Reading with Sean and Ryan as of Early July 2013

I said in a recent post that I’d put this list up. For now, this is what we’ve been able to come up with of the readings we’ve done together in recent years. There are many more books they’ve read on their own or with each other or their brothers. We’re currently part way through Willa Cather’s My Ántonia and Zitkala-Sa’s trilogy about her experiences in the Indian boarding schools.  I am putting up the list in case it is of interest or of use to anyone.  I just love reading, and so it is what I’ve shared with my kids.

Sometimes they have chosen the books. Once, with Ender's Game, we were reading with a homeschool group. Mostly, I have found or known of the books, and I've asked if they were up for making this or that the next one. Or sometimes I just have said that I want to read them a particular book. Lately, we are trying to have enough copies so that they're reading along in their own copy. Or we may take turns reading out loud. 

I wish the list were longer. I wish I’d started reading poetry with them long ago. I don’t know what I was thinking.  It is only recently that we started to read one new poem a day and re-read the one from the day before. And then when I was in the throes of writing the syllabus for the class I will get to teach in the fall, our reading slipped again, as it has so many times. I wish we’d read far more short stories, too. And I know there are things we've forgotten to list.

I will add that they've read almost all my long essays from graduate school, and I've read excerpts of a lot of other things to them. I love reading to them. I feel so fortunate to have my kids to read to.

I will repost the list in early August. Maybe what I will do is post it once a month, noting what the newest readings were for the past month. 

Books

Adams, Richard Watership Down (me and Ryan)

Blanding, Michael The Coke Machine

Bradbury, Ray Farenheit 451

Card, Orson Scott Ender's Game (one only in the series)

Carson, Rachel Silent Spring

Dawson, George. Life Is So Good
Dickens, Charles Hard Times

DiCamillo, Kate The Tale of Despereaux

Dodson, Lisa The Moral Underground

Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Fleischman, Paul Seedfolks

Funke, Cornelia Inkheart books (three)

Habila, Helon Oil on Water

Hochschild, Adam Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery

Jimenez, Francisco: (trilogy) The Circuit; Breaking Through; Reaching Out

Jacques. Brian Redwall (books)

Jaffee, Daniel Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival

Kingsolver, Barbara The Poisonwood Bible

Klein, Naomi The Shock Doctrine

Lapierre, Dominique and Javier Moro Five Past Midnight in Bhopal

L’Engle, Madeleine Wrinkle in Time series

Lewis, C.S. Chronicles of Narnia series (all, me and Ryan; Sean up to book 2)

Lowry, Lois The Giver

Lowry, Lois Gathering Blue

Lowry, Lois Messenger

Lowry, Lois Number the Stars

More, Thomas Utopia

Nix, Garth Keys to the Kingdom (me and Ryan)

Peck, Dale Dritfhouse books (two)

Peck, Robert Newton A Day No Pigs Would Die (me and Ryan)

Philbrick, Rodman Freak the Mighty and Max the Mighty

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter (book 7 together) (4-7 me and Ryan)

Sinclair, Upton The Jungle

Sinha, Indra Animal's People

Skye, Obert Levin Thumps (five)

Stowe, Harriet Uncle Tom's Cabin

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit

Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Short Stories and Essays

Chesnutt, Charles “Po’ Sandy”

Chopin, Kate “The Story of an Hour”

Hawthorne, Nathaniel “The Birth-Mark”

Hawthorne, Nathaniel “The May Pole of Merry Mount”

Hawthorne, Nathaniel “The Minister’s Black Veil”
Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." 

Irving, Washington “The Adventure of the German Student”

Irving, Washington “The Legend of the Moor’s Legacy”

Irving, Washington “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

Irving, Washington “Rip Van Winkle”

Poe, Edgar Allen “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
Zitkala-Sa "Impressions of an Indian Childhood"
Zitkala-Sa "School Days of an Indian Girl" 

Poetry

Dickinson, Emily."Because I could not stop for Death" (479)
Dickinson, Emily. "Hope is the thing with feather" (314)
Dickinson, Emily. "I felt a funeral in my Brain" (340)
Dickinson, Emily. "I like a look of Agony" (339)
Dickinson, Emily. "I'm nobody! Who are you?" (260)
Dickinson, Emily. "Much Madness is divinest Sense" (620)
Dickinson, Emily. "There's a Certain Slant of Light" (320)
Frost, Robert: “Home Burial”

Frost, Robert: “Mending Wall” 

Frost, Robert: “The Road Not Taken”

Frost, Robert “The Wood Pile”

H. D. excerpt from “The Walls Do Not Fall”

Heaney, Seamus. “Digging”

Hughes, Langston. “I, Too”
Hughes, Langston "Theme for English B"
Hurston, Zora Neale. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"

Komunyakaa, Yusef: “Sunday Afternoons”

Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est”
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "England in 1819"  
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias" 

Thomas, Dylan “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”
Whitman, Walt. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." 

Whitman, Walt. "I Hear America Singing" 
Williams, William Carlos “This Is Just to Say That”

Williams, William Carlos “The Red Wheelbarrow”