Well, I finished last night. I wrote down a few thoughts in my notebook - things that seem pertinent to me right now. I have actually never read this all the way through before. Now I can say I have!
I read a little essay written by C.S. Lewis about his experience writing this book, and what led to the writing of "Screwtape Proposes a Toast". I don't know if this essay is included in all copies. Mine is a compilation of several of C.S. Lewis's works. I can imagine that putting yourself in the place of thinking like the devil would be a really strange, odd experience. One that you would not be in a hurry to repeat.
There's definitely a reason that C.S. Lewis is so quoted by General Authorities. He has a very logical understanding of God that is not marred by common religious misconceptions. I enjoy reading him.
I don't have any brilliant thoughts to post. I think we've all gotten kind of bogged down in our various lives and have put our book club on hold. Personally, I'm looking forward to reading "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" as I love that book and know little about the two listed before it.
Hope you're all doing well. Happy reading!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Response to Kami--without having read the book
Kami, sounds interesting. Thanks for recapping so I don't have to read it. I thought the quote about her deep feelings for Poland (although mixed and confusing) were genius. That is why I stood to take the stupid "loyalty" oath to become a citizen with so much anger and resentment. It had NOTHING to do with the States--I love America, I study America, I teach my children to love America--but there are ties that bind you to your original country no matter how dismal your life was there or how short your time there and for Americans in their grand arrogance to ignore that and pretend that it will go away with an oath, are not realists.
I liked your sentiments about identity--I find it hard to believe in "identity crises." What does that even mean??? You figure out who you are from your family/religion/politics/what you read--and those go with you.
I think a lot of the hippie movement was "let-down" from the past. Their parents, WWII veterans, all--even the women--did incredible/amazing things, and then the Cold War that always seemed about to blaze into something never did. So they grew up in luxury and fear, and when they hit college age they decided the fear was ludicrous and since they had nothing "great" to do--they covered their desire for greatness under excuses for poor behavior. I exclude some Civil Rights activists from that general analysis.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
I liked your sentiments about identity--I find it hard to believe in "identity crises." What does that even mean??? You figure out who you are from your family/religion/politics/what you read--and those go with you.
I think a lot of the hippie movement was "let-down" from the past. Their parents, WWII veterans, all--even the women--did incredible/amazing things, and then the Cold War that always seemed about to blaze into something never did. So they grew up in luxury and fear, and when they hit college age they decided the fear was ludicrous and since they had nothing "great" to do--they covered their desire for greatness under excuses for poor behavior. I exclude some Civil Rights activists from that general analysis.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language
Yes, I know this isn't one of our books, but I've become so used to writing about the books I read on here that I just couldn't help myself, and this book has so many interesting points. To give you some background, this is the memoirs of Eva Hoffman who emmigrated to the U.S. when she was thirteen from Poland in 1959. Her family was Jewish and her parents had barely survived WWII (the tidbits she tells about them are the most gut-wrenching parts). The whole book is her reflections on what it is like to adopt a new culture and language. Very good for the most part, but completely pretentious at other times. She ended up going to Rice University, then Yale, and then Harvard and became an editor at the New York Times.
Mostly though I just wanted to record some of my favorite quotes. Read if you wish...
"Once in New York, I met a Russian artist who tried to explain to me why his compatriots are so despondent when they get to America. Like most self-respecting Russian artists who end up emigrating, he was a pretty active dissident. And yet, he told me, his eyes filling with revealing fire, he felt convinced that Russia was the greatest--really, the only--country in the world. "We defeated the Germans in the war, we had the greatest literature in the world, we had the greatest culture. It was such a pride," he said intently. I looked back intently, trying to understand. National pride? It seems, for our globe, a terribly old-fashioned sentiment. I hardly know what it means.
No, I'm no patriot, nor was I ever allowed to be. And yet, the country of my childhood lives withing me with a primacy that is a form of love. It lives within me despite my knowledge of our marginality, and its primitive, unpretty emotions...All it has given me is the world, but that is enough. It has fed me language, perceptions, sounds, the human kind. It has given me the colors and furrows of reality, my first loves. The absoluteness of those loves can never be recaptured: no geometry of the landscape, no haze in the air, will live in us as intensely as the landscapes that we saw as the first, and to which we gave ourselves wholly, without reservations."
I loved this description, it so accurately describes how I feel for Canada. I think since I left so young I've romanticized it immensely, but still what I remember is so vivid and remains the most beautiful and inviting place to be. Perhaps because I only associate it with good times, vacations and visits and relaxing.
"Immigrant energy, admirable name though it has gained for itself, does not seem a wholly joyful phenomenon to me. I understand the desperado drive that fuels it. But I also understand how it happens that so many immigrant Horatio Algers overshoot themselves so unexpectedly as they move on their sped-up trajectories through several strata of society all the way to the top. From the perspective outside, everything inside looks equally impenetrable, from below everything above equally forbidding. It takes the same bullish will to gain a foothold in some modest spot as to insist on entering some sacred inner sanctum, and that insistence, and ignorance, and obliviousness of the rules and social distinctions--not to speak of "your own place"--can land you anywhere at all. As a radically marginal person, you have two choices: to be intimidated by every situation, every social stratum, or to confront all them with the same leveling vision, the same brash and stubborn spunk. I too am goaded on by the forked whip of ambition and fear, and I derive strength--a ferocity, a puissance--from the sense of my responsibility, the sense that survival is in my own hands."
While I agree with her in some of this--mainly that the sense of fear probably goads a lot of immigrants to work hard, in discussing it with Leo he disagreed to the main point. He thinks (as an immigrant himself) that the different social strata are very apparent and that only someone completely unaware of social context could fail to see the varying levels of society and the increased difficulties in entering a higher level vs a lower level.
"Nobody gives you your identity here, you have to reinvent yourself every day. He is right, I suspect, but I can't figure out how this done. You just say what you are and everyone believes you? That seems like a confidence trick to me, and not one I think I can pull off. Still, somehow, invent myself I must. But how do I choose from identity options available all around me? I feel, once again, as I did when facing those ten brands of toothpaste--faint from excess, paralyzed by choice."
This is what bothers me the most about the author, one of the themes of her book is finding her identity in a new plane of existence. She imagines all the time of what her life in Poland would have been and can't seem to bring her reality around to the fact that what she grew up believing her life would be is now no longer possible. I think she's a bit absurd and pretentious. To me, instead of some immigrant angst, it seems she just doesn't know what she wants, which could happen to anyone. How could she be so lacking in identity, you are what you are. Even if I moved to another culture in say, Poland, I would still now my goals, values, principles... self. Blah. She gets annoying.
(After her childhood best friend commits suicide as an adult--he had immigrated to Israel as a teenager, just FYI.)
"But sometimes, I think of him and Zofia and myself, and others like us I know, as part of the same story--the story of children who came from the war, and who couldn't make sufficient sense of the several worlds they grew up in, and didn't know by what lights to act. I think, sometimes, that we were children too overshadowed by our parents' stories, and without enough sympathy for ourselves, for the serious dilemmas of our lives, and who thereby couldn't live up to our parents' desire--amazing in its strength--to create a new life and to bestow on us a new world."
I found her parents' stories the most poignant part (her dad carrying her mother on his back for miles and miles to a new hide out because she was to weak to walk after having a miscarriage; her father's sister being betrayed by another Jew and paying off the soldiers to stay alive, but not soon enough to save her son; of hiding for years in a bunker and then in an attic; of the author's own amazement as a child of one of her friend's grandparents still being alive--the only live grandparents she'd ever heard of) and perhaps because of this, her description above rang true to me. I can understand how her parents lives might have cast a long shadow over her own life. Interesting, anyway.
"Over there, you wouldn't even think about getting divorced. You'd be staying married, happily or unhappily, it wouldn't matter much.
Oh, wouldn't it? Think hard. Wouldn't your unhappiness be just the same as here?
No, it wouldn't. It would exist within the claustrophobia of no choice, rather than the agoraphobia of open options. It would have different dimensions, different weight.
But surely an incompatible marriage is unacceptable.
An American notion.
A universal notion...
If you were in Poland, you'd be making a sensible accommodation to your situation. You've seen people live perfectly happily within their less than perfect unions. They just have affairs, they don't go around blowing their lives apart."
This is one of my favorite of her comparisons between American culture and Polish culture. I think "It would have different dimensions, different weight," brilliantly describes what constitutes a culture. That's just my opinion though.
"You used to be able to emigrate to America," a Polish friend, who has been here several years, quips. "Now where do you emigrate to?" For her, the world is too small to sustain the fabulous America of people's dreams; there is no America any longer, no place the mind can turn to for fantastic hope. But for Maria, who nurtures no fantastic hopes, it's still America you emigrate to--this all-too-real America."
I love this description too. I think many people would agree that the America that is imagined by many people far surpasses the reality of being here, however in the case of her Brazilian maid the reality is still extremely better than her circumstances before, hence her desire to be here, without complaints or criticisms.
"A culture talks most about what most bothers it: the Poles talk compulsively about the Russians and the most minute shifts of political strategy. Americans worry about who they are. Each conversation breeds its excesses of overinterpretation and stupidity, and its compensatory wisdom. Each, of courses, is delicious comedy to the other--the comedy from which so much expatriate writing is made."
Hmmm....Americans obsessed with themselves...sounds a bit familiar.
"What's this thing Americans have about their mothers?" my Polish friends ask. "Why do they talk about their mothers all the time?"
Indeed, my American friends talk about their mothers a lot. The oppressive mother, or the distant mother, or the overloving mother, is an accepted conversational trope, like the weather or the stock market or the latest Mideast crisis. My American friends pay their mothers the indirect tribute of incessant and highly subtle scrutiny. They measure the exact weight the mother exercises upon their psyche, and they practice careful equilibrating acts between letting the mother too much in and keeping her too much out. In their accounts, the mother comes out both extremely close and remote, as if she were both a vampiric incubus and a puzzling stranger.
For my Polish friends, this is grist for cross-cultural satire. Only Americans can make so much fuss about something so...well, normal. A mother, for heaven's sake, is a mother. In Poland itself, you usually live with her until you get married, or sometimes until much later. After you move out, she comes over to help out in the kitchen or with the kids... Things sometimes get uncomfortable in a small kitchen, and the mother and daughter, or son, quarrel. But basically, the mother is as familiar as the slippers in which she shuffles around the apartment, and getting along with her is not a matter for lengthy discussion. The air around her isn't charged with gothic menace."
I found this cultural comparison also amusing. I know my sisters and I discuss our mother a lot. And depending on the sister, she was either a demon or angel. Ah, funny the outside view looking in. The author thinks it's because of the space (size of house, having our own bedrooms etc) growing up and then the distance that children sometimes move from their parents once grown that keeps Americans at odds with their mothers. I don't know that I exactly agree, but it's an interesting theory.
Anyway, I had fun writing this. Feel free to comment, or not. Goodnight.
Mostly though I just wanted to record some of my favorite quotes. Read if you wish...
"Once in New York, I met a Russian artist who tried to explain to me why his compatriots are so despondent when they get to America. Like most self-respecting Russian artists who end up emigrating, he was a pretty active dissident. And yet, he told me, his eyes filling with revealing fire, he felt convinced that Russia was the greatest--really, the only--country in the world. "We defeated the Germans in the war, we had the greatest literature in the world, we had the greatest culture. It was such a pride," he said intently. I looked back intently, trying to understand. National pride? It seems, for our globe, a terribly old-fashioned sentiment. I hardly know what it means.
No, I'm no patriot, nor was I ever allowed to be. And yet, the country of my childhood lives withing me with a primacy that is a form of love. It lives within me despite my knowledge of our marginality, and its primitive, unpretty emotions...All it has given me is the world, but that is enough. It has fed me language, perceptions, sounds, the human kind. It has given me the colors and furrows of reality, my first loves. The absoluteness of those loves can never be recaptured: no geometry of the landscape, no haze in the air, will live in us as intensely as the landscapes that we saw as the first, and to which we gave ourselves wholly, without reservations."
I loved this description, it so accurately describes how I feel for Canada. I think since I left so young I've romanticized it immensely, but still what I remember is so vivid and remains the most beautiful and inviting place to be. Perhaps because I only associate it with good times, vacations and visits and relaxing.
"Immigrant energy, admirable name though it has gained for itself, does not seem a wholly joyful phenomenon to me. I understand the desperado drive that fuels it. But I also understand how it happens that so many immigrant Horatio Algers overshoot themselves so unexpectedly as they move on their sped-up trajectories through several strata of society all the way to the top. From the perspective outside, everything inside looks equally impenetrable, from below everything above equally forbidding. It takes the same bullish will to gain a foothold in some modest spot as to insist on entering some sacred inner sanctum, and that insistence, and ignorance, and obliviousness of the rules and social distinctions--not to speak of "your own place"--can land you anywhere at all. As a radically marginal person, you have two choices: to be intimidated by every situation, every social stratum, or to confront all them with the same leveling vision, the same brash and stubborn spunk. I too am goaded on by the forked whip of ambition and fear, and I derive strength--a ferocity, a puissance--from the sense of my responsibility, the sense that survival is in my own hands."
While I agree with her in some of this--mainly that the sense of fear probably goads a lot of immigrants to work hard, in discussing it with Leo he disagreed to the main point. He thinks (as an immigrant himself) that the different social strata are very apparent and that only someone completely unaware of social context could fail to see the varying levels of society and the increased difficulties in entering a higher level vs a lower level.
"Nobody gives you your identity here, you have to reinvent yourself every day. He is right, I suspect, but I can't figure out how this done. You just say what you are and everyone believes you? That seems like a confidence trick to me, and not one I think I can pull off. Still, somehow, invent myself I must. But how do I choose from identity options available all around me? I feel, once again, as I did when facing those ten brands of toothpaste--faint from excess, paralyzed by choice."
This is what bothers me the most about the author, one of the themes of her book is finding her identity in a new plane of existence. She imagines all the time of what her life in Poland would have been and can't seem to bring her reality around to the fact that what she grew up believing her life would be is now no longer possible. I think she's a bit absurd and pretentious. To me, instead of some immigrant angst, it seems she just doesn't know what she wants, which could happen to anyone. How could she be so lacking in identity, you are what you are. Even if I moved to another culture in say, Poland, I would still now my goals, values, principles... self. Blah. She gets annoying.
(After her childhood best friend commits suicide as an adult--he had immigrated to Israel as a teenager, just FYI.)
"But sometimes, I think of him and Zofia and myself, and others like us I know, as part of the same story--the story of children who came from the war, and who couldn't make sufficient sense of the several worlds they grew up in, and didn't know by what lights to act. I think, sometimes, that we were children too overshadowed by our parents' stories, and without enough sympathy for ourselves, for the serious dilemmas of our lives, and who thereby couldn't live up to our parents' desire--amazing in its strength--to create a new life and to bestow on us a new world."
I found her parents' stories the most poignant part (her dad carrying her mother on his back for miles and miles to a new hide out because she was to weak to walk after having a miscarriage; her father's sister being betrayed by another Jew and paying off the soldiers to stay alive, but not soon enough to save her son; of hiding for years in a bunker and then in an attic; of the author's own amazement as a child of one of her friend's grandparents still being alive--the only live grandparents she'd ever heard of) and perhaps because of this, her description above rang true to me. I can understand how her parents lives might have cast a long shadow over her own life. Interesting, anyway.
"Over there, you wouldn't even think about getting divorced. You'd be staying married, happily or unhappily, it wouldn't matter much.
Oh, wouldn't it? Think hard. Wouldn't your unhappiness be just the same as here?
No, it wouldn't. It would exist within the claustrophobia of no choice, rather than the agoraphobia of open options. It would have different dimensions, different weight.
But surely an incompatible marriage is unacceptable.
An American notion.
A universal notion...
If you were in Poland, you'd be making a sensible accommodation to your situation. You've seen people live perfectly happily within their less than perfect unions. They just have affairs, they don't go around blowing their lives apart."
This is one of my favorite of her comparisons between American culture and Polish culture. I think "It would have different dimensions, different weight," brilliantly describes what constitutes a culture. That's just my opinion though.
"You used to be able to emigrate to America," a Polish friend, who has been here several years, quips. "Now where do you emigrate to?" For her, the world is too small to sustain the fabulous America of people's dreams; there is no America any longer, no place the mind can turn to for fantastic hope. But for Maria, who nurtures no fantastic hopes, it's still America you emigrate to--this all-too-real America."
I love this description too. I think many people would agree that the America that is imagined by many people far surpasses the reality of being here, however in the case of her Brazilian maid the reality is still extremely better than her circumstances before, hence her desire to be here, without complaints or criticisms.
"A culture talks most about what most bothers it: the Poles talk compulsively about the Russians and the most minute shifts of political strategy. Americans worry about who they are. Each conversation breeds its excesses of overinterpretation and stupidity, and its compensatory wisdom. Each, of courses, is delicious comedy to the other--the comedy from which so much expatriate writing is made."
Hmmm....Americans obsessed with themselves...sounds a bit familiar.
"What's this thing Americans have about their mothers?" my Polish friends ask. "Why do they talk about their mothers all the time?"
Indeed, my American friends talk about their mothers a lot. The oppressive mother, or the distant mother, or the overloving mother, is an accepted conversational trope, like the weather or the stock market or the latest Mideast crisis. My American friends pay their mothers the indirect tribute of incessant and highly subtle scrutiny. They measure the exact weight the mother exercises upon their psyche, and they practice careful equilibrating acts between letting the mother too much in and keeping her too much out. In their accounts, the mother comes out both extremely close and remote, as if she were both a vampiric incubus and a puzzling stranger.
For my Polish friends, this is grist for cross-cultural satire. Only Americans can make so much fuss about something so...well, normal. A mother, for heaven's sake, is a mother. In Poland itself, you usually live with her until you get married, or sometimes until much later. After you move out, she comes over to help out in the kitchen or with the kids... Things sometimes get uncomfortable in a small kitchen, and the mother and daughter, or son, quarrel. But basically, the mother is as familiar as the slippers in which she shuffles around the apartment, and getting along with her is not a matter for lengthy discussion. The air around her isn't charged with gothic menace."
I found this cultural comparison also amusing. I know my sisters and I discuss our mother a lot. And depending on the sister, she was either a demon or angel. Ah, funny the outside view looking in. The author thinks it's because of the space (size of house, having our own bedrooms etc) growing up and then the distance that children sometimes move from their parents once grown that keeps Americans at odds with their mothers. I don't know that I exactly agree, but it's an interesting theory.
Anyway, I had fun writing this. Feel free to comment, or not. Goodnight.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Reading?
Okay, Girls.
Now that school is starting I'm not sure how much I will be contributing to this group for the time being. If we read really slowly I might be able to keep up, but other than that I'm just going to be fully immersed in what we're learning here at home and doing some of my own pleasure reading (including Andrea & Kaylie's book!). I will do my best, but that's where I stand as of today. Just FYI.
JULIA
Now that school is starting I'm not sure how much I will be contributing to this group for the time being. If we read really slowly I might be able to keep up, but other than that I'm just going to be fully immersed in what we're learning here at home and doing some of my own pleasure reading (including Andrea & Kaylie's book!). I will do my best, but that's where I stand as of today. Just FYI.
JULIA
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Moving on
Andrea's not reading Young Fu so let's move on to The Screwtape Letters. Really I'm just excited to get to the book about Colombia and since I've already read the Screwtape Letters, I'm not so motivated to read it again. Maybe if you guys posted brilliant thoughts I will be more motivated. We'll see.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Guess What!
Hey guys....
I wanted to join your ranks (well, not you, Ju). I hate being left out of things!!!
So.....I'm expecting my fifth baby! Pretty sweet. Pretty un-planned. Just thought I'd let you know. I'm due in March. I will have three children with birthdays in a 30 day time period. Pretty wild.
I wanted to join your ranks (well, not you, Ju). I hate being left out of things!!!
So.....I'm expecting my fifth baby! Pretty sweet. Pretty un-planned. Just thought I'd let you know. I'm due in March. I will have three children with birthdays in a 30 day time period. Pretty wild.
Ju's Young Fu
Okay, so I read this a long time ago but totally remember loving it. I think what I loved about it mostly were the wise sayings from his teacher friend and the Chinese proverbs written throughout the text. I do agree that there was no real climax in the story. However, I think Young Fu's "luck factor" was also symbolic of those the Chinese deem to be worthy or of value. I think even in our culture we can look at the lives of some great leaders and say they were "lucky" when in reality they were being preserved and saved for a greater mission. We don't know the extent of Young Fu's life after the book ends, but we know that he will continue to do great things (in the fictional world at least). I also thought this book would be a great introduction to Chinese history for when my children are older. It may not have the full content of the history, but it does give a great prelude to further studies and inspired me in such a way to want to learn more about that particular culture.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Young Fu
I have to agree with Kami's comments. There was no climax and Fu was too lucky. I think the most interesting part of the book was the section after the story that talked about China then and now - the changes that have occurred. My book had an introduction and a foreword by two very well-known authors. One of them promised that if you like Tolkien (and someone else who's name escapes me), then you will love this book. I did not think this novel was on par with Tolkien at ALL! In reading more about the two authors who wrote the intro and foreword, they both have a history in China during that time period, so I think their comments were based more on nostalgia than true scholarship. Which is disappointing!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
American Revolution/Colonial Times
You might try Paul Revere's Ride
Also the d'Aulaire books on George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
There's a magic tree house book on the subject.
Felicity, from the American Girl series grows up in Colonial Times. :-)
There's a Diane Stanley book (she's so awesome) called Joining the Boston Tea Party
"The Courage of Sarah Noble" is a good one for younger kids.
I have a bunch of ideas from the Sonlight Curriculum. I usually just use what I can pull from the library and I haven't checked on that yet. But here's what Sonlight uses for American History:
Also the d'Aulaire books on George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
There's a magic tree house book on the subject.
Felicity, from the American Girl series grows up in Colonial Times. :-)
There's a Diane Stanley book (she's so awesome) called Joining the Boston Tea Party
"The Courage of Sarah Noble" is a good one for younger kids.
I have a bunch of ideas from the Sonlight Curriculum. I usually just use what I can pull from the library and I haven't checked on that yet. But here's what Sonlight uses for American History:
American Adventures 1 - Greenberg SL3 (many topics 1770-1870)
The Story of the USA: A Young Nation Solves Its Problems - Escher SL3
Pocahontas and the Strangers - Bulla SL3
Squanto, Friend of Pilgrims - Bulla SL3
What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? - Fritz SL3
Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia - Cousins SL3
Mr. Revere and I - Lawson SL3
And then What Happened, Paul Revere? - Fritz SL3
Can't You Make Them Behave, King George - Fritz SL3
Johnny Tremain - Forbes SL3 (American Revolution)
Toliver's Secret - Brady SL3 (American Revolution)
Phoebe the Spy - Griffin SL3 (American Revolution)
Martha Washington (Childhood of Famous Americans) SL3
Meet George Washington - Heilbroner SL3
George Washington (Childhood of Famous Americans) SL3
Winter at Valley Forge - Knight SL3 (1777)
If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution - Levy SL3
Meet Thomas Jefferson - Barrett SL3
Diary of an Early American Boy - Sloane SL4 (1805 pioneer life)
Johnny Appleseed - Kellogg SLK
Ben and Me - Lawson SL2 (Ben Franklin)
I'm sorry if those aren't helpful for a five year old. These are mainly for my eight year old daughter. The SL3 means it's Sonlight's level 3.
A long time ago I read a fabulous book called "The Signers: the 56 Stories behind the Declaration of Independence". It's not a read aloud for young kids but it was FABULOUS and I told the kids the stories in my own words. Many of the stories moved me to tears as I told my children about the courage of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Sign of the Beaver
I just skimmed Sign of the Beaver to see if I could read it to Miriam this year as it pertains to pioneer/pilgrimy people. Such a great book, but it might be a little slow for a five year old.
For all of my vast knowledge of literature, I'm having a hard time coming up with many fiction titles that deal directly with colonial America. Pre-revolution and during the revolution specifically. Johnny Tremain is the classic. Witch of Blackbird Pond another classic--too old for Miriam though. Why aren't there more books about puritan girls? About Jamestown lasses?
If you can think of any, let me know. Of course, I'm not reading just colonial books to her (boring for a whole year) but I am surprised at how shallow the lit is for this time period. Obviously, I'm missing something.
For all of my vast knowledge of literature, I'm having a hard time coming up with many fiction titles that deal directly with colonial America. Pre-revolution and during the revolution specifically. Johnny Tremain is the classic. Witch of Blackbird Pond another classic--too old for Miriam though. Why aren't there more books about puritan girls? About Jamestown lasses?
If you can think of any, let me know. Of course, I'm not reading just colonial books to her (boring for a whole year) but I am surprised at how shallow the lit is for this time period. Obviously, I'm missing something.
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