Today is Back to School Day for kids around here. In our house, it’s Not Back to School Day. Newt wanted to have breakfast on the front lawn so she could watch all the “poor kids” (her words, not mine) on their first day trek. I think she had some gloating planned… I told her that we could eat near the living room window. She could watch and silently gloat while I read to her.

These are some of the books we’ve been reading in the last week.

What I’ve Been Reading
Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box
Last month, I started an online class to help me improve as a mentor. Leadership and Self Deception was included in this month’s assignments, and I was not looking forward to it. Judging from it’s cover (I know!) I thought it would be a combination of my two least favorite genres: self-help and business. Bor and ring. I made myself a goal to read 60 pages in one week, but then I picked it up and read the entire book in two days. It is a little self-help-businessy, but in such a good way. The ideas in it have caused me to look at the way I act and react in my relationships in whole new ways. The insights I have received have been so helpful, healing even.
I went ahead and read the companion book, The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict. Wow. More powerful stuff. This one teaches about spending most of our time helping things go right instead focusing on fixing them when they go wrong. I’m sure this has been only the first of many readings to come.

Cheaper by the Dozen
I love this book. This is the third or fourth time I have read it. If you have seen the Steve Martin movie adaption, please know that though that was a cute movie, it shares nothing with the book but the name. Cheaper by the Dozen was written by Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, two of the dozen children the book is named for. Their father was an efficiency expert and he certainly applied his methods at home. From using two lathering brushes to cut a few seconds off his morning shave to talking the children’s teachers into allowing the little Gilbreths to skip grades, he was a man that didn’t waste time.
I love some of the parents unusual methods of education and the ways they fit learning into every part of the day. (For example: The children became fairly fluent at French by listening to language records during their baths.)
I am enjoying this very much. So much that Gulliver’s Travels has fallen by the wayside, though I do have plans to get back to it.

What I’ve Been Reading to Newt
We are still reading (and enjoying) Matilda Bone. It has been fun to see Matilda begin understand that, for all her Latin and knowledge of Saints, she does not know as much as she thinks. We have also been both fascinated and disgusted by Medieval medicine: ant eggs, viper fat and donkey dung made into an elixir for poor eyesight? An elixir that is to be drunk?! Hee. Perhaps Newt won’t mind my homemade cayenne cough syrup quite so much next time she is sick.
I Walked to Zion
Most mornings, we have a devotional after breakfast. We sing a song or two, read a scripture and read from an inspiring book. I Walked to Zion is our devotional book right now. It contains first-person accounts of children that walked the Mormon Trail.
Some stories are funny, like when a boy described sneaking onto a wagon to ride awhile. He decided to hide in a barrel, but was surprised by the six inches or so of molasses at the bottom. That didn’t stop him from slipping down in and taking a good long nap. With water being scarce on the prairie, his only set of clothes, hair and skin remained sticky until they were fully covered with dust. He seemed to think his nap was worth it though.
Other stories are sad. The hardships endured are difficult to imagine. Slogging through miles and miles of mud, hunger and cold, and even saying goodbye to family members at quickly dug trail-side graves were only a few of the things these pioneers endured. Even still, they continued to faithfully put one foot in front of the next until they reached their goal. Quite inspiring.

What We’ve Been Listening To
The Home Ranch
This is the third book in the Little Britches series. I read the first book aloud to Newt, but we have listened to books two and three on CD in the car. I can’t say enough about how excellent these books truly are. Newt and I have learned so much from Ralph Moody as he shares the lessons of his boyhood.
In the second book, Ralph briefly tells about his experience working on a cattle ranch the summer he was eleven years old. The Home Ranch revisits and expounds upon his time there. He is learning valuable lessons about pride, rushing in without thinking, and even girls…
I admit, sometimes I take the long way home so we can listen a bit longer. I’m so glad that there are more books in this series for us to discover.

What Newt is Reading
Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog
This is the first not-written-for-children book that Newt has started reading. I think it is her way of dealing with our own aging dog. (She has seen the movie, so she knows how things end.)
I read Marley & Me a few years ago; I don’t remember anything objectionable or too adult in it. And if there was, I wouldn’t have kept it. I tend to only keep books around that I am comfortable with Newt picking up, since I know the best way to encourage a deep desire to have something is to label it off limits. Still, I’ve wondered if I should quickly re-read this one so I can make sure she’s ready for it.
On one hand, I know that I will never be able to read all the books that she is interested in, nor would I want to. I also know, from experience, that if she comes across something that confuses or bothers her, she’ll usually bring it up so we can talk it out.
On the other hand… she’s not quite eleven. Advice?

That’s it for us this week. What are you reading? Also, how do you deal with your kids reading grown-up books?

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