So…Michael read pretty much every Vision Saint Book ever printed that we could find…and all the Greek and Roman literature trilogies and more (and has finished religion, vocabulary, and history for the year)….NOW he is reading his way through all the Hardy Boys mysteries. I am thrilled he is doing this, and enjoying it. The Hardy Boys of the 30s, 40, & 50s by Franklin Dixon (the originals) are full of complex but fun mysteries, some rather chilling and adventuresome, and I know this is helping Michael in more ways than one: therapy!…Really, there was no way he would have read these two years ago for the sure terror of it all; he would not have been able to bear it. So, I am very pleased he is reading his way through all …34?..I’m not sure how many we have on our shelf – but they were given to us by his grandmother when his father’s Catholic grade school closed years ago; my husband’s mother ended up with many of the books from the school library and the Hardy Boy's set was among them. They look like this, the old library binding:
And even more fun …the old library check out cards with signatures and due dates are still in the back of the books!
So, now my youngest son Mark is out of chapter reader kind of books, although I’m not sure he was really ever in them to begin with….this is the one that reads the dictionary for fun before bedtime! Happily, he is now reading what I would consider his first real great classic literature, E.B White’s, Stuart Little. I always mark that book as going uphill in reading from there when my children pick it up. Mark is the earliest to do so, the others read it around 3/4th grade. But due to his higher reading level and now having worked on his comprehension all year and seen great improvements, he can read this level, understand it and enjoy it.
So, my older college kids….what are they reading?! LOL! Well, some pretty intense stuff. Lately, both my son and daughter in college are in one class the same – Literary Non-fiction Writing…and it’s very challenging. And my daughter just read You Can’t Take it with You, for theater, and the college is currently putting on this production. My son is reading lots of prose and poetry and writing it as well, due to his poetry class. I am also so impressed and amazed at the level of reading they do for their classes, both being English Literature majors and minors. I am ever so grateful for having exposed them and raised them quite literally in their homeschool with lots of good literature and a lot of reading. While their Advanced American Government and Economics course is the equivalent of an AP course, it was mostly reading, reading, reading and began with St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa take on the perfect government – very heavy stuff. But it prepared them so very well for college level work.
All in all, I have seen reading and the love of it take hold in each of my children at a different grade level/age. Some sooner, some later, but so far it has not failed. In this house to read is to breathe! It’s so much a part of our existence…the written word…. and being able to connect to it.
Blessings to you this Friday! More on reading in another post…..
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