Down From the Shelf

I'm trying to get better about jotting some family reading notes each week.

The sweet girl has been into Shirley Hughes again. Her books are regular favorites around here, but we go through seasons when we read her a lot. This week it's been the Alfie and Annie Rose Storybook with the added, first-time pleasure of S. actually reading some of the stories on her own. Last night we read my favorite in the collection, "Mr. MacNally's Hat," before bedtime.

I've mostly been reading church history this week. I try to read one to two weeks ahead of the current session for which my students are writing, so this week I've been delving into the Wesleys. I also began the intro to David Adam's book Aidan, Bede and Cuthbert (isn't that a marvelous title? Kind of an "ABC" of Celtic saints!).

I'm continuing to read a biography (yes, a grown-up one) of Wilson Bentley, called Snowflake Man. Nothing very lyrical about the prose, but it's well-researched and provides a fascinating glimpse into turn of the 20th century Vermont -- and one man's creative obsession.

Just started Jill Paton Walsh's A Presumption of Death, another Vane/Wimsey novel she wrote (this one based on Sayers' Wimsey Papers, not on an unfinished Sayers novel).

I think D. has been reading Book, Bath, Table and Time again (subtitled "Christian Worship as Source and Resource for Youth Ministry").

We've been doing about two chapters per day of the Burgess Bird Book for Children during read-aloud time. I'm glad I held off on this one. What a great time to read about returning springtime birds! We also read Jim Arnosky's I See Animals Hiding and were thrilled to realize that we could identify the woodcock on the cover (thanks to what we've been learning in Burgess).