So, Books!

A winter and spring in which you can barely use your arms for keyboarding, screen-scrolling, cooking, or pretty much anything else leaves you with a lot of time to sit with a book open on your lap – silver lining city!
Here are some favorites that have kept me amused, and have helped me learn, sometimes about stuff I never even knew I needed to learn about. So, in completely random order:

The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine totally blew my mind. Written by a psychiatrist, it details a phenomenon with which therapists nationwide are currently grappling, namely, that children and teens who outwardly appear to have every need taken care of are instead full of anxiety caused by pressure to succeed, and in huge numbers are turning to alcohol and drugs, destroying their futures and inner lives at the same time. It is a real eye-opener for anyone with children or who cares about children, and the author shares many great ideas for helping now.

The Lost Art of Feeding Kids by Jeannie Marshall was a favorite for so many reasons: the recipes, her description of the wonders of living in Italy with children, and especially for the analysis of how and why our foodways have become so broken. Read this if you've been wondering about the how and why, and also about how to start fixing.

The Lemonade War Series, five books in all by Jacqueline Davies, is a rarity in that each book is about some different aspect of childhood and deals with serious stuff but in a way that is really appealing to children – and adults! Chapters alternate between the perspectives of a brother and sister, instantly making it a series for both genders, and one of my favorite things is that the author never uses labels. There are characters in these books with serious challenges, and any adult reading will be tempted to put those characters into a labeled box; but children interact with others at a more basic, label-free level, and the author does a fantastic job of highlighting the importance of that. Read these because they are fun and entertaining – and also because they will give you and your children a way to approach complex issues such as sibling rivalry, ill or aging grandparents, bullying, divorce… The list goes on.

Finally, my current obsession is Jane Austen, Game Theorist by Michael Suk-you Chew. Actually, it is a uniting of two long-time obsessions, the novels of Jane Austen and the economic school of thought that is game theory. I know, they sound like two things that could never, ever be united – but the author makes an excellent and compelling case that Jane Austen was in fact the first game theorist. If you love Jane Austen and have never heard of game theory – or vice versa – then you might enjoy this book very much. And, if like me you love both, thenI know you will enjoy this book very much!

Fully Grown

So, we've gone from this:



to this:



And, it was really, really good.

A Very Harry Summer

So, we are all obsessed with Harry Potter. Again.

Only, this time Owen is old enough to enjoy, too; it is just so much fun. Here are some pics of our particular brand of Pottermania:



That's the Hogwarts Owen and I made early on in the summer - when we found out that they're re-releasing Harry Potter legos! Notice the Durmstrang ship in the lake? Owen's.



That's Owen as a Death Eater, a costume he made with the help of his Auntie Lena. Check out the eyeliner veins!



Yes, I knitted them owls... they 'arrived' on the mornings of the boys' birthdays with certificates from Eeylops Owl Emporium.



Here's Luke with his new screech owl...



... and Owen with Barney, the barn owl.

Lastly, here are a few Potter-related links -

Owen was super-sick last week, with a high fever, the most lethargic I've ever seen him. Usually when we listen to Harry Potter on CD, Owen is jumping around, or playing with lego, or something; I couldn't stand just watching him lie on the couch, so I thought back to my own childhood. When I was sick, it was all about paper dolls. A quick Google search brought up Madame Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, a virtual universe of paper dolls with clothes and accessories for all four Hogwarts houses! It is awesome, there is simply no other word.

We also used these directions to make our own fantastic Marauder's Map.

And no paper doll collection would be complete without this, the Severus Snape paper doll. I got a total kick out of the gray skivvies (Luke theorized that maybe there's a Permanent Sticking Charm on them, hence the color) and the Hawaiian beachwear. Imagine Snape at the beach!

Once again, J.K. Rowling's amazing universe is making us muggles feel better, even when we are sick.

Finding the Beauty - Day 5

Today, a field trip in pictures. First, we have The Book Barn. My gosh! What a place:

Next, it was off to an amazing state park in Connecticut:

We topped it all off with ice cream (Thanks Jen:-) Yum!

The Perfect Age

We are now entering the kids' best, best years for Halloween. Do you remember those years? Where you'd sort your candy, trade with friends, eat some, sort, trade, eat, and so on until somebody finally herded you off to bed, sticky and satisfied?

That was Luke's night anyway - nine is just perfect for that.

And Owen's night was fun, too:

Five isn't about candy yet, at least not in our house. It's about playing the part, running with the big, noisy crowd of kids from house to house, drawing upon the courage of your costume so that you are NOT afraid when you go by the house with the fake gory cemetery scene. It's about bravery and belonging.

In other areas of life, outside of Halloween, both boys are the perfect age right now. Luke is busy reading, questioning, learning, playing Yu-Gi-Oh, often at a local comic-book-store with a bunch of teens (I always picture them in those little green poker visors, swathed in cigar smoke, but that's fortunately not the reality). Luke's current interests don't necessarily make for compelling picture-taking, but to make up for that, we have some really cool conversations and like the same books. I'm just finishing the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and Luke's read the first two, The Lightning Thief and The Sea of Monsters. They are amazing books, funny and thrilling, and leave the reader with a working knowledge of the pantheon of Greek Gods. Can one ask for more?

And Owen, at five, is just so much fun. I wish I could stop time and keep him this age:

He'll yell "Hey Mom! I just made a letter!" and I will come upon him standing proudly over a collection of blocks, or markers, or tinker toys perfectly arranged. When I ask, "What letter is it?" the inevitable answer is, "I don't know... but it's a letter!"

Then, there are the blanket-in-the-hallway moments:

Definitely, definitely, the perfect age.

Soul Restoration, Part Two

Lately, my soul has been feeling kind of scraped up, as if it has taken a few punches. I think it started back in the spring, with the six weeks of rain; since then, every time the sky clouds over, I cringe and worry that it'll be December before we see the sun again.

And, I feel like I didn't get enough summer. I know that sounds whiny, but I find myself unwilling to put on socks, or dig out the winter clothes, or just give in already and let fall come. As if I could single-handedly keep fall at bay, through mental resistance. This is weird, too, because fall is usually my favorite season.

So, arguments with hubby have escalated, disputes with the kids end more often than not with me shouting as my eyes bug out of my head; everything seems a much bigger problem than it would, ordinarily.

And then, there's the food. We spent this summer in the grip of a huge tomato blight, and so many other locally grown favorites had trouble, too: the eggplant, the peppers, the strawberries, the cherry tomatoes, the tomatillos, the basil, the cilantro... and the list goes on.

So, that's been my underlying mindset - worrying, sadness, fear of what's happening to our corner of the world. My soul, the place inside me where joy and light live, has spent these last months with a shadow across it.

Until recently. I think it was right around my brother's wedding that I started feeling better. Also, each day brings rosier, more beautiful trees and weather that has cooled gradually; one week, I can still wear sandals, but I'd better find a sweatshirt. The next, we need another blanket on the bed. The next week, I actually want soup for dinner, with nice warm biscuits served alongside. It's like this gentle, lovely autumn is cosmically trying to make up for the recent abysmal spring.

And, because I am me, food plays a huge part in the restoration of my soul. Eggplant minestrone, our first soup of the fall, cheered me immensely, inside and out; here's the recipe, in case you want to try it.

When one of the hens started laying, that was a big strike against the shadow on my soul.

The egg from our girl is in the lower-left corner; in the House of Worrying, I fretted that the hens weren't getting enough time outside the coop, semi-free-ranging in their chicken tractor, but I don't worry about that now. The egg, alongside those we get from a local farm, is such a happy, bright orange color that it is clear it came from a happy, bright chicken. The shadow recedes a little more!

And, my friend Shannon loaned me the best book of bread-making ever, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I already loved baking bread, but this book makes it even more fun. My banner is the result of experimenting, with the book as a guide: Brioche au Chocolat, as good as you will ever get in a pastry shop (I know, tooting my own horn... it is THAT good.)

Candles help, too. What is it about candle flame that cheers me all the way through?

I think the shadow finally got gone this weekend, spent apple picking and corn-mazing with friends and relatives. Here are the boys and their cousins at a nearby farm, hamming it up for the camera:

So now, it is with a thankful heart and a restored soul that I look forward to autumn and winter, warmth and love... I hope you're having similar good thoughts and a nice fall, too.

Interview with Daniel Wolff, Author of How Lincoln Learned to Read

A few weeks back, I fell in love with How Lincoln Learned to Read, which tells the story of America and American education, from the time of Ben Franklin on up to modernity, by diving into the young lives of twelve well-known people. It is a fascinating read, well-written and with a great story to tell (to read my rave review, go here - and, to read Daniel Wolff's blog about the book at Amazon, go here, where he shares about some of the talks and readings he's done since How Lincoln Learned to Read was published in March. I loved the perspective it gives from people around the country who've read the book).

Anyway, Mr. Wolff agreed to an interview with me, and I'm happy to be able to present it here today. I think his take on education is conducive to homeschooling; in fact, many of the Americans he writes about were homeschooled themselves, and their educations helped shape them into the influential people they eventually became. The book poses questions about what education is for, and how people learn what they need to know. Here's the interview:

Stone Age Techie: 1. While I have not yet read them, this book seems like a departure from the books you've written before; how did this idea occur to you, and how did you develop the idea into How Lincoln Learned to Read?

Daniel Wolff: It was a less an idea than feeling. You know that sensation when your kid – of, for that matter, when you – went off for the first day of kindergarten? Both the excitement of facing a new world and the sinking sensation of entering a large and largely faceless institution. I think that was the start of How Lincoln Learned to Read: all the questions that follow from that moment.

One of the main ones that I’ve always had is: what’s this for? Why do we take our children to one part of town and put them in those buildings with the playgrounds out back? What are we trying to accomplish?

In my experience, these are hard questions just to ask, never mind answer. Before my kids entered public school, and for about a decade afterwards, I was involved in a group of people who tried to discuss what education was for and how we might make it better. We called ourselves Partners in Education and created a little stir in our hometown and, to some degree, nationally.

We were parents and guardians, teachers and community members, from various races and economic groups. We discovered, early on, that to ask what education is for is to ask for trouble. Our “opponents” (and it soon became that polarized) saw our actions as the equivalent of disrespecting the flag. Or questioning the military draft. Parents were supposed to support public education, not ask what it was about. People were entitled to differences of opinion, of course, about testing and merit pay and playground safety, but asking how our children might learn to think was crossing the line.

Looking back, I’m not sure we ever really got the question out in the open. I’m lucky enough to live in a town where the schools are multi-racial: by high school, about 60% of the students are labeled “white” and 40% “other:” African American, Haitian American, Hispanic, Asian. Almost immediately, our discussion turned to whether or not “minority” kids were getting as good an education as “white majority” students. As I discuss in How Lincoln Learned to Read, one of the central beliefs behind American public education is that it gives everyone an equal chance. That it’s based on merit, not skin color or money. But we kept finding that the schools mostly ranked kids like they’d already been ranked in society. White kids from educated, better-off families tended to be in the honors programs; black kids from less well-off families tended to be in the “slow” groups or in special ed. There were exceptions, of course, but that was the pattern. And the longer kids were in the system, the stronger those divisions became.

So, instead of getting to ask why our kids went to those buildings with the playgrounds, we ended up spending our time asking if all kids were getting an equal chance once they entered. It was hard and fascinating and well worth it. But in a sense, it wasn’t what we’d set out to do.

So when our coalition finally ceased to be, I still had these issues I wanted to deal with. And I thought I might be able to write about them.

Oh, and I’m not sure how much this book is a departure. I wanted to understand how Sam Cooke learned from gospel music how to make great soul music, so I wrote his biography. It’s about learning (and a bunch of other things). And the story of American democracy that is one of the narratives through How Lincoln Learned to Read is central to the history of Asbury Park I wrote. I hope there’s a thread through all my stuff about where we’re headed and why. And about people who don’t normally get a voice having a chance to speak out.

SAT: I love your discussion of Partners in Education - "People were entitled to differences of opinion, of course, about testing and merit pay and playground safety, but asking how our children might learn to think was crossing the line."... this is something that many homeschoolers care deeply about, and I think part of why we are seen by our non-homeschooling neighbors as eccentric, even radical. I can see them thinking sometimes, 'don't we send them to school so we don't have to think about education?'

Also, I can see that I am going to have to read your other books, it was very presumptious of me to dismiss them as not about education, just by their titles :-)

SAT: 2. As you researched and wrote How Lincoln Learned to Read, did any of your subjects especially appeal to you? Did you identify with any of them more than the others, and, if so, why?

DW: Once I set out to deal with education and learning, I was determined to avoid the “education debate” that, it seems to me, circles and circles itself. If you go back, you can find people a hundred years ago arguing about how best to test students, teach reading, maintain classroom discipline. I didn’t want to get drawn into that whirlpool; I wanted to talk about how and why people learned. It seemed to me that the best way to do that was to side-step theory and “ask” the people themselves.

I thought I’d start before this was a nation and bring us up to the present – both to see how our thinking abut learning had changed and to trace how we got to this point. So I started looking for people who seemed to stand out as American types: folks we might or might not admire but who seemed key to our idea of ourselves as a people and a nation.

I began with Benjamin Franklin whose autobiography is about what he called his “self-education.” Then I jumped a couple of decades and chose Abigail Adams. And I went on like that right through American history! I didn’t necessarily “like” all they people I chose, but they all seemed important to the story. Through their own writings or talks, they’d each commented on how they learned the things they needed to know.

So I got to ask this question about learning sequentially, from Franklin through Elvis Presley. And it ended up producing a kind of narrative about the country: how we arrived at this point, what our goals have been, what factors came in and out of play as we kept adjusting the idea of getting a “good education.”

Did I identify more with one or another? I don’t think so. I identified with them all. I was amazed and impressed by how hard people work to learn – inside and outside the classroom.

SAT: 3. I love How Lincoln Learned to Read for both its history and the important questions it poses for individual people and our society as a whole. I wonder, what sort of feedback are you getting about the book, and also, is there any way to tell who's reading it? (College students, President Obama, parents of school-aged children...)

DW: Well, I was lucky enough to get an endorsement from Arne Duncan, current Secretary of Education. So I assume How Lincoln Learned to Read is way up on President Obama’s reading list! I’ll let you know when I get his review. But I also received kind words from Deborah Meier, one of the leaders of the alternative school movement. I’ve heard from teachers and parents, students and “general readers.” And I’ve heard a lot from home-schoolers or un-schoolers.

I think what that indicates is that the book doesn’t have a particular ax to grind. I certainly tried to research as thoroughly as I could and to report accurately how folks learned – whether it was at home or in school, from books or machines, with help from teachers or alone. And readers of all kinds seem to have responded to that. I’ve been very pleased with the conversations I’ve had at readings and other events and hope folks will feel free not only to contact me but to push the conversation forward among friends and colleagues.

Part of what I hope to do with How Lincoln Learned to Read is simply to broaden the questions we ask about learning. To acknowledge that some people learn best in the backyard with a tin can and an irrigation ditch, and some people learn best with a text book and a clock ticking. I think we all know that; we just don’t say it very often.

And if we can say it more often and more clearly, I think it might take some of the pressure off of teachers, schools, parents, and kids. The way we talk about learning now, if your child does badly on the 4th grade reading test … well, it’s curtains. He or she is a failure, is in trouble. There’s this enormous pressure on teachers and schools to educate everyone along strict standards, leave no child behind, and, so, solve the problems of the world.

I hope How Lincoln Learned to Read suggests that’s too simplistic. Just as we keep learning as long as we’re alive, we keep finding other ways to learn and situations to learn in. Shouldn’t they all be respected? The guy who fixes my car knows a lot more about that that I do. He learned some of it formally, a lot of it on the job. He has an amazing bank of knowledge he relies on – and I, in turn, rely on him. Did he do well on his SAT’s? I don’t know or particularly care.

SAT: 4. We pulled our son out of second grade and began homeschooling him because not only was he not learning what he needed to know, he was being taught to mistrust his own instincts, which destroyed any confidence he'd once had in his ability to learn. Homeschooling has restored his confidence and his joy in learning, because he decides what it's important to learn about. Do you think that your book could influence the course of our nation's education system, perhaps making it easier for schoolchildren to learn what they need to know in school?

DW: The destruction of confidence often goes back to that first day walking into kindergarten. Sometimes people call that “adjusting to society” -- which it is, in part. But one of the results of that adjustment can be a kid who enjoys life, feels good about him or herself, and is suddenly made to think that he or she isn’t good enough, can’t be good enough. In How Lincoln Learned to Read I write about the history of schools as a way to “Americanize” kids – so that we’re all on the same page and society as a whole can function – but part of that Americanization includes this sense that we’re all in competition. Some get A’s; some get F’s; and that is what matters.

I don’t begin to say that homeschooling is the answer for all kids. I know families, for example, where one kid learned at home, another went off to school. But I do think we can learn some things from the principles underlying homeschooling – or, for that matter, from the dynamics of learning in a family whether the kids are homeschooled or not.

There are a couple of reoccurring themes in How Lincoln Learned to Read. One of them is that people seem to learn when they care: whether it’s the young Andy Jackson learning to fight for his survival during the Revolutionary War, or the young Elvis Presley learning that he can let out his frustration and hope in a Pentecostal service. Learning is connected to passion. And meaning.

That’s often clearer at home, I think, then it is in a classroom where the management of 25 or 30 kids tends to dominate. How do we get some of that passion into the educations of the majority of our kids? I won’t pretend to have the answer to that. But I do think the question has to be asked, and asked over and over again. And I sure hope How Lincoln Learned to Read will contribute to that happening.

Oh, and I should add that I hope the spirit of the book not only restores the confidence of someone like your son but of you, as a parent, trying to decide what learning is. I hope it broadens your choices and helps you recognize that it isn’t school or not school: it’s the unbelievable range of learning possibilities that all of us have.

SAT: Your response to this question gave me goosebumps; you can't fit all kids into one academic box and expect to turn out successful, creative graduates. Kind of along these same lines, a friend just passed on this link to me, it's a group of educators including two of my absolute heroes, David Elkind and Vivian Gussin Paley, discussing the disappearance of unstructured play in Kindergarten and the problems this is causing: Alliance for Childhood in case anyone's interested.

SAT: 5. Two-part question: first, in your opinion what changes might educators make to schools nationwide, to teach children more of what they'll need to know – and second, are any of these changes evident, or even discussed to your knowledge, in school systems today?

DW: How Lincoln Learned to Read deliberately begins and ends in the present. My hope was to help formulate what you’re asking here – how children can learn more of what they need to know -- in a larger, more inclusive way. But the same way I believe good classrooms don’t provide answers but let kids think, I believe good books give readers the information to wrestle with issues.

The job of answering the first part of your question – changes that might be made to education – is up to each of us, I think. And the answers are going to vary per town, per school, often per kid. I’m not at all convinced that nationwide change would be helpful – unless it’s the sort of nationwide change that allows for this kind of one-on-one decision making. A nationwide policy, that is, that allows us to act locally.

As to whether these kinds of educational questions are currently being discussed, I have two reactions. The first is that with No Child Left Behind and the current emphasis on testing and on product, nothing much is being discussed. Part of why our group of activists faded out, I believe, is because the current slant of education doesn’t leave room for this kind of debate. I believe in measuring how we’re doing, but too often “outcome driven” schools seem to me to be driving out all discussion and questioning. Everybody ends up handcuffed: teacher, student, administrator, parent.

My second reaction is that education as a field is full of serious, passionate, well-meaning people – who get involved because they care a lot about exactly these kinds of questions. I know many who are extremely frustrated by the system as is and are still trying to do the best they can under the circumstances. If I had to guess, I’d guess that folks are indeed having the discussion about “how we learn what we need to know” – but it’s more likely to be on vacation, or in the supermarket line, or over a beer, than in school.

SAT: 6. Do you have an opinion on how television and other screen-time influences children's learning?

DW: I think it’s astonishing how the human species learns from all sorts of sources, for better or for worse. We don’t stop! Abraham Lincoln studied newspapers; Sojourner Truth had to study slavery; John Kennedy tried not to study anything too hard – and learned from that. Bruce Springsteen famously said he learned more from a three minute record than he ever learned in school. None of these strike me as bad influences per se. It’s how they’re used. It’s the context they grow in.

Limitations on TV or computer time make some sense to me, just so they don’t take over the whole day. But I don’t think those screens are the bad guys or the good guys. I think it’s the people and the values behind them. And if those are going to be changed, don’t kids need to know how the screens work?

SAT: 7. Is there anything you'd like to add about education in general, or How Lincoln Learned to Read in particular?

DW: Ah, no! Your kind questions have already made me go on too long.

Except, I want to thank you.

SAT: I really want to thank you for taking so much time over this, and for putting so much thought into your responses!

You mentioned your hope that people would contact you, and I'm wondering if there is an email or website that we could direct people to?

DW: Sure, ziwolff@optonline.net

6/9/09 Update: Daniel Wolff was recently interviewed on NPR! If you'd like to listen, click here.

An Inborn Sense of Wonder

Rachel Carson is my hero.

I'm reading about her life in a completely awesome book, How Lincoln Learned to Read by Daniel Wolff, which I can't put down. Wolff's book delves into the early lives of twelve famous Americans, starting with Ben Franklin and moving chronologically forward to Abigail Adams, Sojourner Truth, and all the way to Elvis Presley. We consider what they learned, what was going on around them, and how it shaped them into the adults they would become. This book weaves the lives of these twelve into one beautiful, unconventional quilt of American history - specifically, the history of how young Americans get educated. It is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read, and I have read a LOT of books.

One of these Americans is Rachel Carson, pioneer of the modern environmental movement, biologist, author of Silent Spring. Rachel grew up on a ridge in the Allegheny region of Pennsylvania, and spent much of her childhood wandering the woods around her home. The town in which she lived, Springdale, became a manufacturing Mecca during her childhood. Home to glue and glass factories that spewed out horrific pollution, perhaps it was this early exposure that gave Rachel her first sense of the destruction that can accompany modernity. In any case, she grew up a passionate nature lover, and I think it came easily to her, years later, to speak out and try to help stop the destruction of her - and our - beloved outdoors.

According to Wolff, Rachel hardly attended the public elementary school in her town, preferring instead to be out in nature, or reading and writing books and articles of her own choosing. Her writing was published in a national magazine for children, St. Nicholas, starting from the time she was eleven (if you want to read more about the magazine, go here). One, "My Favorite Recreation," written by fifteen year-old Rachel, chronicles a day in May spent out in the woods, among the pines and birds - "a hymn to nature," Wolff calls it in How Lincoln Learned to Read.

As an adult, Rachel published a magazine article (later turned into a book) called "The Sense of Wonder," in which she writes about the preservation of a child's "inborn sense of wonder." This phrase, which I recall hearing during my teacher training (but never knew that it originated with Rachel), resonated within me - I wanted to be the teacher who could encourage this in my students.

It is Wolff's description of her 'Wonder' article that, for me, elevates Rachel from merely a great American woman to my hero: "The Sense of Wonder" places other forms of learning above school-type learning. Wolff quotes Rachel: "I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel." He then continues: "What [Rachel] calls "a diet of facts" is more hindrance than help."

And that, dear reader, is why we homeschool; to foster this inborn sense of wonder. Learning is so much more than just vocabulary or math facts, and if we make it too much about these things, the spark goes out of our kids. The beauty of all styles of homeschooling, from school-at-home to interest-led, is that the acquisition of facts really doesn't take all that long, certainly not seven hours a day, five days a week, for twelve precious years of a child's life.

I haven't finished it yet, but I suspect that the conclusion of How Lincoln Learned to Read will discuss the need for modern education to include more of the unconventional, and far, far less of the standardized. In nearly every chapter so far, the early education (of these shapers of America) that mattered most didn't take place inside a school. Instead, it was out in the world - in a print shop, in the Civil War, or out in the woods - that these Americans learned their most important lessons.

Dreaming Big

I have been reading Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, a book that rapidly rose to 'favorite' status for me. Which is weird, because I'm generally not a fan of books about Life's Little Lessons, or Lofty Reflections On Life - usually, I go all morbid when I am even in the same room with them.

But Pausch's book has kind of a back door in: the lecture he gave at Carnegie-Mellon University just after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Feel the morbidity creeping? ... you are free to ignore it, Randy Pausch's 'engineering problem,' as he referred to his cancer, was not really the subject of his last lecture. Instead, it was about the dreams of childhood, and how they made him into the man he became. (I tried to find this on YouTube, but it wouldn't play :-(

Reading the book got my friend Shannon thinking about her childhood dreams, which got me thinking about mine - and Luke's and Owen's, too.

When I asked Owen about his dreams, he gave them to me right away: to be a Dad, cook breakfasts, and "sleep without pajamas." At four, I'm not sure he can really give voice to some of his other dreams, which, judging by his play and the conversations he has with his stuffed buddies, include journeying as a knight and joining the Star Wars universe.

Luke dreams bigger: he wants to be an inventor of time machines and other "trans-dimensional" modes of transport, and he wants to live with the dragons in the woods behind our house.

Here are my childhood dreams:

To do a split all the way to the ground.

To play ice hockey.

To be in Narnia.

To run away and live in the woods, like the boy in My Side of the Mountain.

To be an Olympic skier or ice skater (as a transplanted Canadian, winter sports were BIG, and still are).

I look at my list now, and wonder if it can be said that I've achieved any of my childhood dreams? I am a Yoga instructor and, while I can't do a split all the way to the ground, for me Yoga is a direct result of that first childhood dream.

Ice hockey was out for me (because of my gender - no daughter of my Dad's was going to sit in stinky locker rooms with sweaty boys), but I played field hockey for five years, LOVED it and have several lifelong friends because of it.

I go to Narnia still, every time I read the series - also, I am able to escape reality with great literature all the time, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was the original doorway into that world.

While I do not technically live in the woods like the kid in My Side of the Mountain, the appreciation for nature that this book instilled in me continues to be a part of my life, every day.

And, while I'm certainly not an Olympic skier, I love winter sports and want Luke and Owen to love them too.

I look at my list, and realize that there is a direct connection between these childhood dreams, and the grown-up I have become. It makes me wonder about Luke and Owen: will their dreams come true? And if not, will the fact that they dreamed them at all help contribute to the kind of adulthood they have? I sure hope so.

Well, those are our childhood dreams... what are yours?

Winter Must-Reads

Lately, we've had lots of time to read because winter has lost, shall we say, a touch of its thrill. Of course, we do enjoy our outside time around here, but now in these waning days of February, with the snowpants mostly covered in mud (but unable to be abandoned on account of the remaining snow), we spend less time out, and more time in, 'recovering' in front of the fire with good books, hot cocoa and popcorn.

Kids' favorites include a variety of chapter books, especially Jack and Annie in The Magic Tree House series, Wishbone the Dog in an adventure about Beowulf, and The Artemis Fowl series, adventurous and funny books about an Irish boy and his obsession with faeries.

Luke and Owen devour graphic novels by the bagful since our library gave this genre its own shelf a few months ago; graphic versions of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Shrek, the Incredibles, and the Star Wars Clone Wars series top their lists right now.

When they want more than a book, but not quite a full-blown unit study, we pull out the Lithgow Paloozas Boredom Blasters, kits with great ideas that children ages 5(-ish) and up can do mostly themselves, and that younger kids enjoy at their own level, too. I first blogged about the Boredom Blasters back last February, when we visited my folks in the Rocky Mountains, and they continue to thrill us all now. Thank you, John Lithgow!

I'm learning about randomness and probability in a great, readable book by Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk. I say readable because, while I'm not a big math person and therefore not a likely candidate to comprehend probability-speak, Mlodinow makes the concepts of probability understandable and - more importantly, I think - pertinent to my life. I have laughed out loud while reading this book, reason enough to endorse it, but I learn as well while I read.

The books that have obsessed me most this winter, though, at least until I finished the fourth in the series and must now wait until the author publishes the next, are those in the 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' series; the first is called The Lightning Thief. These books, about modern day teenage demi-gods, have taught me almost as much about Greek mythology as Luke knows from reading the myths themselves. Author Rick Riordan brings the gods to light, for anyone interested in Greek mythology, but even if you're not they are just great, light reading.

So, these are the books that we've been obsessed with this winter; any books you can't put down? Tell me about them, and happy reading!

Harry Potter

One thing I notice about the way Luke learns and plays is that he cycles through 3 or 4 passions constantly, weaving Pokemon, Star Wars, Harry Potter and the occasional new thing (dinosaurs, perhaps, or Bakugan) throughout his week, or day, or hour.

So when he dropped Harry Potter a few months ago, I didn't think much of it - until Thanksgiving, when we were visiting friends with the familiar rainbow of Rowling's series on their bookshelf. I wondered, why hasn't Luke gone back to HP in so long?

The answer, Ben and I decided later that day, was because we've always insisted on reading these to him, so that he gets the "most out of them." I felt (and it really has been pretty much me, I think) that left on his own he'd miss important points, or skip to the ending, or otherwise mess with these wonderful, perfect books.

But, I realized this weekend, what is the point of wonderful, perfect books that never get read?

So, we told Luke on Sunday that he could read them himself if he wanted - and he finished The Half-Blood Prince by Wednesday. (Well, he finished about the last 300 pages, we'd already read the first half with him over the summer. But still. 300 pages!)

And then, he and I took turns reading to each other from "Who Killed Albus Dumbledore?," an analysis of the goings-on in the first 6 books with predictions about what might happen in book 7 - some of which were right on! - before he picked up book 7 himself...

... and then the new Bakugan movie came in at the library. So, he's off Harry Potter for a while, but I think he'll be back soon.