The Round-Tower

So my eldest has found a book in the ‘grown up/great literature’ section that doesn’t look boring… and finally found one of my favorite authors… Alexandre Dumas.  The book is The Man in the Iron Mask.  We happened to have it taped, so watched the movie last night.  She is definitely hooked. Dh and I teased her about her not liking it, so why didn’t she let US have a go… to which she instantly assumed ‘penitentiary meal position’, book clutched protectively to her chest, shoulders hunched, eyebrows furrowed ferociously… entire posture screaming TOUCH MY BOOK AND DIE.  To which I responded, but Kenna, the GROWN UP section doesn’t HAVE any GOOD books! (quoting her own words back to   her of course)  Did you KNOW that you can exaggerate the above posture?  It takes GREAT talent and skill, and a substantial helping of Pubescent Hormone Therapy, but it IS possible. I have witnessed it. 

Fast forward to poolside today, the neighbor boys are playing in the water with the girls, and Kenna, in true enthusiastic bibliovore fashion, inquires if this young man, a few years her junior, has read The Man in the Iron Mask.  To which he replies, “The comic book?” The discussion went downhill from there, until I finally had to step in and explain to him that she meant a REGULAR book and that she wasn’t simply confused re: comic book titles, and to HER that there were comic book titles somewhat similar. I could tell that Kenna was somewhat frustrated… he was a BOY after all, and this was a really fabulous book with lots of heroism and chivalry and battle and stuff… SURELY he had read it… In the end, no, he hadn’t read the book. End conversation. 

And they say we TEACH these differences…

Well, ok, maybe not… because they live with their teacher…and ‘no more books’ doesn’t work either, because I KNOW my children will be reading… you can’t go to any area of the house without tripping over a child engrossed in a book… and if our first day of their break is any indicator, dirty looks still abound. Still,   !!!

We have finished yet another school year.  The girls have time to enjoy the debauchery of summer in all it’s glory, while I slave over the curriculum for next year.  There are attractions for me as well though, the breaks to take the girls to the pool and read are a veritable treasure… if only sweating worked off calories!    Also, the knowledge that the trials and struggles of the previous year are in the past (at least for book-keeping purposes) and a clean slate, with a new plan, awaits us all. There is a great deal of work for me to do… cleaning out binders, making portfolio’s, cataloging the new books, sketching up the rough plan, entering detailed lesson plans, curriculum lists, and pre-reading books as necessary.  The more I do now, the better life goes later… or so I keep telling myself!

I went in to tuck my oldest daughter in for the night last night and got an unusual response to my usual ‘Sweet dreams’.  She muttered,”Not likely.”    I, of course, questioned such melancholy only to find it due to a BOOK!  Here I’m wondering what slipped through the safeguards that would give her such trouble… after all, this child watches movies all the time that would give another nightmares with no trouble at all.  The book was second in a new favorite series (loosely based on the Rangers from Tolkien’s LOTR series), recently released.  She had come to the end of the book only to find a cliffhanger of an ending.  This was a hardcover and there was a blip on the author along with a picture in the back flyleaf.  As Kenna was wailing about the long wait until the next book came out and how awful it was going to be, and how she wasn’t going to be able to sleep for thinking of what might happen next etc et al… She all of a sudden interjects a new problem.  She said, “I’ve SEEN this author (the pic), and he’s a STORYTELLER (our family’s term for a person of senior citizen type age as a result of their being a wonderfully inexhaustable fount of stories)!!! WHAT if he DIES before he finishes the next book!?!?!?! THEN where will we be????”  Mumbling something conciliatory,  I picked up the book and headed to bed myself.  First thing I did upon opening the book to read it, was turn to the back flyleaf and check out the author’s picture.  I like the series too, just how close ARE we to that horrid possibility of author’s death?  Shouting with laughter I hollered across the hall to her room, “KENNA! That poor man isn’t any older than your FATHER!” I heard some sheepish mumbling reply… and I do think she got to sleep… eventually.

So I recently placed an order for some books we’d need for the next year of history.  This time from Barnes & Noble since I had MyPoints book money to spend there.  Thus, boxes turned up on my porch today.  The reaction was very. amusing.  I was napping at the time and Micah, my severely dyslexic 10 yr old, burst through the door (without knocking as is our rule) to ask if I KNEW that there were FIVE boxes of books on the porch? I gave her instructions, which did NOT involve opening said boxes.  When I got up, my eldest was waiting for me.  She was wanting me to call her when I got ready to open the boxes because she didn’t want Micah to have first dibs on anything good therein.  Finally, when I sat at my desk, computer whirring busily with multiple windows open and conversations going, to open the boxes I had children hovering over me.  Finally, I had to assure them that they would get to see the books and I would CALL them if anything of interest to them had arrived before they would leave me to open boxes in peace.