me: “what do you want to read before lights out?”
odin: “the dictionary!”
we take turns giving each other random words and time each other with a stopwatch to see can find words faster and then read the definition.
it’s a fun game and with almost every word both of us learn something new.
he’s looking for “zenith” on this round. for now i can usually beat him, but i don’t think that will last for long.
frida is getting veeeeeeery sweepy as odin wubs her ears.
/me shakes fist at gutenberg.
just kidding. we don’t normally allow reading at dinner but what are you going to do when it’s a book about great hockey players?
odin has always loved books and while he’s a quite a capable reader he’s always preferred to have us read to him than read on his own. that is, until he discovered the “percy jackson & the olympians” and he tore through the five books – more than 1,500 pages in total – mostly all my himself.
after nine years, it’s a bit bittersweet to have him not quite as interested in having us read to him, but fun to see him love to read and caught up in the story.
the new york public library published it’s first ever 100 Great Children’s Books ( they are, of course careful to refrain from calling the a “top 100” list ). it’s a superb list and we’ve read many of them with odin but it’s tough to take a children’s book list seriously that doesn’t contain “the wind in the willows”?! i bet odin would have fun writing down his top 20 or 30.
i’m always happy to hear what books you all like that are appropriate for a 9 year old. right now odin is tearing through percy jackson series. it’s not pulitzer prize winning fiction, but he loves it and that’s all that really matters 🙂
update: i received many excellent suggestions we’ve read quite a few but several we haven’t including, “Guardians of Ga’Hoole”, “The Famous Five” series, “The Prince and the Pauper”, “The Cricket in Times Square”, “The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man”, “the mouse with the question mark tail”, “george’s secret key to the universe”, and the “myth-o-mania” series.
a new second edition of linux command line book is available for those needing a handy 537-page reference to, well, the linux command line interface.
odin wanted to put the duplicate fortunes in his book of Odin’s Adventures which i think somehow i’ve forgotten to write about. how is that even possible?
he’s had it for a couple of years and it might come as some suprise that i’m not the inspiration for his interest in documenting his adventures 🙂
he keeps a “monday journal” at school where he writes stories of interesting things that happened in the prior week most of the good stuff goes in there. this book is for “extra stories” and things that happens outside of the normal school year. the blogger in me can’t understand why he doesn’t keep it in strict reverse chronological order but, hey, it’s his book and he can go whatever he wants.
there was an open page next to his account of biking 20 miles along the elroy-sparta state trail so he stuck the duplicate fortunes in the available space.
maybe someday he’ll write online and you’ll get to see two different versions of the same story. or, maybe even better, we can go on adventures together and write a shared story.