Some books we have loved in May
And what do you think about abridged classics?
Usually I do a monthly resources post, but this month I don’t feel I have much new to share with you. We have, however, been doing a lot of reading, so here are some of the books we’ve enjoyed recently. I’d love to hear what your family has been enjoying too!
Yomi and the Fury of Ninka Nanka
The first in a series of adventure stories based on African mythology. Both children raced through this and the follow-up, Yomi and the Power of the Yumboes. Yomi and the Curse of Grootslang is coming out in the UK in August this year.
Amazon recommends for ages 6-9.
Mysteries at Sea series
My daughter (8) was gripped by the first book, Peril on the Atlantic, set on the Queen Mary in 1936. She couldn’t wait for the next book, The Royal Jewel Plot, to be available at the library so I splashed out and bought it new. Now she is counting down to The Hollywood Kidnap Case coming out in August.
Amazon says 8-12.
Polar Bear Explorers’ Club series
An excellent recommendation from
. My son (6) has read 4 of the 6 books in the series this month. My notoriously picky husband read the first page and said “Wow, this is actually pretty good”.Amazon says 9-12, but my son is a confident reader. If you also have a precocious reader, it might be useful to know that these books have been fine content-wise for my son. He can find books a bit scary but these seem to be thrilling without being terrifying.
Dickens
No, not the real thing. My daughter has been rereading the Usborne Dickens books we own, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist (7+). A Christmas Carol (6+), A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, and Bleak House (all 7+) are available in the same series. We also have A World Full of Dickens Stories, which she’s been reading as well. I think the retelling in this book is excellent. Usborne also do Illustrated Stories from Dickens (7-10)—we love the Illustrated Stories series, so I am now itching to add this to our collection—and Complete Dickens, which is for slightly older children and doesn’t have so many illustrations.
Do you remember when you first read original Dickens stories? Or when your child did?
I picked this up in a secondhand bookshop at the weekend and my son read it through in one sitting. I was sure we already owned it, but the children said we didn’t. I figured their knowledge of their own books was probably better than mine, and indeed it was. Never leave books in this series behind when you find them secondhand!
Amazon says 8-12.
I no longer read bedtime stories to the children because they’d rather read to themselves. But in an effort to keep them reading good, classic books that they might otherwise snub I have started reading to them at teatime. My daughter is really enjoying My Side of the Mountain, the 1959 American classic about a boy who escapes his family’s crowded city apartment to go and live in the Catskills. My son, vexingly, manages to read to himself at the table, even though I’m reading aloud right next to him. I suppose I have to admire his powers of concentration.
Some books about explorers
Our history topic at the moment is the age of exploration. I have been reading aloud:
Explorapedia, which covers explorers from all periods. This is an excellent book for any family.
Corpse Talk: Ground-Breaking Explorers. My son in particular adores this series of books. We’ve read about Zheng He, Columbus, Magellan, Cortés, Malinalli, and Alexander Selkirk, and there are many more. Each one is told in a comic-strip style, and manages to be humorous as well as honest about the horrors of exploration and Colonialism (without being terrifying for children).
You Wouldn’t Want to Sail with Christopher Columbus! and Avoid Exploring with Captain Cook! This series is good, but so packed with information that we find it rather numbing if we read too many pages at once. We’ve also been reading Avoid Being a Tudor Actor in Shakespeare’s Theatre! from the same series. (Watch out, sometimes these books are bizarrely expensive on Amazon. Please don’t accidentally spend £30 on a small paperback book. Try secondhand.)
What do you think about abridged classics?
My daughter recently enjoyed Treasure Island, in an abridged, illustrated form. When she saw that The Hound of the Baskervilles is available in the same series she begged me to buy it. And I was about to, when my husband wondered aloud if reading an abridged book when you’re young puts you off reading the real thing in a few years time. This seemed particularly possible to me with a whodunnit.
What do you think? Did you read abridged classics? Do your children? Tell me your experiences!
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I tend to avoid abridged versions of classics (the exception is Shakespeare!) because there are so many great books to read at each reading “level” that I will just wait until that child is ready to read the real thing. And if it’s hard for them to get into the real thing, I have found that starting it as a read-aloud is enough to get them into it. My daughter was not loving Robinson Crusoe, but when I read it aloud to her for a few chapters, she grew interested in it.
I have mixed feelings about abridged versions after I tried reading a really terrible version of Anne of Green Gables as a child, not realising it wasn't the original. I could have gone through life avoiding LM Montgomery! Luckily a friend recommended the series a few years later and I was outraged to discover her book was quite different.
I think there are cases where abridged versions can be useful but I'd always check the quality of the writing after that experience.