Book Review: The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson (1958)

Armand, a homeless old Parisian man, has never wanted to be tied down by traditional family life.  When three children and their mother move in beneath the bridge he thinks of as his own, he is at first very resistant. Over time, though, his affection for the little family motivates him to look beyond his own desires and help the little "starlings" get back on their feet. 

I have read this book three times, and have never managed to put my thoughts down in a review. In a lot of ways, it's a very sentimental story, the kind of heartwarming tale that I like to read around Christmastime, which is when the story takes place. Because it has that sentimental feel to it, not everything that happens in the story feels completely realistic, and sometimes that has bothered me. I also struggle with the French pronunciation when I read the book aloud.

Still, in terms of setting and character, I think it's a top-notch children's book. Armand is a very different hero for a children's story, and I think young readers fall in love with him the same way the young children in the story do. Though homelessness is slightly romanticized by this book, the story does give kids a chance to contemplate what it might be like to live in less fortunate circumstances. It's also fun to do a bit of armchair traveling to Paris with Armand as a guide. 

My most recent reading of this was aloud to my 6-year-old. She didn't love it as much as her older sister did, but I wonder if that will change in a year or two when I read it again to the next child. In any case, I'm happy to keep this book on our shelves as a feel-good read for the holiday season. 

Book Review: The Other Side of Silence by Margaret Mahy (1995)

Hero, whose mother wrote a famous parenting book and raised several academically gifted children, is the youngest in her family, and she almost never speaks. To escape her parents and siblings, she often leaves the house and hides out in the tree in a neighbor's yard down the street. When the neighbor finds her there one day, she invites her in, and hires her to do a little work around the house. After spending some time there, however, Hero realizes the warm welcome she has received might not be as friendly as it seems on the surface, and she needs to find a way to communicate to her family what's really going on.  

I was looking for a book to fulfill a challenge prompt, which asked for a book with a quiet word in the title. My husband, who has not read this book, handed this one to me. The only other Margaret Mahy novel I've read is The Haunting, and that was pretty strange from the outset, so when this one was a little more in the vein of ordinary young adult fiction, I let my guard down and settled into the world of the story. The result is that when things got weird, as they did about 90% into the book, I was caught utterly off-guard. Not since Afternoon of the Elves have I been so disturbed by a book for children! 

It's hard for me to say right now whether I will give this book to any of my kids. My oldest is eight, and it's definitely too dark in tone for me to suggest to her right now, but she doesn't mind scary or creepy things, so I think when she's 13 or 14, she might enjoy it. My second daughter is so sensitive, I'm not sure she'd be able to stand the shift in tone near the end of the story. I would not have handled it well as a kid. As an adult, I was disturbed enough.

Often, I think it's fine to take the word of a trusted reviewer rather than to pre-read every book yourself, but this is one that I think parents need to read ahead of time so they know what their kids are getting into. It's definitely not just a sweet slice-of-life YA book, however much it may feel that way until almost the end.

Book Review: Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (1972)

Miyax, also known as Julie, who has been forced into a marriage she does not want, decides to run away into the Alaskan tundra. There she takes shelter with a family of wolves, while she tries to figure out how she might get to San Francisco where her pen pal lives. 

Julie of the Wolves is a book I actively avoided as a kid, and as with many books like that, over time, I invented my own mental version of what the story was about that was just totally off-base. I thought this was historical fiction, like a winter version of Island of the Blue Dolphins. While it does have the same focus on survival, this is a much more contemporary story, the crux of which is the clash between modern American values and the traditional values of Miyax's family. 

I liked the writing in this book very much, but I found the story very slow. I listened to the audiobook, and read along in the print book and that did help me stay focused, but it was hard to stick with the story. I absolutely appreciate the reasons this book was awarded a Newbery medal. The author's writing style is very distinctive and there are moments from the story that still come to mind months after reading it. It's not my cup of tea, and I think George's My Side of the Mountain is infinitely more readable and enjoyable than this book, but I have kids who I suspect will feel differently and will love Julie of the Wolves.

Reading Through History: Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates (1950)

Amos Fortune began his life as the son of an African king. Kidnapped into slavery as a young man and brought to the United States, he is purchased at auction by a Quaker family who take him in, teach him to read, and eventually give him his freedom. From there, Amos works toward freeing other slaves and slowly building the life he wants for himself.

The writing in this book is really well-crafted and it makes the story of Amos Fortune's experiences fighting against hardship really come to life. I read this aloud to my three oldest daughters, ages 4, 6, and 8, and they were utterly enthralled, begging me for just one more chapter. This was their first introduction to slavery in American history, and I appreciated that the book handled the subject matter in a way that was accessible for them. It was already very clear to all three of them that slavery is wrong (we talk about that when we read the Old Testament), and this book helped them understand how that wrong was carried out in our own society. They also love biographies, and hearing the details of Amos's jobs, homes, spouse, etc. really appealed to them.

Amos Fortune, Free Man isn't the most popular book today because people often judge it based on what it doesn't include, using today's approach to race as the standard. But considering this is a children's book from 1950, prior to the Civil Rights movement, I find it pretty impressive. Another wonderful book we recently read from around the same time period is Carvers' George (1952) by Florence Crannell Means. While George Washington Carver was born into slavery in the US and freed as a child, he has much in common with Amos Fortune when it comes to dealing with relentless adversity. Neither of these would be sufficient as the only book a child reads about the experience of black people during and after slavery, but they are both excellent entrypoints into the discussion for young readers.

Read-at-Home Mom Report: June 2022 Wrap-Up

My Month in Books

Even though I didn't read anything at all during the last week of June, I still read 17 books and most of them were 4 or 5 star reads. The books I read are mostly romance, which is typical for my summer reading, and I also knocked out a couple of longer, more demanding titles. Here is the full list. 

40 Re-Reads Before 40

I didn't read as many books for this project in June as I had hoped, partly because a lot of the books I want to re-read aren't available on audio, and that's been my preferred reading method. But I did listen to two re-reads:  Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson (5 stars), which was every bit as funny the second time around and On Writing by Stephen King (5 stars), which I hadn't realized was a source of a lot of the "rules" I give myself when I write fiction.  

Challenges and Book Clubs 

For my personal #EbookSummer challenge I fulfilled 4 squares on the Bingo board. Love and Other Great Expectations by Becky Dean (5 stars) counted is an ARC, Jill Came Tumbling by Julie Christianson (4 stars) is a novella, The Love Connection by Denise Williams (4 stars) has "love" in the title, and All in Good Time by Carolyn Astfalk (5 stars) is by a favorite author. Love and Other Great Expectations is a YA romance involving a literary-themed scavenger hunt in the UK. It was delightful. Jill Came Tumbling was well-written but I've already forgotten the details of the story. I enjoyed The Love Connection a lot, but I heard the second book in the series had some content that I prefer to avoid and I won't be reading it. All in Good Time was great. It was an emotional rollercoaster at times, but very believable and very relatable for Catholic moms. 

With my husband and our friend, I read Mohawk Valley by Ronald Welch (4 stars), which deviated a bit from the formula of the other titles in the series in a way that I enjoyed. 

With Close Reads, I finally finished Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (4 stars). I'm glad I read it and I like the way Hardy writes, even though it was a depressing tragedy. 

For #WorldFullofBooks, the theme was popular books. I read Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez (5 stars) and Book Lovers by Emily Henry (3 stars). Part of Your World was great; Book Lovers was kind 

of a let-down.  

The Goldberry reading challenge prompt was a book your husband or father loves. My husband asked me to read Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (4 stars). It's a strange book with many passages I didn't understand, but it also made me laugh and it made me think. It was worth picking up. 

The prompt for the Buzzword Reading Challenge was a book with "all" in the title, so I counted All in Good Time by Carolyn Astfalk. 

For the Read Your Bookshelf challenge, the prompt was a book with a book on the cover. I listened to  Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson (3 stars). It was a good story, but not very memorable. 

Mood Reading 

The other books I picked up this month were all chosen at random, and all were audiobooks. I listened to Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink (5 stars) after seeing it recommended on Instagram. It was a nice look at the reading life, and at re-reading, which seemed appropriate given my own re-reading project. Word by Word by Anne Lamott (5 stars) is a short lecture based on her book, Bird by Bird, which I read and enjoyed in  2021. The lecture had different enough content that it was worth listening to even after reading the book. The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd (5 stars) was recommended in the Modern Mrs. Darcy Summer Reading Guide, and it was a surprise big hit with me. It's a mystery involving maps and it's a little bit fantastical, and I loved it. Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships by Sarah Grunder Ruiz (5 stars) is another one I saw on Instagram, recommended by a writer friend, and it was really good. I loved the details of working for a charter boat company. Finally, I listened to Joyland by Stephen King (4 stars), which was recommended on What Should I Read Next when the guests were the hosts from A Strong Sense of Place. It was not scary. 

As for the rest of the family's reading...

A (girl, 2 years 3 months)

• The Big Scream by by Kirsti Call and Denis Angelov
• I Am a Baby by Bob Shea 

R (boy, 2 years 3 months)

• I Am a Baby by Bob Shea
• Truckery Rhymes by Jon Scieszka
• I Am a Backhoe by Anna Grossnickle Hines 

E (girl, 4 years 8 months)

• Elmer and the Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
• The Dragons of Blueland by Ruth Stiles Gannett
• B is for Betsy by Carolyn Haywood 

C (girl, 6 years 9 months)

• Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary
• Mr. Popper's Penguins by Florence and Richard Atwater 

M (girl, 8 years 7 months)

• The King's Beard by Leonard Wibberley 

My husband

• Mohawk Valley by Ronald Welch
• Eusebius the Phoenician by Christopher Webb
• Hittite Warrior by Joanne Williamson 

Up Next For Me

I came home from visiting my family in New York with over 50 new-to-me used books. I hope to read a couple of those in July, along with A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr for Close Reads, The Scarlet Letter and Franny and Zooey as two of my re-reads, and possibly The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman to go along with the #WorldFullofBooks theme, Italy. 

I'm adding this post to the link-up for An Open Book at CatholicMom.com. 

Homeschool Update: May 2022

Poetry 

From Favorite Poems Old and New, edited by Helen Ferris (Doubleday Books, 1957), I read aloud: "Trains" by James S. Tippett, "Barbara Frietchie" by John Greenleaf Whittier, "A Nautical Ballad" by Charles Edward Carryl, "The Archer" by Clinton Scollard , "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Swimming" by Clinton Scollard, "The Brown Bear" by Mary Austin, "All But Blind" by Walter de la Mare, "The Spider and the Fly" by Mary Howitt. 

Music

M., C., and E. read Turandot from The Random House Book of Opera Stories as well as the version by Marianna Mayer. Then they watched an animated version as well as a full stage production from the Metropolitan opera. They learned to sing "The Battle of New Orleans" and "Crown Him with Many Crowns." 

Art Appreciation 

E. completed the first two levels in Child-Size Masterpieces. All three girls looked at paintings from The Vatican Art Deck and The Louvre Art Deck, including Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio, Madonna of Chancellor Rolin by Jan Van Eyck, and The Deposition of Christ by Rogier Van der Weyden.  

English 

C. continued to work on Grammarland. M. completed Rex Barks lesson 3-1.

At lunch time, the girls listened to Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright.  

E. read books from the Cowboy Sam series , books from the Dan Frontier series, My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, Pony Scouts series by Catherine Hapka,  and Katie Woo and Friends by Fran Manushkin.  

C. read Redwall by Brian Jacques and The Trouble with Jenny's Ear by Oliver Butterworth, as well as some of  Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld.  

M. read The Erie Canal by Samuel Hopkins Adams, The Santa Fe Trail by Samuel Hopkins Adams, Kit Carson and the Wild Frontier by Ralph Moody, Remember the Alamo by Robert Penn Warren, Simon Bolivar: The Brave Liberator by Arnold Whitridge. 

Science

We completed our science work for this school year, so for fun the girls watched some Sci Show Kids videos. C. did the Levitating Lantern Kiwi Crate, and E. did the Bird Koala Crate. 

History 

From Abraham Lincoln's World, M. read:  Victoria is Born; Hard Times and Bad Kings; Victoria, Who Was She?; Charles Dickens, or, David Copperfield; Wild Turkeys and Waste Time; The Story of Brazil; The Drama of Greece; Ulysses Grant, Named and Renamed; Railroads Are Here;  A Three-Day Revolution; Young Patriots of Italy; A Bloodless Revolution; Union and Liberty; Time Makes an Old Idea New; The Sultan's Guest; India; Li Hung Chang, a Boy of China; Slavery, What to Do About It?;  Abe Lincoln of New Salem; Remember the Alamo;  On to Oregon; Into Darkest Africa; Young Lion vs. Ancient Dragon; R stands for Regina; Corn and Potatoes; Rebellion in Canada; Steam Across the Atlantic; Behind Japan's Closed Door; Wedding Bells; Authors and Visitors; Telegraph and Photograph; On to the West; To the Halls of Montezuma;  Gold!; Canada; Corn and Potatoes, continued; The Year 1848; A Beautiful Uniform or a Spiked Helmet; The Peace Festival; Napoleon III; Der Tolle Bismarck; At Home in Springfield; Free Soil and Slave; Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

C. learned about Pompeii from The buried city of Pompeii: what it was like when Vesuvius exploded by Shelley Tanaka. She watched Pompeii Walking Tour in 4K Part 1 and Behind the Scenes of the First Excavation of Pompeii in 70 Years. We also read One Day in Ancient Rome by G.B. Kirtland. 

Then we covered the New Testament. We briefly used In Bible Days by Gertrude Hartmann, but I quickly determined that it wasn't in line with Catholic (or really any branch of Christian) teaching and we switched to The Holy Bible Adapted for Young Catholic Readers edited by Jane Werner Watson and Charles Hartman and illustrated by the Provensens and Feodor Rojankovksy. On her own, C. read Tomie dePaola's Parables of Jesus and Miracles of Jesus. 

C. finished history for the year with the section about the fall of Rome from Builders of the Old World.  

Math

C. worked on the addition and subtraction exercises in Singapore 2B. 

M. worked on Challenging Word Problems and geometry.  

Art 

M., C., E. made Mother's Day cards for me and their grandmothers. 

Religion 

We read from the Catholic Children's Treasure Box volumes 3 and 4. 

Read-at-Home Mom Report: May 2022 Wrap-Up

My Month in Books

#ShortReads22

 

This month, I participated in a short story and essay read-a-thon hosted by booktubers Chantel Reads All Day, What Brings Corina Joy, and Mitzi Reads and Writes. I completed the whole Bingo card. Here are the pieces I read and which prompts they fulfilled.

• From The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: "A Case of Identity" (1800s)
• From Flowers in the Rain and Other Stories by Rosamund Pilcher:  "Flowers in the Rain" (weather) 
• From Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy: "It's Only a Day" (another country); "Liberty Green" (color in title); "The Cure for Sleeplessness" (written by a woman); "Dolly's Mother" (name in title)
• From The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg: "The Only One of Millions Just Like Him" (number in title); "The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted" (2000s)
• From Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang: "The Evolution of Human Science" (science fiction); "Story of Your Life" (adapted to screen)
• From Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor: "Total Effect and the Eighth Grade" (essay); "The King of Birds" (favorite author); "The Fiction Writer and His Country" (free space) 
• From Kinsey and Me by Sue Grafton: "The Lying Game" (mystery)
• From Telling Time by Nancy Willard: "The Birds and the Beasts Were There" (nature)
• From The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang: "Toads and Diamonds" (fairy tale); "Beauty and the Beast" (fantasy) 
• From Fables for Our Time by James Thurber: "The Unicorn in the Garden" (humor/satire) 
• From my Kindle Library: "Gruff" by Rachel Kovaciny (retelling); "No Match for a Good Story" by Rachel Kovaciny (new-to-you author) 
• Found online: "Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1900s); "Joy" by Anton Chekhov (translated);  "The Wedding-Knell" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (gothic horror), "The Destructors" by Graham Greene (allegory) 
• From the public library: Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris (play)

40 Re-Reads Before 40

 

I'm officially halfway finished with this project! My first re-read of the month was  Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells (5 stars), which I first read when I was in college. The audiobook was excellent and I enjoyed the world of the story every bit as much this time around as I did the first time.  The second re-read I picked up was 11th grade assigned reading: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (5 stars). I liked this book fine as a teenager but appreciated it so much more 20+ years later. I also re-read two books that I have often identified as favorites:  That Summer by Sarah Dessen (5 stars) and Empire Falls by Richard Russo . Dessen's writing never disappoints, and Russo does a beautiful job of capturing small-town life.  My last re-read of the month was Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes. Julia Whelan's narration of the audiobook highlights just how great the dialogue is.  

Read-Alouds

  

I read two books aloud to my girls this month. I had never previously read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (5 stars), and we all loved it. Reading aloud in a Yorkshire accent isn't easy, but it was worth giving it a try. We also read The People in Pineapple Place by Anne Lindbergh (4 stars), which was mostly a light, easy fantasy read, but it had a lovely unexpectedly poignant ending. 

Challenges and Book Clubs

 

I read Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (5 stars) for the Goldberry challenge, where the May prompt was to read a book your mom (or grandmother or wife) loves. Gone with the Wind is my mom's favorite book and I totally understand why. I could not put it down. For the Read Your Bookshelf challenge, the prompt was a new-to-you author. I read my ARC of The Treehouse on Dog River Road by Catherine Drake (3 stars). I loved the premise, but there were a lot of little problems in the book that would have felt minor on their own but which, taken together, became tedious. For the Buzzword Reading Challenge, the prompt was a book with a direction in the title, so I chose Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons. This was the most disappointing book I've read by this author so far, and were I not trying to become a Siddons completist someday, I probably would have abandoned it.  For the summer (May 19 to August 19), I've created an ebook reading challenge for myself to help me prioritize some digital books, especially Kindle Unlimited titles I will lose access to when my subscription expires in August. For that I read two books Cloaked by Rachel Kovaciny (4 stars) and 6 Dates to Disaster by Cynthia T. Toney (5 stars).  

For the Ronald Welch Zoom book club that my husband and I have going with a friend we read Captain of Dragoons (5 stars). I loved it because it surprised me and made me gasp, even though this might just be because I am not a careful reader and missed a lot of cues. For #WorldFullofBooks, the theme was Shakespeare and I kind of copped out and read a cozy mystery involving Shakespeare instead of tackling a place as I had intended. The book was Untimely Death by Elizabeth J. Duncan (4 stars). It was well-written and had a unique feel compared to other cozies, but I don't plan to continue the series. 

Mood Reading

 

My mood reading was a bit eclectic this month. I read three romance novellas by Ali Hazelwood: Under One Roof (4 stars), Stuck with You (4 stars), and Below Zero (3 stars). The sex scenes in these are about as graphic as they can be, and I skipped them entirely on the audiobook. The writing in the rest of the stories is brilliant, but I do wish authors would tone down the sexual detail. (Below Zero had the most sex in it, and Under One Roof was the best story of the three.) 

I also read 10 Steps to Girlfriend Status by Cynthia T. Toney, which is book two in the Bird Face series. (6 Dates to Disaster, mentioned above, is book 3). Toney is like a Catholic Judy Blume, and I love all of her books that I've read so far. I also listened to Falling for Your Best Friend's Twin by Emma St. Clair, which is a rom-com that actually made me laugh. I plan to read more from the series this summer. My husband suggested that I read Adam and the Golden Cock by Alice Dalgliesh (4 stars) one day, and I did so in one sitting. Finally, I read The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer, which was a gift from the same friend who does the Zoom book club with my husband and me. I enjoyed my first Heyer experience, melodramatic though the story was, and I'm excited to try more of her books.

As for the rest of the family's reading...

A. (girl, 2 years old)

• Babies by Gyo Fujikawa 
• The Baby's Catalogue by Janet and Allen Ahlberg

R. (boy, 2 years old)

• Adventure Awaits by Henry Cole 
• At the Pond by David Elliott
• In the Woods by David Elliott
• Demolition by Sally Sutton 
• Construction by Sally Sutton 
• Roadwork by Sally Sutton 
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mr. Rogers 

E. (girl, 4 years old)  

• books from the Cowboy Sam series 
• books from the Dan Frontier series 
• My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
• Pony Scouts series by Catherine Hapka 
• Katie Woo and Friends by Fran Manushkin 

C. (girl, 6 years old) 

• Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld 
• Redwall by Brian Jacques
• The Trouble with Jenny's Ear by Oliver Butterworth  

M. (girl, 8 years old)

• The Erie Canal by Samuel Hopkins Adams
• The Santa Fe Trail by Samuel Hopkins Adams
• Kit Carson and the Wild Frontier by Ralph Moody
• Remember the Alamo by Robert Penn Warren
• Simon Bolivar: The Brave Liberator by Arnold Whitridge

My husband 

• The Prisoner of Pineapple Place by Anne Lindbergh
• The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden
• Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
• Captain of Dragoons by Ronald Welch

Up Next for Me

In June I'll be focusing on finishing Tess of the D'urbervilles with the Close Reads podcast and reading Foucault's Pendulum for the Goldberry challenge prompt of a book your father or husband loves. (My husband asked me to read this one.) I'm also planning to read All in Good Time by Carolyn Astfalk and Book Lovers by Emily Henry. 

I'm adding this post to the link-up for An Open Book at CatholicMom.com.