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By:
Aline Pereira,
on 8/23/2010
Blog:
PaperTigers
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Picture Books,
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Our summer holidays are nearly over and the Reading the World Challenge is nearly running away with me in terms of posting about the books we’ve read – so without further ado, here’s the latest installment, including the long overdue catch-up with our fellow readers…
Together we have read the delightful Lulie the Iceberg by Her Royal Highness Princess Takamado and illustrated by Warabe Aska (Kodansha America, 1998), which Sally wrote about a while ago – her post prompted us to get hold of it: and we did, indeed, love it. We read the actual story one evening and then spent several evenings after that reading the factual information at the end, while hunting again and again for the various creatures mentioned in the gorgeous illustrations. Read Sally’s post for a synopsis of the story…
Meanwhile, Older Brother has read Linda Sue Park’s A Single Shard (Clarion Books, 2001):
A Single Shard is about a young boy called Tree-ear in 12th Century Korea, who loves watching a potter called Min making vases grow from the wheel. Then Tree-ear starts working for Mon (but he’s not allowed to actually make things) and goes on a long journey to the emperor with some pottery to seek a commission – but he is tricked by robbers on the way…
It’s a very exciting story. It made me feel happy and sad at different times: and the ending was probably the saddest part of all, though it did eventually turn out to be for the best.
Little Brother has also read a book set in Antarctica – but I have to confess that I have mislaid the notebook in which he wrote his mini-review, which he will be quite unimpressed about. I will try and remedy the situation asap.
In the meantime, what of everyone else in all these weeks that have elapsed since my last update?
Corinne has read Shanghai Girls by Lisa See, of which she says, “It won Honorable Mention for Adult Fiction in the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature. I loved Lisa’s previous book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and this book did not disappoint either. Highly recommend it especially for all those “historical novel” lovers like me.”
Olduvai at Olduvai Reads has completed the Challenge – Hooray! You can find links to her reviews for all the books she read here…
Tiina of A Book Blog of One’s own has read The Lovers of Algeria by Anouar Benmalek and The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge…
And I’m so glad Jama at Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup has joined in too. She’s been reading a wonderful selection of picture books about Asia and Asian Americans, focusing on
0 Comments on Reading the World – Update #3 as of 1/1/1900
Well, we’ve finally started this year’s Reading the World Challenge in our household!
As our together-read, we’re “doing” Europe at the moment. We’re about half way through Dickens’ Oliver Twist, which I’m really enjoying, since it’s a good few years since I read it, and the boys are revelling in. I suggested it because I was getting a bit fed up with continued allusions to Oliver via the musical Oliver! and felt (poor kids, purist that I am!) that they needed to get back to grass roots here… I did wonder if we were biting off a bit more than we could chew but in fact they are completely caught up by the narrative and Dickens would be happy with his effect on their social consiousness/consciences! It’s definitely proving to be one of those books that they wouldn’t read on their own but that, with frequent, unobtrusive asides to gloss the meanings of words, they are more than able to enjoy having read to them. It’s just very long and now that term-time is back in full swing, it’s hard getting the sustained reading time all together that we would like.
We have also read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (David Fickling Books, 2006). This is an extraordinarily powerful book about a nine-year-old German boy, Bruno, who becomes an unwitting witness of the Holocaust when his father becomes the Commandant of “Outwith” concentration camp (as Bruno mistakenly calls it), and who makes friends with a Jewish boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the perimeter fence. If you have read this breath-taking, punch-in-the-stomach book, do take a look at the discussion that Janet got underway here on PaperTigers on the Tigers Bookshelf. Although it says on the back cover that despite being a book about nine-year-olds, “this is not a book for nine-year-olds”, and I therefore, again, had some reservations of reading it with the boys, I was glad we did. Because we were reading it together (and not at bedtime – this is definitely not a book to read just before you go to sleep), we couldn’t read it in one sitting as has been recommended – but we all mulled over it deeply and all brought our own ages to it. I know that Little Brother’s nine-year-old perspective was very different to mine (as, indeed was Older Brother’s), but it was still valid; and I hope they will both read it again independently when they are older.
Little Brother’s own read was also focused on Europe with Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei by Peter Sís – this is what he says about it:
I liked The Starry Messenger because you could always recognise Galileo in the pictures because there were always stars near him. Sometimes he was wearing them and sometimes he was drawing them in the sand. It was hard to rea
We have yet to start the PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge in our household – the boys are getting geared up to have their first book read by the end of this month for their individual reads, but I’ve decided to wait till April to start on our readaloud together, to take advantage as much as possible of school holidays. They both seem to have so many different evening activities during term-time that reading to both of them at the same time has become a challenge in itself!
However, it is definitely time for a round-up of those people who have been reading already – and it’s great that the Challenge has been taken up for “grown-up” reading too. Sometimes I get so immersed in children’s books that I lose sight of books written for “my age” – but there are some fantastic booklists appearing on various blogs, which means that I now have an enormous list of books I want to read!
Susan at Black-Eyed Susan, from Detroit, Michigan, US, leapt in straight away with two books – Faith by Maya Ajmera, Magda Nakassis and Cynthia Pon (a Global Fund for Children Book/Charlesbridge, 2009) – which was recently a PaperTigers Book of the Month; and 14 Cows for America by Carmen Agra Deedy, Thomas Gonzalez, Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah (Peach Tree, 2009).
PaperTigers’ own Corinne, in Vancouver, Canada, has read The Shepherd’s Grand-Daughter by Anne Laurel Carter (Groundwood/House of Anansi, 2008).
Eva at A Striped Armchair, who lives in the U.S. Rockies, has already chosen the countries she is going to focus on in each continent and has put together what she calls a pool of books to choose from – I would call it a sparkling lake – if you’re looking for inspiration, dive in – so far, she has read The God Who Begat a Jackal by Nega Mezlekia. And an aside – just take a look at the wonderful maps Eva produced of the books she read in 2009…
Tiina at A Book Blog of One’s Own, in Helsinki, Finland, has posted reviews of her first two reads – she covered Asia in January with Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali and Europe in February with The River by Rumer Godden.
Edi at Crazy Quilts has also ticked off a couple of continents with one of my favorite reads of 2009, Rukhsana Khan’s Wanting Mor; and a new one to me that has gone onto my to-be-read list: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave – which she points out is published as Little Bee in the US.
Olduvai at Olduvai Reads, in the Bay Area of San Francisco, has also, like Eva, produced an extensive reading list for the count
A very Happy New Year to all our readers old and new – in the words of our current editorial over on the PaperTigers website, all of us on the PaperTigers team wish you a 2010 filled with books, peace and understanding!
…And in order to help you ensure that you have plenty of books to read, it’s time to launch our Reading the World Challenge for 2010. You may have noticed that this year we have a wonderful new widget (Thank you, Eun Ha!): please do use it on your blog if you have one; and if you don’t, do let us know about your book-choices – we would love to feature them here. I know there are many book-challenges out there but do join us if you can.
The criteria will be the same as last year, with one slight difference. You can choose at what point between January and June your 7-month period begins, in order to have completed the Challenge by the end of the year. So here’s what we have to do:
Choose one book from/about/by or illustrated by someone from each of the seven continents – that’s:
Africa
Antarctica
Asia
Australasia
Europe
North America
South America
Have the books read aloud to you or read them yourself; share them as part of a book-group or in class. Combine your choices with other reading challenges.
The books can be picture-books, poetry, fiction, non-fiction… the choice is yours.
You can find lots of ideas in the PaperTigers Reviews and Reading Lists sections – and if you have any ideas you’d like to suggest to people joining in from different continents, please do!
Happy Reading!