My Cop-Out

Ok. In order to catch up as quickly as possible, it has been my goal to review a book every 5 days. I accomplished this with my first book. The book I chose to read 2nd is Randy Alcorn's 494 page "If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil". It is a very good book, and I'm finding that it's not one that I want to read through quickly. One hundred pages a day would be a reasonable goal at certain times, but with no weekend free time in this 5-day period, and the Olympics occupying our evenings, it is just not happening. After 3 days in this book, I am on page 113.

So, yesterday, I went through the house looking to find a few books I could read through more quickly. I came across my beloved set of The Chronicles of Narnia, which I fell in love with in the 3rd grade, and have re-read every few years since then. I have never, as CS Lewis predicts in the forward to his dear Lucy, grown too old for fairy tales. So, I will once again be re-reading these classic children's tales, and posting reviews to them, which I hope will get me "caught up" in the next couple of weeks. Then I can slow down & work on reading one book a week.

One very important side benefit of pulling these books out, is that my just-turned 6 year old son, Josh got very curious about them when he saw them. For the last year, we have been searching for good quality chapter books we can read to him that will hold his attention. It has not been easy. "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" was our first try, and that went really well. But, since then, the books we found have either not held his interest, or had too many pictures to accomplish our goal. We want him to see that learning to read paragraphs and pages full of words with no pictures can reap great and wonderful rewards that he will not find in picture books. But it has been hard to find books of good quality that hold his attention. I have been quite disappointed in the section labeled "Chapter Books" in our local library. If you have any good suggestions, I'd love for you to leave them in the Comments section.

I have been hesitant to introduce him to the Chronicles of Narnia too early, fearing that they would not hold his interest & that later on he would reject them, remembering that he didn't like them the first time. Yesterday when he asked me about "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", I said, "Let's read a chapter & see if you like it." I read him the first chapter, and then it was time for his "quiet time" in his room - a practice we put in place after he stopped taking afternoon naps. After quiet time, he had the option to play or watch some of the Olympics that we had recorded from the previous night. Instead, he pointed at "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and said, "Can we read some more of that book?". (YEA!!!)

I had also pulled out "Prince Caspian", which has a picture on the front of Peter dueling with King Miraz. Josh pointed to it and said "I want to read that one."

"We will", I promised, "But we have to read this one first, so you will understand what happens in the 2nd one. Don't worry - there's an exciting battle coming up in 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe', too."

"With the Witch?"

"Yes, and the great lion, Aslan"

"Does the Witch win?"

"No - the lion and the children on the good side will win" (Why was I revealing the end to him? I have no idea.)

"Does the Witch die?"

"Yes - Aslan will kill her"

"How does he kill her?"

"Well... he just jumps on her"

"Does he bite off her head?"

"Um... no... It doesn't really doesn't give us that much detail."

Boys.

Sojourner