from my kids about food and nutrients. What are cruciferous vegetables? What is a tuber? I think it's because they love reading all the kids' cookbooks we have. The books will have little bits of "healthy eating" information, you know, like a few sentences about what kinds of vitamins are in each vegetable, what family the vegetables belong to, that kind of thing. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to have a book around with more information. I guess I'm looking for something on plant classification that focuses on vegetables. Or at least that includes lots of vegetables. I'd like to be able to show them what "brassicas" are and what the larger family is, etc. Right now, I kind of either dodge their questions or I google, and I'd really rather have a book...ideally with pictures..I looked around a little online for book ideas, but I thought I'd also try here to see if anyone has some suggestions.

I'm glad you posted this, because it makes me feel less crazy : ) I tried to follow Ambleside Online, and I ended up doing a very pared-down version (plus changing some of the books, but that's a separate issue). I spent so much time browsing the AO forum and trying to understand how all those other families got everything done. It's not the actual school work that seems tough -- like you say, it's all the extras. Handiwork, etc. It just seemed like those families were following a set structure all day long, from morning to evening. I really didn't want to be directing my kids' activities all day long. II can see the beauty of it, it's like how I admire the Benedictine Order, but I couldn't imagine actually pulling it off.

Yes!

Washington Irving -- Rip van Winkle, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A retelling of The Tempest, maybe. Love all the suggestions here. I don't know a lot of them -- I'll be putting Perilous Gard on hold at the library.

I want all of this, plus about 12 extra hours every day so I can read, daydream, idle around, etc, but still have plenty of time left over for everything I'm really supposed to be doing!

Yes, we definitely had this issue-- I remember struggling to keep scary material away from my kids' eyes. Both of then learned to read by 4 and once they could read, they couldn't stop. They are both anxious kids as it is, and of course they didn't know how to filter anything themselves. They both really, really benefitted from lots of gentle read aloud books. Sorry, that sounded so negative! I love reading and it was also very wonderful when the kids started to read. This thread just reminded me of some of the downsides!

I didn't think this was rambling at all 🙂 and I'm sorry if it seemed like I was saying everyone has to love literature, or read certain things at certain ages, or that it's a failure to not love literature. I actually meant the opposite, but I must have expressed it badly! I think everyone should be given access to literature, and should be free to make what they want of it. The art thing is interesting to me because actually it's taken me way more time to get my kids interested in art than in literature...so I don't necessarily think art is easier or more immediate! But then, that just proves your point that we are all different and that it's a bad idea to cramp everyone into the same mold.

Yes. I totally agree that kids should be given scaffolding and support. Like @ordinaryshoes is doing with her daughter as they read together! My parents talked to me a lot about books -- the books they were reading, the books I was reading, and that provided a huge amount of support.

I've been thinking about this topic a lot...I feel like I got distracted by the whole question of Dickens but I really did have a bigger point to make, I promise. I want to approach literature with my kids in the same way I approach art. Before COVID, I'd take my kids to the museum sometimes just to look around. They didn't have much staying power, and I didn't expect them to -- I always went with the idea that we'd stay for 10 minutes and, if they liked it, we'd stay longer. Sometimes we only looked at one painting! (We pretty much only went to free museums because of this...I knew if I was paying I'd get stressed out.) My goal is to make them comfortable in museums, to teach them that they can come and go freely in them and that they can like, dislike, criticize whatever they wanted. This is how I feel about literature too. Obviously I I don't want to push them beyond what they can do, but I also do t want them feeling overly hesitant about any book. I want them to be free to read in their own way, drawing their own conclusions, forming their own tastes, etc.

That's so cool -- it sounds like your daughter is asking really good questions and is getting a lot out of the book!

Yes! We have the same approach. One day my daughter was like "I read The Nose." She then told me all about chapter one of the Gogol novel which, really, does read like a fairy tale for kids! I mean, nose baked into bread, then coming to life. She had zero interest in reading further. I think by chapter two it gets into functionaries and social events anyway, and then she went back to reading Sound Box Parade...like no difference in her mind...

Okay. I don't want to get stuck in a Dickens for All stance. What bothers me is this division people make between "classic literature" on the one hand and "pleasure reading" on the other. I think a lot of kids learn that the "classics" are somehow intimidating and should be approached with anxiety, and I think that's a shame. Kids should be taught to enjoy books and to engage with them.

But with Dickens in particular, I don't think reading for the plot has to be reductive. He is such a direct writer, and such a good storyteller, that I think you can read him for the plot and then later come back and add new layers of understanding. I didn't mean to say that everyone has to read Dickens in elementary school. I definitely loved reading Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.

That makes sense though -- a book like that would've been crazy hard for me in French. I'm thinking it's not just vocabulary but also general familiarity with other, similar books. I definitely didn't know what sanguine meant when I was 10, but I don't remember it bothering me. I think I just plowed through anyway, trying to find out what was going to happen next:) I was kind of a greedy reader as a kid.

You know, that's totally true. Oliver Twist is going to have new vocabulary and will generally take more concentration than Nancy Drew. I guess I was thinking about the story -- you can read Dickens for the pleasure of the plot.

I don't think it's a question of "pushing" books on kids, or "forcing" them to read particular books. I also don't think we need to have an either/or approach to the classics vs everything else. I much prefer "and" to "or." I do think that, sadly, a lot of people grow up feeling intimidated by "classic" literature, which is a shame and is totally irrational. Oliver Twist is not really a harder book to read than Nancy Drew, or the Hardy Boys. I think we create a lot of anxiety around certain books. I don't agree that the answer is to avoid the classics, or to stop giving them to kids -- I think it's easy enough to teach kids to love those books, or at least to respond to them, rather than lumping them all together in a despised category. I think my parents did a good job with that and I'm trying to follow their lead. My father watched a lot of Saturday morning cartoons with us but he also spent months reading us the Oddyssey at bedtime -- not because he thought he should, but because he loved it. We read it so slowly, and I remember laughing at all of the millions of times Dawn would appear with her rosy fingers. I want my kids to have the same free and easy relationship with books.

I love this theme. What distinguishes noir from other detective novels? I guess we can't call Agatha Christie, or any of those British puzzle mysteries noir -- but what about Simenon? There's a lot of darkness and squalor, but is the hero just too bourgeois for the books to count as noir? I don't know. I just read "Maigret's Childhood Friend," which I don't think is his best but is still very wonderful in my opinion. I finished reading Gilead (Marilyn Robinson). It's the story of an Iowa preacher, told in the form of a long letter to his unborn son. Lots of details about the preacher's one-eyed grandfather, an abolitionist who hung out with John Brown. It's a good book, beautifully written, but more limpid than I wanted. Now I want to read a book called "Lord," by a Brazilian author named Joao Gilberto Noll. I found out about the writer in a random fit of googling last year and the book has been on my shelf ever since. I'm excited about it because of the writing style - very interior, psychological, rich. I'd really like to actually read it instead of just look at its spine on the shelf every day : )

But what if someone posted something on this board like, My 16 year old is having so much trouble in school. He's very bright and articulate, he loves to read, and he writes well, but he just isn't interested in his studies. He can't make friends with the other kids, he distrusts authority, and he is always talking about hypocrisy. The only person he seems to really love is his little sister. And to make things worse, he's now run away from school and spent the night in the park! ...wouldn't we be sympathetic, and help the poster see the good in their son? I haven't read the book in YEARS so I really can't remember anything unspeakable that Holden did to other people. Yeah, I see being angry at his money and general advantages, but we read an awful lot of books about characters with white privilege. Nobody is up in arms about Darcy after reading Pride and Prejudice : )

What period of time does she want to focus on? Before Europeans came to the Americas, or after? Does she want to focus on North America, or the Americas in general? That would impact which spine to choose. I would probably have her come up with some broad topics / questions to focus on. So, maybe she wants to look at labor, or land ownership, or education, or... I don't know. Once she has a list of topics, it'll also be easier to pick a spine and then to find other sources to build on.

I agree with this. I liked Catcher in the Rye, although I read it on my own, and I was very young, maybe 11 or 12. I don't know if it would hold up now. And I definitely got sick of Salinger's books about the Glass family. I did have to do it in school later, which was much less fun. We read it in the 9th grade and almost everyone in my class hated poor Holden. "Why didn't he just buckle down and do his homework?" was how most of our discussions went. Maybe it's not the right book to read in school. I have to say, I still don't get why the book makes people so aggravated. Is it because of the money and class? because other than that, Holden is obviously a troubled, lonely kid who feels powerless in the world, and I don't understand why people find him so frustrating.

I haven't read BB but since Violet Crown is talking about Genet, I'm assuming that there are themes of male love in the book... There are in Moby Dick too. All those cozy scenes of Ishmael and Queequeg curled up together in bed, chatting... I remember liking Melville's White Jacket, if you're looking for something else by him.

I also liked Tale of Two Cities better than Great Expectations. But I kind of lump them together in my mind, because I think of them both as his most heavy-handed, paint-with-a-broad-brush books. Most of the time Dickens is so funny and energetic -- his descriptions are so quirky and kind of astonishing, and it feels like he's playing, even when he's writing about the most serious issues. I don't remember feeling that much in Great Expectations or Tale of Two Cities. Hm, now I want to go and read them again.

I loved Moby Dick, surprised to find so many people didn't! Why? I hated Flowers for Algernon. And A Separate Peace. I wasn't wild about Red Badge of Courage but I wouldn't mind rereading it now. I love Dickens but the ones we read for school (Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities) aren't my favorites.

I really like those books. They're totally approachable and they do a really nice job making history real, at least the ones I've read. My daughter was very impressed by how hard Pilgrim kids had to work!

I don't either, but I'm pretty sure my husband does. He was SO HAPPY when the kids fell in love with Dog Man.