Intoducing: Book Reviews!

I've decided to add a new feature to this blog: book reviews! I've been reading a lot of "children's" books, with two goals: first, in support of my (future, hopeful) efforts at writing in the same genre; and second, to be able to guide Son and Daughter's reading (which, given their approach to our advice, might be classified as wishful thinking). I thought it would be helpful to save my notes on these books here --- helpful to me to have a bit more discipline about it, and possibly helpful to you, who might be interesting in the same literature. If you're not interested, I've also started to use tags on my posts, so you could change your subscription to follow only the "family" tags ....

While I've read and enjoyed my share of fantastical stories for children, my current favored area is in more realistic settings. In addition, my favorite stories also contain an element of storytelling. I feel this acts in some small way as a counterweight to the all-to-common attitude of today that story is something that someone else does that one passively consumes. In the broader sense, I feel this is connected in some way to the "maker" movement, which celebrates what you can make as an individual (or small group) rather than relying on the people with the design teams and the factories to make things for you.

The archetype of what I'm driving at is the novel Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. This book follows the summer adventures of two groups of syblings (four in one, two in the other) who during an eventful summer vacation meet, wage war, declare peace, and engage in voyages of exploration (the fact that these are acomplished by sailing is, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, icing on the cake and not the main course). The characters are believable (more or less --- having lived with children for almost 6 years now, I am forced to admit that there's a large element of fantasy about the children in this book!), the situations are in keeping with the period (contemporary to the writing), and the attitudes of the children are just what I'm looking for: everything they encounter is an opportunity to engage in creative storytelling, the children themselves playing the leading roles.

In a future post, perhaps I'll revisit the Swallows and Amazons (until then, read it --- you won't be disappointed). For now, I'll stop here, and continue in the next post with a review of Magic or Not? by Edgar Eager.