…except on vacation. I typically find it hard to put down a good book once I’ve picked it up. And so I haven’t read much. I just haven’t found much to interest me. My wife says I’m picky, but I seem to have a hard time finding books with more than one-dimensional characters, that aren’t too dark or violent.
But when I do go on vacation, I’ve got to have something. I don’t want to just flip through a magazine…
Then a few weeks ago, it dawned on me. We were at a used bookstore with the kids and my wife was looking for books for home school. The kids were in the young adult section looking around, and I was browsing with them. I kept running across books that I had read as a kid:
- Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH
- Harriet the Spy
- The Black Cauldron
- The White Mountains
All wonderful books. I kept telling ~D~, “Oh, here’s a good one…here’s another one.” He looks at them and shrugs. Not interested.
Then it occurs to me that there must be a bunch that I haven’t read. Why not read some kiddy lit? In fact, my wife reads bunches of books to the boys during home school and I haven’t read most of them. So, I asked for suggestions:
“Hey ~D~, what was your favorite book in school this year?”
“~K~, what book do you like the best?”
And I got several great suggestions:
- The Sign of the Beaver
- Moccasin Trail
- The School Story
- Akiko on the Planet Smoo (OK, this last one was not on our reading list, but I was just curious of what the kids were reading in their free time.)
These were all excellent books (Except Akiko, but even that made me realize how easily kids can suspend their disbelief.) and I could usually read them in a few hours, so they weren’t all consuming.
In fact, this “experiment” was so successful, I’ll probably extend it through the summer, at least.
Not (quite) Balanced 