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Welcome to Week 8 of The Book-Jumper Summer Reading Series!
This series is my way of inspiring parents who are looking for creative ways to keep their kids reading this summer. All of the books I am jumping into feature protagonists are girls or women and most of our showcased authors are women as well. I will be offering up a combination of themed weeks, great novels, booklist giveaways, and blog post recaps so be sure and stop by to discover more wonderful ways have A Bookjumper Summer while Exploring Our World and Beyond!
This week we’re in the Redwood Forest and enjoying Northern California! We are so inspired by these incredible trees. They are the oldest, tallest trees on the planet. Some of them are 1000 years old. It’s been a huge challenge to save these glorious trees from the blade of the lumber companies. Muir woods it a save haven for the redwoods. It’s our hope that our booklist will inspire you as well to make a trip to visit these ancient giants and become active in saving them for future generations.
An ordinary train ride becomes and extraordinary trip to the great ancient forests.A subway trip is transformed when a young boy happens upon a book about redwood forests. As he reads the information unfolds, and with each new bit of knowledge, he travels–all the way to California to climb into the Redwood canopy. Crammed with interesting and accurate information about these great natural wonders.
The Tallest Tree by Robert Lieber (a board book produced by the Golden Gate National Park)
Science teachers and ecologically minded parents: this book is a delightful introduction to the habitat in and around old trees. As AAAS Science Books & Films says, “The science is accurate and the book painlessly teaches important ecological lessons.” From lowly fungi to majestic owls, the book connects the web of nature. Repetitive, cumulative verse–a poetic technique that children universally enjoy–aptly portrays the amazing ways in which the inhabitants of the forest depend upon one another for survival. Stunning illustrations by the renowned illustrator, Christopher Canyon, manage to be both magical and true to life. It includes a guide to the forest creatures and their interrelationships, and a concise explanation of an ancient forest.
This edition of Who Pooped in the Park? follows Michael and Emily on a trip to Redwoods National and State Parks in California. Michael tries to deal with his fear of bears as Mom and Dad teach him and his sister about the wildlife in the area–without ever getting close enough to be scared. In their “close encounters of the poopy kind,” the family learns about a variety of animals, and readers will become familiar with their tracks and the droppings they leave behind (scats).
“Sibley Carter is a moron and a world-class jerk,” reads Julian Carter-Li in an angry e-mail message meant for his greedy, high-powered uncle. The fateful message sets him on the course to stop an environmental crime! His uncle’s company plans to cut down some of the oldest California redwood trees, and it’s up to Julian and a ragtag group of friends to figure out a way to stop them. This thrilling, thoughtful debut novel shows the power of determined individuals, no matter what their age, to stand up to wrongdoing.
It is a very beautifully illustrated children’s book describing the love, peace and contentment that can be experienced in an ancient old-growth forest. With faeries, nymphs, a Forest Goddess, an Ancient Magician, and other colorful characters, we learn through the eyes of a young girl, why these last remaining forests should be saved, and about the senseless destruction already wrought upon them.
Have you ever seen a tree as wide as a house? What about one taller than a skyscraper? Get ready to explore the gigantic trees in the Redwood Forests! These amazing forests are located along the West Coast of the United States, from California to Oregon. Just how tall can a redwood tree grow? Read this book to find out!
What amazing redwood forest books have you read?
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This week we’ve been celebrating author Michaela MacColl, her books and her recent release The Revelation of Louisa May based on authoress Louisa May Alcott. I have so many incredible memories of her book Little Women. When I finally arrived at Louisa Alcott’s home Orchard House with my own brood in tow, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
The first time I met Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy I was ten years old. Every Thursday I had a date with Marmee, I mean mom, as she stood there ironing. To make her arduous task go by faster, I read Little Women to her. Orchard House seemed the perfect setting to iron in and besides it was a family we felt we related to. Though 100 and some years had passed since Jo wrote plays for her sisters, our 1970’s/80’s household seemed to hold the same passions and desires. All we really needed was Laurie living next door and a mean old aunt who wanted us to read to her. Hey wasn’t I already reading to somebody? There you have it — I was one step closer to being Jo March.
(Here is where my mother would want me to point out that she wasn’t ironing her husband and children’s clothes. She was a wedding dress designer; she always steamed and pressed the wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses on Thursdays so they could be packed and delivered on Fridays.)
That summer of Little Women was packed gently away in the recesses of my mind until many years later when I was, yet again, utterly lost on the Boston highways and by-ways. After what seemed like endless driving, I found myself in the little town of Concord Massachusetts. Passing before us were colorful clapboard colonial houses boasting quaint little gardens. As the country road kept turning and winding, I couldn’t help muttering every two minutes to my son, “We are so lost. If it wasn’t so nice to look at I’d be worried.” Just after one of those mutterings and country road turns I saw a sign for “Orchard House.” Surely that couldn’t be my Orchard House, could it? I made a hasty right-hand turn into the parking lot, and sitting before me was the Orchard House of my imagination — just as I had left it.
“Let’s get out of the car,” I said to my son, gazing at the house.
“Mom, do you know where we are?”
“I think so.” I started walking up towards the house.
“Mom, where are we going? Do you know these people?”
“Yes,” Came my quick reply. “We’re visiting some old friends.”
“Mom, who lives here? I thought we were lost.”
“The Marches live here. My friend Jo March and her sisters live here.”
By this time we had come to the kitchen door.
I knocked and without waiting for a reply I entered. There to greet us was a very kind woman who, I might add, looked an awful lot like Marmee.
“Are you here for the tour?” she asked.
“Tour?” I questioned.
“Yes, you’re at Louisa May Alcott’s house, author of Little Women.”
From there we got a private tour into the world of Louisa May Alcott and an up-close visit into the life and times of this cherished author. During our visit to Orchard House seeds were planted, and I just had to discover what ideas were to unfold. We decided to stay in Concord, or stay “lost,” as my son likes to put it.
Over the next three days, we met her, her family, and neighbors, all contributors to American education, thought and literature.
Louisa May Alcott was the second daughter of Bronson and Abigail May Alcott. Born on the same day as her father, on November 29th, 1832. Louisa was raised along with her sisters Anna, Elizabeth, and May in a very unique family.
Louisa’s father Bronson Alcott, a transcendentalist and educator, believed that the key to social reform and spiritual growth was at home and in family life. He woke his family everyday at 5 am to run outdoors. They would finish with a cold morning bath before starting their daily studies and chores. He was a philosopher who loved public speaking and often would stand outside his house to discuss his ideas with passersby. Next door neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a very solitary and private man, had a path built above his house in the forest which led around the Alcott home and came out on the other side so he could avoid meetings with Bronson Alcott.
Concord looked at the Alcott’s as an eccentric family. The Alcott family made many life choices which contributed to them standing out from the rest of their community.
Louisa and her sisters were home-schooled, taught by their father until 1848. He instilled in them the values of self-reliance, duty, charity, self-expression and sacrifice. Noticing how bright and curious Louisa was, Ralph Waldo Emerson, another neighbor, invited her to visit his library any time she wished. What followed was Mr. Emerson becoming her literature and philosophy teacher. They would spend hours together discussing literature, thought, poetry, rhetoric and the like. Another of Louisa’s teachers was naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau. Louisa and her sisters accompanied him often on his long nature walks. Along with the art of nature observation he taught them biology.
Though Louisa’s father was a very educated man, he brought in little income. Louisa, her mother, and her sisters had to hire themselves out to clean houses, take in laundry, and work as tutors in schools. Louisa had been writing poems and stories under a couple of pseudonyms. She started using her own name when she was hired to write children’s stories. At the age of 15 she decided that her family would no longer live in poverty. The first book she wrote was Flower Fables, which she wrote for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter Ellen Hawthorne. She wrote Little Women in ten weeks and the sequel Little Men in another ten week session. Both books were written at Orchard House and while we were visiting there we saw the small desk by the window that Bronson Alcott made her. All of her children’s books have been continually published since the late 1800’s and translated into 50 languages.
Louisa was a very strong-willed woman. During the Civil War she worked as a nurse in Washington D.C. There she contracted typhoid fever and the mercury used to cure her ended up poisoning her. She suffered from chronic illness for the rest of her life.
Her family was staunchly abolitionist and housed slaves moving towards freedom. John Brown’s widow and children stayed with the Alcott’s for several weeks after the death of Mr. Brown.
Like many educated women of her time, Louisa was an advocate for women’s suffrage. She was the first woman registered to vote some 40 years before women had the right to vote in the United States. Louisa walked into a school board election and pounded on the table saying “I have the right to vote and you won’t stop me.” The election chair gave her a ballot and registered her to vote. Whether her vote counted or not, no one knows, but people actively speak about Louisa as the first woman to vote in the United States.
As in her book Little Women, Louisa’s sister Beth died from smallpox, which she contracted taking care of a poor immigrant family. Later her sister Amy moved to Europe to study painting at the Beaux Arts in Paris. Amy married a Swiss man and later died after giving birth to her daughter who they named after her sister Louisa (Lulu). Upon the insistence of her sister, Louisa took care of Lulu at Orchard House until she was ten years old and then sent her back to Switzerland. The eldest of the Alcott sisters, Anne, loved to act just like the older sister Meg in Little Women. As I was walking up Walden Street in Concord I noticed a little theater which I learned was founded by Anne Alcott. To this day plays are performed there seasonally and a production of Little Women is an annual event.
Louisa never married and wrote until the day she died at 55 years old. Just as she was born on the same day as her father, she died just two days after his death.
We paid a visit to the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. This lovely place was created by Ralph Waldo Emerson as a place of beauty for the citizens of Concord to come and reflect on nature, literature, music, poetry, and their loved ones. As they were in life, all of the above-mentioned people are neighbors in death as well. As we approached Louisa’s grave in her family plot we took part in the tradition of leaving a pen at the authoress’s grave, as well as a stone on Henry David Thoreau’s grave just nearby. Walking a few feet we also paid homage to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Since returning from Concord we’ve started our own family journal practice. In the Alcott household, journals were meant to be shared. The Alcott family would write about the daily happenings in their lives, what books they were reading and the thoughts they inspired, political opinions, women’s suffrage, plays they were working on or had seen, walks and observations, poems they had written and poems to be shared. Anything at all that held their attention would be written in their journals. Each evening after dinner they sat around the table and read from their journals.
In our family we’ve taken to collecting not just snippets from our daily lives but to writing down poems we’ve discovered during the week. We also include riddles, jokes, favorite recipes, and this week’s favorite music. The family journal sits on the old radio by the kitchen table where everyone puts something daily into it. On Sunday dinner we read from our weekly family journal. It’s been fun to watch what catches the eye of my growing family and how we are creating this weekly testament about the lives we share together.
By getting lost on our way back to Boston, we ended up in another era of American thought, literature, and history. Unbeknownst to me, I had no idea that by discovering Louisa May Alcott an entire world of famous American transcendentalist would plant the seeds of inspiration. Over those few days we walked the path of Henry David Thoreau, saw the birth of our nation at Minute Man National Park, and embraced the world of 19th century America.
For further information about Orchard House, Louisa May Alcott, her books, and the time period she lived in , please look here.
This 8-week eCurriculum is packed with ideas and inspiration to keep kids engaged and happy all summer long. It offers 8 kid-approved themes with outdoor activities, indoor projects, arts & crafts, recipes, field trip ideas, book & media suggestions, and more. The curriculum, now available for download, is a full-color PDF that can be read on a computer screen or tablet, or printed out. Designed for children ages 5-11, it is fun and easily-adaptable for all ages!
The At-Home Summer Nature Camp eGuide is packed with ideas & inspiration to keep your kids engaged all summer long. This unique eCurriculum is packed with ideas & inspiration from a group of creative “camp counselors.” Sign up, or get more details, HERE
Welcome to the second week of Book Jumper Summer Reading Series! This is my way of inspiring parents who are looking for creative ways to keep their kids reading this summer!
Our summer reading program will be a combination of some really neat things. All of our protagonists are girls or women and most of our showcased authors are women as well. I will be offering up a combination of themed weeks, great novels, booklist giveaways, and blog post recaps so be sure and stop by to discover more wonderful ways have A Bookjumper Summer while Exploring Our World and Beyond!
This week I want to focus on the wonderful works of author Linda Sue Park. Earlier this week I shared some history about Linda Sue herself and reviewed her wonderful book A Long Walk to Water. We also have have a giveaway going on where one lucky winner will win FIVE Linda Sue Park books! More details HERE.
This week on Book-jumper Summer we’re celebrating the great works of one of my favorite authors Linda Sue Park. Project Mulberry is one of our favorite books. Anyone interested in growing silk worms? Have a look below to find out more about both the book Project Mulberry and the actual project. Enjoy !!
I was walking in the yard the other day and discovered that some how we have a volunteer mulberry tree. Well it’s just huge and it’s growing mulberries.
For someone who walks their yard everyday I don’t really know how I missed this but I did. As the family began picking Mulberries, we were reminded of the most incredible story about a mulberry leaf, silkworm project written by Linda Sue Park (author of The Single Shard) called, Project Mulberry.
Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park
240 pages for Grades 4-7
Julia, a 7th grader who has just moved to Plainfield Illinois with her family is coming to terms with her new home and school environments. From the moment they meet, Julia and Patrick become best friends. Needing a project to enter in the State Fair, they ask Julia’s mom , who suggests raising silkworms. Julia refuses this idea at first because she is wanting something a little more American. Julia’s parents are Korean and she feels very self conscious about her asian heritage. Julia doesn’t want to be identified or labeled by her culture.
Finally, Julia accepts the project and reluctantly takes on the responsibilities which are needed to complete the project. Each unfolding step into the world of silkworms helps Julia to embrace her heritage and value her friendship with Patrick even more.
Woven into the story are the themes of racism, nature’s cycles, life and death, folk art, family relations, self-acceptance and sustainable farming. At the end of each chapter Julia, the main character, has a discussion with the author Linda Sue Park about the direction the story should take. It opens the door to the inside world of the writer’s process.
Something To Do
As we stood under our mulberry tree remembering this great story, we decided right then and there that we had to grow our own silkworms. I must admit to you that we are at the beginning of this process and are waiting for our little silkworm eggs to arrive. We promise to keep you updated on our progress.
Would you like to join us in growing silk worms? Just leave a comment below and let us know if you will share this experience with us.
A few weeks ago I saw the most interesting TED talk about what they are now using silk for. It’s amazing and is being used in ways one could not even imagine. It is taking science and technology to a new level. This is a great video for kids probably age 8 and older.
Looking for more ways to not only get your youngsters reading, but get them OUTSIDE as well? Enjoy more month-by-month activities based on the classic children’s tale, The Secret Garden! A Year in the Secret Garden is a delightful children’s book with over 120 pages, with 150 original color illustrations and 48 activities for your family and friends to enjoy, learn, discover and play with together. AND, it’s on sale for a limited time! Grab your copy ASAP and “meet me in the garden!” More details HERE.
Welcome to the second week of Book Jumper Summer Reading Series! This is my way of inspiring parents who are looking for creative ways to keep their kids reading this summer!
Our summer reading program will be a combination of some really neat things. All of our protagonists are girls or women and most of our showcased authors are women as well. I will be offering up a combination of themed weeks, great novels, booklist giveaways, and blog post recaps so be sure and stop by to discover more wonderful ways have A Bookjumper Summer while Exploring Our World and Beyond!
This week I want to focus on the wonderful works of author Linda Sue Park.
Linda Sue is an American author of teen fiction. Park published her first novel, Seesaw Girl, in 1999. She has written six children’s novels and five picture books. Park’s work achieved prominence when she received the prestigious 2002 Newbery Medal for her novel A Single Shard. She has written the ninth book in the 39 Clues series, Storm Warning, published on 25 May 2010. Linda Sue Park was born in Urbana, Illinois on March 25, 1960, and grew up outside Chicago. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she has been writing poems and stories since she was four years old, and her favorite thing to do as a child was read.
One of Linda’s amazing books that I have grown to love is A Long Walk to Water: based on a true story
and published by Clarion Books, November 15, 201
A Long Walk to Water is based on the true story of Salva, one of some 3,800 Sudanese “Lost Boys” airlifted to the United States beginning in the mid 1990s.
Before leaving Africa, Salva’s life is one of harrowing tragedy. Separated from his family by war and forced to travel on foot through hundreds of miles of hostile territory, he survives starvation, animal attacks, and disease, and ultimately leads a group of about 150 boys to safety in Kenya. Relocated to upstate New York, Salva resourcefully learns English and continues on to college. Eventually he returns to his home region in southern Sudan to establish a foundation that installs deep-water wells in remote villages in dire need of clean water. This poignant story of Salva’s life is told side-by-side with the story of Nya, a young girl who lives today in one of those villages.
Both Salva and Nya are from Southern Sudan, but they are separated by time and enemy tribes.
Salva, a son of an important leader in the Nuir tribe, is separated from his family during the revolution during the 1980s. For months, he and others separated from their family and their homes by the rebels travel by foot across Sudan in at attempt to reach the refugee camps in Ethiopia. But as one can assume, the road was not easy. Days or weeks without food or water, the threat of being left behind, the danger of lions and other vicious wild animals, an unforgiving river, and the biggest threat of all—days in the desert. Salva experienced loss during this journey, but he also experienced love and learned so much about life. He spent years in an Ethiopian refugee camp, but when the Ethiopian government begins to collapse, where are the refugees to go? Will Salva ever see his family again? Is a better, safer life even a possibility?
Nya is the niece of her tribe’s leader. She walks several miles twice a day to gather water for her family from the only water source around—a dirty pond. Every day she walks back and forth, an easy journey to and a difficult, heavy journey fro. One day a man and his team appear in their village claiming that they can make water come out of the ground that has been dry since the beginning of her people. Is this man magic? Does he even speak the truth? Or are Nya’s beloved people just being tricked with false hope?
The stories of these two Sudanese children are beautiful and wonderfully intertwined. The story of Salva is a true story about a man who survived Sudan and has made a wonderful life in America. However, his story and his life bring attention to a major issue in Sudan since the 1980s: water. Water is either an extremely far walk from a tribe or the water is dirty and carries the threat of disease—or both. People die every day from poor quality of the water, and tribes that do not live near developed areas are sometimes too far away from the medical help that their people need.
Recently, Salva’s organization, Water for South Sudan has been drilling wells in Sudanese communities, giving fresh, healthy drinking water to these tribes and developing their lands. To learn more about Salva’s organization and to learn how to help, please visit http://www.waterforsouthsudan.org.
Somthing To Do-Lessons and Resources from A Long walk To Walk:
H20 For Life: H2O for Life educates, engages and inspires youth to learn, take action and become global citizens. We provide students with a unique and valuable learning experience through service-learning opportunities focused on the global water crisis. H2O for Life provides a service-learning opportunity for schools, youth groups, and faith-based organizations to raise awareness about the water crisis while taking action to provide funds for water, sanitation and hygiene education for a partner school in a developing country.
In 2007, Patty Hall received a cry for help from a small village in Kenya that was desperate to build a water project. Could she help? She introduced the idea to her school, Highview Middle School in New Brighton MN, to see if they could help raise funds for the project. Staff and students embraced the challenge with open arms. Students learned about the global water crisis and created action plans. Read more about Patty and H20 For Life’s mission HERE.
Support for South Sudan Refugees: As the international community prepares to mark World Refugee Day next month (June 20th), refugees themselves confront the daunting challenges of daily life in encampments.
One such temporary home to at least 8,000 refugees is Lasu, in South Sudan, which the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) helps to support. Read more HERE.
According to Water.org, every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease. Surveys from 45 developing countries show that women and children bear the primary responsibility for water collection in the majority of households. This is time not spent working at an income-generating job, caring for family members, or attending school. Learn more HERE.
This 8-week eCurriculum is packed with ideas and inspiration to keep kids engaged and happy all summer long. It offers 8 kid-approved themes with outdoor activities, indoor projects, arts & crafts, recipes, field trip ideas, book & media suggestions, and more. The curriculum, now available for download, is a full-color PDF that can be read on a computer screen or tablet, or printed out. Designed for children ages 5-11, it is fun and easily-adaptable for all ages!
The At-Home Summer Nature Camp eGuide is packed with ideas & inspiration to keep your kids engaged all summer long. This unique eCurriculum is packed with ideas & inspiration from a group of creative “camp counselors.” Sign up, or get more details, HERE
As usual, I have seen a TON of great activities, booklists and suggestions from other bloggers involving Keeping Kids in the Reading Habit this Summer during this last week and I’d like to share my favorites with you today. Enjoy!
Kim at I’m Not the Nanny has an awesome blog post on 18 Diverse Children’s Chapter Book Series for Summer Reading
Multicultural Children’s Blog has their own wonderful reading series called Read Around the World Summer Reading Series. Quality blogger from all over the blogasphere are offering up their choices on multicultural books for kids so please stop by, click a few, and find some excellent new reads!
Hot giveaway and booklistat PragmaticMom! 10 Books to Expose Kids to a Foreign Language
I also wanted to share a few guest posts from last summer’s Discover Your World Summer Reading Extravaganza because there were some true gems during those 2014 summer months. Here are a few
AND…::drum roll: my 2015 Book-Jumper Summer Reading Series kicks of June 4th! I promise to offer up exciting, creative, unique and innovative ways to keep your kids reading this summer. There will be many book reviews, giveaways and crafts to keep those little minds active while school is out. The fun starts June 4th so be sure and stop back!
Sale Ends May 31st!
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Enjoy more month-by-month activities based on the classic children’s tale, The Secret Garden! A Year in the Secret Garden is a delightful children’s book with over 120 pages, with 150 original color illustrations and 48 activities for your family and friends to enjoy, learn, discover and play with together. AND, it’s on sale for a limited time! Grab your copy ASAP and “meet me in the garden!” http://amzn.to/1DTVnuX
