Ten Titles on Tuesday: 4/27/21
This week’s Ten Titles, never in any particular order:
Not Yet, Yvette by Helen Ketteman
The Lady in the Box by Ann McGovern
Island of the Mighty: Stories of Old Britain by Haydn Middleton
The Spider Weaver: A Legend of Kente Cloth by Margaret Musgrove
The Money Tree by Sarah Stewart
We All Play by Julie Flett
The Power of Poppy Pendle by Natasha Lowe
Brothers & Sisters: Family Poems by Eloise Greenfield
The Mousewife by Rumer Godden
The Ramble Shamble Children by Christina Soontornvat
Not gonna lie: I was brutally sick after my second shot last week and almost nothing got accomplished in any area of my life, which is fine (if I say it enough I might believe it). I was smart ahead of time, though: we took a planned week off homeschooling in the event this very thing happened. That doesn’t mean we learned nothing (I will argue to the ends of the earth that taking care of one another when the opportunity arises is life’s greatest lesson, anyway, but): between my husband and my pathetic self we managed a small special study on Jane Goodall. It turns out she is more amazing than I even knew.
I highly recommend the following:
Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell
The Watcher: Jane Goodall’s Life With the Chimps by Jeanette Winter
Chimpanzee Children of Gombe by Jane Goodall
Who is Jane Goodall? by Roberta Edwards (I don’t love the Who Was? series at all but they can be useful if paired with other titles)
The excellent National Geographic documentary, Jane (which you can stream on Disney+) — made almost entirely of 100+ hours of 1960s footage thought to be lost. My children were riveted.
Jane Goodall’s life reminded me of this poem from Naomi Shihab Nye’s most recent book, titled Everything Comes Next: Collected & New Poems, which is as breathtaking as all her work:
“Please Describe How
You Became a Writer”Possibly I began writing as a refuge from our insulting first grade textbook. Come, Jane, come. Look, Dick, look. Were there ever duller people in the world? You had to tell them to look at things? Why weren’t they looking to begin with?
Jane Goodall had no formal scientific training, no higher degree of any kind, when Louis Leakey hired her and sent her to Tanzania to study chimpanzees. But she knew how to look to begin with. And her eyes — her curiosity and willingness to see — changed the world.
What a lesson.
Read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah
@can_we_read
Hope you are feeling better, Sarah!