The Christmas that the Lone Star Girl was a young four, she received the set of Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura is only four in Little House In The Big Woods, so I again thought that one would be okay. She, again, was hooked. Much to my surprise, she insisted that we read every one and enjoyed them all immensely, even the ones in which Laura was married and struggling with motherhood. Weird. I do not believe in exposing kids to any media violence before the age of seven, as their minds are so absorbent up to that point, with no real filters, so I did skip a few bits here and there. I also skipped bits that would cause Santa problems and such, but, for the most part, the books were very appropriate. I only am ever really interested in the relationships of the characters in books, so I was kept on my toes by the Lone Star Girl's detailed questions about the engineering of certain pioneering technologies. Whew!
The Christmas that she was five, the Lone Star Girl received the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. She inhaled the first four or five when Betsy, Tacy and Tib are children, but this time did lose interest at Betsy In Spite of Herself when they hit high school, so we put them away. The Christmas that the Lone Star Girl was six coincided with Kindergarten. The Lone Star Girl had found a soul-mate in the teaching assistant in the Kindergarten room who was also the school's science teacher and the early and aftercare teacher for the kindergarteners. This teacher read them beautiful literature after school and she also read them Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville, with which the child fell deeply in love. The Lone Star Girl therefore got the rest of Bruce Coville's Magic Shop books for her series that year, except for The Skull of Truth, which I put away because it was quite violent. She loved them.
The Christmas that the Lone Star Girl was seven, she was finally deemed old enough for The Chronicles of Narnia which we sped through happily. The Christmas that the Lone Star Girl was eight, she got Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet...and I was pregnant with the Lone Star Baby. Things changed quite a lot with us. I was very, very tired and did not read as long at night as we had in the past. I also started skipping nights...a lot of them. We actually stretched those four short and wonderful books out past the next Christmas by a month or so, although she still got her series for her ninth Christmas...the Harry Potter books.
I had known that the Lone Star Girl was a natural for Potter-mania, but still made her wait longer than all the other reader-children to read them. A sensitive child who has had nightmares from the movie of The Wizard of Oz, I knew the Lone Star Girl would have loved the first one so much the previous year that she would have had to read the second one...and been scared out of her wits. I made her wait until nine, but then we started reading them. Fast forward to late August a couple of weeks ago when I still hadn't finished reading her the first one due to baby duty...well, we needed a change. I finally told the Lone Star Girl to go ahead and finish the book, and then the rest of the series, herself. We are just not in a season when much bedtime reading by me is possible, but that will surely not always be the case, and we have had a good run regardless. Freed to read them independently, The Lone Star Girl finished the first book immediately, the second in less than four days and is almost done with the third now. She'll definitely finish them all by Christmas, of that I have no doubt.
I also have no doubt that I will get her another series for Christmas this year, although I haven't decided what it will be yet. Babies grow fast and change often, so I cannot say when mine will have grown enough past her current night-time needs to allow her sister and I more reading time again, but I know it will happen eventually. If it does not happen by Christmas, then I will set the Lone Star Girl loose to read "our" series on her own again after a bit, much sooner this time, and that will be fine, too. We change, we grow, we adapt. And still, we treasure the precious memories. I love our series reading tradition and will treasure it my heart, whether it is a thing past or present. It has been very good for us.
What series this Christmas for the Lone Star Girl? Suggestions are welcome.
7 comments:
The Myth-o-Mania series! They're for about a 4th grade reading level, and perhaps you'd want to show her the D'Aulaire's Greek Myths first, but I truly found the tales of Hades correcting Zeus's myth-conceptions quite funny and joyous.
Maybe...she went through an extremely heavy Greek mythology phase in second grade and is pretty over it. It sounds more like something she'd read herself, also. I will point it out to her and see if she wants to read it herself. She likes to read funny books, but me not so much.
I'm leaning towards possibly The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper maybe. I still would like lots of suggestions, though.
There's the Chronicles of Prydain, now in a nifty one book set! (By the way, the Myth-o-Mania books are funny without being mean. That's a rarity these days.)
That is rare; I'll definitely point them out to her. She used to be the queen of Greek mythology. She did an independent study on the Trojan War in school and read every Greek myth (and a few Roman, but she preferred Greek)she could get her hands on for a good year. She made a "Greek mythology bed" that she insisted on sleeping in at night for awhile and took to wearing self-made togas. The movie Troy came out during this time and she saw a promo and was really ticked that I would not let her watch it. I did, however, let her read Cooney's Goddess of Yesterday, which was pretty mature for a kid her age, and she LOVED it. I've been considering letting her read Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It's way too mature, really; I read it when I was 17, but I think she would eat it up. That phase was the school year before last, though. Last year, she transferred her obsessiveness to Star Wars, since we let her watch the movies the summer before third grade.
The Prydain Chronicles are a good suggestion, too. I definitely want her to read those sometime. I have the one-book set at home.
Please keep the suggestions coming!
Any other suggestions? Anyone?
Just remembered some stuff from that Firebrand book...no, she'll definitely have to wait until teenhood for that one.
I would still like more suggestions!
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