“I can’t wait to go to Seattle this weekend so I can sit in the car for a really long time and read my book” – Matthias
Huuunh!??? This from the boy who was hard pressed to ever read anything, I mean, a paragraph was really pushing things and suddenly I find him laying on his stomach hanging over the footstool, book on the ground, just reading away; or slumped, legs over the arms of the chair reading away; or ‘I think I will go to bed now so I can read a little bit.’ He has even given up running around during his lunch break to read.
Who is this boy and what have they done with Matthias?
It was all kind of a sudden. I forced, I demanded, that he read The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and he did read a page, and denounced it as boring. “They talk funny in it: ’Ary day you git the best of a trade, I’ll eat my wash-pot.”
He had a point but, “Tough luck, Matt,” says I and so he begrudgingly read a bit more. And then a bit more, and darned if he wasn’t getting sucked into the story. Then he began to be a critic, “Jody’s father is irritating me.” Five hundred pages later, Matthias was done with the book and had loved it.
Next he devoured most all of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques and found out I had named him after the valiant mouse in Redwall, Matthias.
He is now onto The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, which “is way better than the movies of Lord of the Rings.”
So in the end, I am glad I forced, and demanded he read a book of quality writing for his first really lengthy book. I now need a whole stack of great books that I think he will love.
What was your all time favorite book when you were a child?
Heidi, but that’s probably not what you had in mind,
Heidi was a fantastic series for girls. When Meghan and Erin were little we would read Heidi aloud and after our reading sessions would put on aprons and dresses and go out to play “Heidi” with our goats and sheep in the field.
I dearly loved Alec Forbes and His Friend Annie – the “sanitized” version of A Maiden’s Bequest, by George MacDonald. Wee Sir Gibbie of the Highlands was another one, more of a boys’ book. Esther Forbes books were great, too.
Little Women :/
Thanks for these, I have heard of Little Women but not His Friend Annie.
My “changling” book was The Ordinary Princess, which I’m so glad to have waiting on my shelf for Freyja, for the day when I find out she hates reading as much as I did.
Ah, Redwall. That was a good series of books. The boys read them several times.
Wind and the Willows & Narnia are, of course, essential. :) Hans loved Farmer Boy, too.
I have never read Wind in the Willows and I don’t think any of my seven children ever did either; I think Matthias should be the first!
I really broadened my reading while Home schooling, and a couple that I enjoyed reading, and I think Matt would, are:
Johnny Tremain, Gone Away Lake, Snow Treasure (which I’m surprised Mom didn’t mention), My Side of the Mountain and Detectives in Togas.
I loved Johnny Tremain, my parents bought me that book one year as a Christmas gift and the title seemed lame and hopeless but it was a great book and I could not put it down.