What We’re Reading Together

    Some people like to read (and finish) one book at a time. I am not one of those people.  

    This is also how I clean the house.  My husband would rather clean one room in entirety.  I'd rather flit around from room to room, making each room a small percentage better.

    In my own reading, I have multiple books I'm reading at any given time, and I have carried this over into read alouds with the boys.  We read picture books every day together, but these are the chapter books/longer books we're currently working through:

• Who Was King Tut? - We actually just finished this one.  In history, we were studying ancient Egypt, and I always love pulling in a Who Was?/What Was? book when I can because I love the series, and we can always learn a lot in a short matter of time.  Last year in history, we read the ones about George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Helen Keller, the Summer Olympics, and the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Children of Noisy Village - This is by the same author as the Pippi Longstocking books and is also based in Sweden.  I like that the chapters are short (often even short enough to hold the little boys' interest!), and they are each a stand-alone story, so it's okay there's a gap between reading chapters.
• Nate Saint: On a Wing and a Prayer - I had set the goal of reading through three biographies from this series (Christian Heroes Then and Now) this calendar year.  We has already learned about Jim Elliot and Eric Liddell, and I let the boys choose this time around.  I was kind of surprised that they voted for Nate Saint, since the story overlaps a lot with Jim Elliot's.  I have been reading a chapter of this book to the big boys every Sunday after "family church," but since we're almost at the end, we're going to try to finish it this week.
• The Jesus Storybook Bible - We often read random Bible stories from random storybook Bibles, but we're trying to read this one through from beginning to end.  It's tricky because the little boys don't really like any type of storybook Bible, and the big boys already know all the stories, so they feel it's beneath them. I do like how all the stories point to Jesus.
• When Families Pray - Lucas reads a devotional from this book every Sunday for our family church time.
• I've Lost my Hippopotamus - I usually like to have a poetry book that we slowly work through at the end of our evening family reading time.  We're definitely fans of Shel Silverstein, but this one by Jack Prelutsky has been good so far.
• On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness - For our audiobook, we're slowly working through this first book in the Wingfeather Saga series.  I've heard so many raving reviews, but we've really struggled through it.  I tried to read it to the older boys last year, but it was difficult to read aloud with all the crazy names and footnotes.  This time around, we're doing the audiobook narrated by the author, but we're still having a hard time getting into it.  We've got about 3 hours left, and I couldn't even tell you much of what's happened in the first 5 hours.  I'm hoping it redeems itself by the end.