When Andy was nineteen years old, his mother died of cancer. Shortly after his mother’s death, his father died in a car accident. Through a series of events, Andy found himself alone and living under a bridge in Orange Beach, Alabama. Frustrated and hopeless, Andy began asking the question “Does life just happen, or are there choices we can make that change the course of our future?” His search for the answer to this question took him to the library.

Andrews read over 200 biographies of successful people, people who had excelled in their own particular field. He began to see a pattern of seven principles that all of these successful people demonstrated. Out of those seven principles came the best-selling book The Traveler’s Gift, which would catapult him into recognition.

I began to meditate on his having read over 200 biographies. That’s a lot of books. I have tried for several years to read 100 books every year. I never, ever reached that goal, so the last couple of years I have trimmed down my goal to 52 books in 52 weeks. Even that is a stretch. So how in the world can a person read over 200 biographies? And if I were to add biographies to my line-up of books, how much could I learn about principles of success as well.

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I don’t know if we are easy to please, or if we have simply chosen good literature this year. I realize that my post on every book we read says that we loved it. Perhaps it’s just that classic books become classics for a reason: they are loved. The Borrowers was our latest read-aloud book for school. It was one of the more difficult books we’ve read, but we enjoyed it just the same.

It’s the story of a family of tiny “borrowers” who live under the kitchen floor of a big house. They sneak out at night and borrow items from the “human beans” living in the house, always in danger of being “seen”. We thought it was quirky and cute, but also suspenseful and tragic.

When we finished the last chapter today, MA said, “Mom, can we get the next book in the series when we go to the library?”

Are you asking me to read yet another lively, funny classic novel to you, Little One? I think that can be arranged.

In a deviation from the classic novels I have been hung up on lately, my newest book was The Noticer by Andy Andrews. I have read a couple of Andy’s books before, and last year I heard him speak at my church. He lives in the same town as my parents, and so many of the people and places in his book are recognizable to our family.

The best way I know to describe Andy’s writing style is “inspirational allegory”. In his first book, The Traveler’s Gift, he lays out seven principles that successful people display. In his next books, he further explores one of the seven principles. The Noticer expounds on the principle of perspective. Now, before you say that it sounds like dry reading material, Andy’s story-telling ability makes his books anything but boring. He uses characters and weaves tales together in a unique way to drive home his message and make the message come to life.

I really enjoyed reading The Noticer, and I can’t wait to pick up the rest of his books at the library.

We are all about books in this family. Always have been. I have always loved to read (hence, my 52 in 52 list on my blog). I used to own a small Christian book store. Both of my girls love to read, even the two-year-old. I am pretty choosy about the books I let them read. There are so many high quality, well written, lovely books available that I won’t let us waste our time on sub-par reading material. I wanted to share a few of my top picks for toddlers, in hopes that you might enjoy them too. These make great gifts as well.

One of my all-time favorites is Adam, Adam, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr. and Michael Sampson. You will recognize Bill Martin, Jr.’s popular works Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? In fact, this book is, obviously, patterned after Brown Bear, but all the animals have been changed to Bible characters. It has lines like:

“Adam, Adam, what do you see?”
“I see creation all around me.”

“Moses, Moses, what do you see?”
“I see the Red Sea parting for me.”

“Esther, Esther, what do you see?”
“I see the king listening to me.”

“Little child, little child, what do you see?”
“I see Jesus watching over me.”

When I owned my bookstore, I carried this book in hardback and board book form. I was distraught when they stopped publishing the hard print version. And now that I have tried to upload a link to the board book, I can’t find it anywhere. Let me know if you are able to find it in print somewhere. Until then, check your local library.

Another series I love for my girls is the “The Story of…” board books by Patricia Pingry. They are published by Candy Cane Press. I treasure these books because they tell the hard truths of scripture without watering it down, but they are on a level that even a toddler can understand. We have The Story of Jesus, The Story of Christmas, The Story of Noah, The Story of Thanksgiving, The Story of the Lord’s Prayer, The Story of the Ten Commandments, and The Story of Easter. She has also done some historical books in the same series like The Story of Abraham Lincoln, The Story of St. Patrick’s Day, The Story of America’s Birthday, and The Story of Rosa Parks. These books are not expensive and hold up very well to rough little hands.

My last recommendation came from the museum store at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. I got them when I went to New York a few years ago, and my girls have really learned to recognize famous works of art by reading them. They are by Julie Merberg and Suzanne Bober, and the illustrations are the actual famous paintings. We have Painting With Picasso, Dancing With Degas, Sunday With Seurat, Quiet Time With Cassatt, and A Picnic With Monet. There are others in this series, and I highly recommend them as a starting point in teaching little minds to appreciate art.

As this book was rising to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and all my friends were reading and recommending it, I held off reading it because I has so many other books going at the time. I did place my name on the reserve list at the library for it, but as of yet, my turn has not come. So when my mom said that she bought it, I asked her to borrow it. I see what the buzz was about.

Kathryn Stockett, originally from Jackson, Mississippi, wote this book about the life of African-American women who worked as maids/nannies for white families during the 1960’s. It is a work of fiction, but I’m sure stories just like it happened everyday in homes around the country in pre-civil rights times.  It was enlightening and horrifying. It was funny and depressing. It was hopeful and devastating. I found myself waiting for the happy ending. I’m still waiting.

Not that all the stories contained in the book were bad. Actually, there were some very uplifting stories about love and devotion between the white families and their black “help”. There were many instances of the white families treating their employees like members of the family, caring for their sick loved ones and paying for their childrens’ college education. But the bad stories more than made up for the good ones.

As much as I would like to believe that this book was entirely fictional, I know that some of these stories mimicked real life. And my heart hurts because of it.

Last time we were in the library, I chose this classic novel by Jules Verne, and at the same time chose The Twenty One Balloons for MA’s read aloud. I had no idea of the similarities in these two books. After reading them, it is easy to see how Around the World in Eighty Days, written in 1873, influenced the writing of The Twenty One Balloons in 1947. Jules Verne is known to be one of the founding fathers of the science fiction genre, and this book is definitely adventuresome.

Around the World In Eighty Days is the tale of eccentric English gentleman, Phileas Fogg.  On a wager with his social club acquaintences (for Fogg is so eccentric he has no one he could call “friends”), Fogg sets off with his faithful companion, the lively Passepartout, to travel around the world in eighty days. The stakes for the wager are high, all of Fogg’s fortune, and so his motivation to finish the journey on time is intense. Utilizing most every form of transportation available at the time, including a most amazing trip atop an elephant, Phileas races against the clock to try to secure his fortune.

While traveling through Egypt, Fogg makes the acquaintence of Detective Fix, whom it is supposed is coincidentally travelling the same path as Fogg. It is later discovered that Fix is a detective with Scotland Yard who is tracking Fogg, whom he believes is the culprit in a Brisith bank robbery.

Can the peculiar and bizarre Fogg save his fortune, or will his race against time destroy him? I won’t give away the ending, but I will tell you that it was ingenious and surprising. Maybe that’s why this book has remained in circulation for so long.

We LOVED this book by William Pene du Bois. I haven’t read it since I was in middle school, so I decided to do it as a read-aloud book for Mary Anneliese. It is on about a sixth or seventh grade reading level, so I knew that it would be challenging and I would have to explain a lot. There were some words that were new to her vocabulary, but the book is so engaging and fascinating that she didn’t seem to mind. And the writing is such that she could understand the meanings of most words by the context.

This is the anxiety-filled journey of Professor William Waterman Sherman, set in San Francisco in the year 1883. Professor Sherman is a mathematics teacher who has had enough with children and classrooms, so he decides to retire from teaching and fly solo in a hot air balloon, staying in the air for a year. He meticulously plans every detail of his voyage, making provisions for food, sleeping, and most importantly designing a balloon and basket in which he can survive for such a great length of time. The detailed plans presented in this book are extremely interesting and thought-provoking.

After being in the air for a short time, Professor Sherman runs into trouble, which was not in his meticulous plans. He crash lands on the delightful island of Krakatoa, and there finds a way of life that is idyllic and yet as precisely well thought out as his balloon voyage. But life on Krakatoa might not be all it’s cracked up to be, as there is the perpetual danger of living on an active volcano.

Mary Anneliese didn’t want this book to end, and that’s the sign of a classic book.

I thought that Because of Winn-Dixie was a cute book. It was written by Kate DiCamillo and was a Newberry honor book for 2001. It is the story of India Opal Buloni, a young girl who has recently moved to Naomi, Florida, with her preacher-daddy. Her mother left them when Opal was a baby, and she has wondered about and missed her mama ever since. Being the new kid in town, Opal decides she needs new friends. She sets out in Naomi with that goal in mind. Along the way she is introduced to Otis, a guitar-playing, slow-minded man who manages the local pet store; Miss Franny Block, the librarian at the Herman W. Block Memorial Library; Gloria Dump, an eccentric woman whom the local children believe to be a witch; Amanda Wilkinson, a pinch-faced girl the same age as Opal who, it is later revealed, is so pinch-faced because she loses her little brother to a drowning accident the summer before. But no friend sticks closer to Opal than the dog she discovers in the produce section of the Winn-Dixie.

I read this book to Bitty, and she and I both thought it was a fun book. It is not one I would have read on my own, as it is more elementary than many classic children’s books. However, it is a delightful little story.

I found some great teaching resources for this book at this website.

After my first encounter with Truman Capote, I was intrigued. I found myself wanting to read some of his fictional work to see if it was anything like In Cold Blood. While the writing was just as beautiful, the plot was, of course, quite different. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is the story of young, flighty socialite Holiday Golightly. I just have to stop right here and say that there has never, ever in the history of fiction writing been a name as perfectly suited for a character as that of Holiday Golightly. Anyhoo, I was intrigued at Norman Mailer’s comment that Truman Capote was the “most perfect writer of my generation.” And he also said, “I would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” I had to read it.

Not ever having seen the movie (Can you believe it!?!), I really didn’t know what to expect. First of all, it’s a very short book. Just a short novella of only 105 pages. I wasn’t sure Capote could tell an entire story in such a short time, but I found the plot to be fully developed. I enjoyed the flair and flakiness of Miss Golightly. She had a carefree attitude, even in the face of some big problematic situations.