More Books for Children

July was full of reading books recommended by children and families, and I'm almost done the list. I have a few on hold at the library; once they're in and read, that goal is complete. Until I start meetings again in the fall and get a new list!

Here are the ones I really liked:

• Britfield and the Lost Crown; Britfield and the Rise of the Lion by C.R. Stewart
• The first Britfield book is all adventure, escape, and running from bad guys through England; the second one is all adventure, escape, and running from more and worse bad guys through France! There's intrigue, danger, and (in the second book) a major, world-wide conspiracy headed by some very, very bad guys with amazing tech. The fighting gets more intense and there are more casualties, but it's never gory or excessive. 
• An added bonus: The author includes history and other information about the areas the kids are traveling through.
• There are two more books out (and another one coming), but the library doesn't have them, so I haven't read them. I know that one takes place in Italy, and I think the next in Austria.

• The Restorationists trilogy by Carolyn Leiloglou
• The job of restorationists is to restore paintings, especially after the distortionists have damaged them. The best part is how they do it: by traveling into and through paintings! Of course, there's adventure, confusion, and danger, but also a lot of fun and some facts about artists and artwork.
• The stories are interesting in that they each focus on a different young restorationist and his or her specific challenges (anger, jealousy, fear), while telling the story of the battle between good and evil. It's very well done. I wish there were more books!

• The Complete Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem
• The stories are fun, simple, and entertaining. The main attraction, for me at least, is the artwork. It's so wonderful and detailed! 

• Mac Undercover by Mac Barnett and Mike Lowry
• The story is okay, silly, and will be enjoyed by children. I do not like that the author claims that the book (and the series) are true, and that when he was a kid, he was a spy. I don't like that sort of dishonesty in books; let's not confuse children about real and make-believe. Yes, the story is so far-fetched that it's unbelievable, but some children may believe it. Aside from that, the story was fine and the illustrations are good.

• Pax by Sara Penny Packer
• The story contains war, violence (against humans and animals), and an adult's PTSD from a previous war, including her telling a child about killing a man. I would absolutely not give it to younger children, nor to many in the preteen or early teen age.
• It's also very much pro-nature and anti-human.
• It's officially recommended for 8-12 year olds, with some upping the age to 10-14. I would say that the reading level is accurate for the younger age, but the content level is better for older children (maybe even older than 14).
• If you want to have your child read it anyway, read it first. Then you'll be ready for hard conversations and potential nightmares.

That's the list for now. It's been a fun month of reading!

July

Happy August! Summer is racing past; it's hard to believe that July is done.

July was a mix of rain, rain, rain, and hot, hot, hot! My garden is thriving. The petunias are growing taller and brighter than any I've had, and the tomato plants have many, many tiny tomatoes. Even some of the flowers I planted from seeds are getting ready to bloom.

The month was mostly quiet. I had friends for dinner one evening; we talked about books and told the baby how wonderful and adorable she is. I was out more this past week. Our missionaries from Colombia were in town, and on Sunday there a group of the Latino families and the Colombia STM team had a potluck dinner with them. On Monday, one of the couples from the church invited me over to have Indian food with them, the missionaries, and another friend. I found out that this young couple (and their two and soon-to-be-three young daughters) have just move to a new house very close to me, so that was nice.

Last night, I went to see The Odyssey with a couple friends. It's been many years since I've been to a movie theatre, and I forgot how intense the experience can be! It was a pretty good movie and fun to get together with the ladies.

The biggest thing this month was packing up the Sunday School rooms and dealing with a pile of books that had been donated to the church library and left in the office. Both jobs had to be done in preparation for the upcoming renovations (and the elders probably wanted the books out of the office!). It made is pretty clear that there would be no Sunday School or Wednesday morning homeschool rooms this year. I'm sure that will feel strange in the fall.

Overall, it was a good month. I read a lot and am almost through the list of children's books, at least as many as I could get from the library. I'll change up my reading habits a bit in August, although I still have the last 2 books on hold. I'll start preparing for back to work, and focus on a couple more projects I want to get done this month (a baby blanket and some sewing). And I'll look forward to the cooler weather in September!

Memories

Three years ago, I spent 10 days on a STM in Colombia. The church supports a missionary family there, and we went to help with a some preaching, teaching, and a conference. I mostly worked with the children, both in Sunday School and at the conference. We also spent time visiting with the missionaries, their family, and friends, and getting to know their part of Colombia.

The missionaries are visiting this week, and I was invited to join the Latino community at our church for a lunch yesterday to get to know the missionaries. Or, in the case of the original team, to catch up and visit with them.

It is amazing, the memories that flooded back, just being with them. Not just the events, but the little things: making piles of photocopies for the children (many of which they are still using), watching our missionary show the children how to run through the city square so the birds flew off, breakfasts together at the hotel, card games, playing "find the sheep" with the kids, being awakened one night by fireworks going off, buying huge bottles of water for a small amount of money....there are so many little memories that made up that time.

With the memories, came all the emotions of those days. It was exciting, tiring, confusing, fun, joyful, concerning.... I loved the children and taught them as well as I could, but I felt so overwhelmed so much of the time, I'm not sure how well I managed to teach them. There were moments of "I want to stay forever" and moments of "I would like to go home right now, please," and everything in between. 

And the question came again: Would I go back, or on another STM? Maybe. I want to serve, but it was hard, being so far from home, with everything different and noisy, and without enough time to properly rest and adjust. If they really needed me, though, I think I would go and trust God to use me how He will.

Clearing Stuff Out

We are planning to do renovations at the church this fall, which means no Sunday School. This week, in preparation for whenever the renos start, we cleared out the Sunday School rooms. It only took one morning, and was faster than we thought to get everything sorted, packed, and hauled out to the van. One of the teachers is going to store it all at her house.

In the process, we found:

• curriculum that had never been used
• other curriculum books that we do use
• still more curriculum that belongs to another ministry
• many pencil crayons
• so many erasers
• a very nice pen
• another assortment of pens
• crayons
• crayon bits
• more pencil crayons
• registration forms from 2014
• several pack of goggly eyes
• a VBS kit that came from who-knows-where and included a VHS tape
• piles of photocopies for worksheets that we no longer use
• seriously, where do all these pencil crayons come from?
• multiple pairs of scissors

In short, I am never listening to teachers again when they insist that they need more materials. What we need is to look closely at what we already have!

I told the elder who does the shopping for me to check if I ever again order pencil crayons, crayons, or erasers.

Anyway, that's done. Fall will be strange without Sunday School, but I'm thankful for the renos because they mean more room for Sunday School. I'm also thankful for a year to rest and revamp our program. It's good, but with the influx of children over the past few years, we need to make sure we're serving them well. We also need to go over all the curriculum, making adjustments and making sure we're ready to start strong next fall.

Quick Recommendations

I don't know how many of the books written by my former Sunday School children I've recommended, but here is the list, in order of publication date:

A Vessel in the King's Hand: A Story of the Filles du Roi by Abigail Froese

A Parched Land by Elizabeth Russell

A War Within by Maddison Ford

Difficult Decisions in Difficult Days by Elizabeth Russell

When All Isn't Right With the World: Letters from Golden West Farm by A. Frose

That's the list, for now. I'm looking forward to more from the children, especially the sequel to A War Within. I think they're all wonderful, so go and read them.

How much rain?

I didn't quite understand how much rain we have had this summer until I looked up the stats. In June, the city shattered a 212 year record, with 269.1mm of rain (10.5 inches); it was the second rainiest month in our history (July, 1901 was a bit wetter). We usually get around 78mm of rain in June, so it was very, very wet. So far we've had around 95mm of rain this month. Our average is 91.7mm for the month, so we are ahead of schedule.

The rain has stopped, at least for now. It's hot, hot, hot outside now. It's supposed to cool down a bit on Sunday and then start going back up to so very hot, maybe with thunder storms. I have the fans going and I'm giving the plants -- especially the tomatoes -- plenty of water. I'm also making sure I drink plenty of water!

The rain was good, for all that it seemed excessive. For the first time in several years, my part of the country is not overwhelmed with forest fires; we're down to 17 active fires (compared to the over 1000 each year for the past few years). The city is not full of smoke for a change; it makes breathing much easier and my throat is not as bothered. Of course, now we're getting hot, dry weather, so the fire risk is there again.

The gardens are doing well, both from insane amounts of rain and now sunshine and heat. My tomatoes are getting many, many flowers. My flowers are thriving, getting taller, and blooming wonderfully.

I am very thankful for the rain that we got this year.

Books, Books, Books

I have started my plan to read all the recommended books, or at least all the books I can get from the public library. I'm a little disappointed at the number that aren't available.

So far, the books have mostly been good, although not without some problems here and there.

There is one I won't recommend because there's a bit that I suspect the parents don't know about. It's rather subtle and may go over the heads of children, but it's there anyway.

I'm also a little hesitant about The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series by MaryRose Wood. I read book 1, The Mysterious Howling. As I read it, I thought "She was definitely influenced by Lemony Snicket and A Series of Unfortunate Events." After the first book, I looked up the series to see what the rest were about, and many of the reviews and websites mentioned A Series of Unfortunate Events! It's not in the storyline, but the writing style.

The book started out well. Someone found three wild children (they had been raised by wolves) on his estate and claimed them. Penelope comes to be their governess and she tames them just as she would an animal. The taming is pretty quick in many ways, but it makes for a good story. It's only later that I began to be concerned about giving it to children. There is a party, and some of the men talk about hunting the children. The lady of the house also gets very drunk at the party. There are themes that many children aren't ready for. The story ends on a cliffhanger: What is really going on at the house? (That's when I looked it up online so I didn't have to read the rest!)

It's probably okay for some children and a bit much for others. As I said, I'm hesitant, not refusing. It's down for readers aged 8-12.

On the list of fun books that I will definitely recommend (the grade levels are approximate and will change by child; they can also be read alouds for younger students):

• Appleblossom the Possum by Holly Goldberg Sloan (around grades 3-5)
• Young Appleblossom gets stuck in a people house. At first it's fun, but then she misses her family and outside. Happily, her brother are planning a rescue! It's a fun story and children can learn a little bit about possums.

• The Wild Robot by Peter Brown (around grades 3-5)
• Roz the robot washes up on the shores of an island inhabited by a plethora of wildlife. She learns to communicate with them and to enjoy being wild. In the end, she has to head back to civilization for repairs, but that it not the end. There are 2 more books in the series, and a picture book for younger children.

• Sunny the Shark by Remy Lai (around grades 1-3)
•  This is a simple story about a shark, some fish friends, and the dangers of pollution.

• Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library; Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics; and Mrs. Pennypickle's Puzzle Quest by Chris Grabenstein (around grades 3-7)
• The title of the first one won me over fairly quickly! The Mr. Lemoncello stories are fun and full of puzzles and quizzes. There are two more that I haven't read. I enjoyed them more than the Mrs. Pennypickle book; while it was an okay story, parts of it felt forced, and I didn't really enjoy the ending.

There are still more books that I'm reading, and more waiting for me at the library! It's a very fun way to spend summer afternoons.