Tuesday, July 3, 2007

A Must Read (or Listen-You Choose)

The Tale of Despereaux is just fabulous. I think I enjoyed it more than the kids. We listened to an unabridged version on cd in the van. The only thing that kept me from making excuses to take off for a long trip to hear the story, was the gas prices. Otherwise, we would have been heading for the beach for a nice long story. LOL I am not, by nature, patient when it comes to a good book. Even a bad book for that matter. I usually end up reading the end first, then come back and read the whole thing over. Most times I'll read a book two times in a row just to make sure I caught all the good parts and to savor them once more. So when i actually get my hands on a real paper and binding copy of this book, I'll probably read it at least three times within the first week. Did I mention that I read fast too?

Pooh was really trying to pay attention to the story. We would discuss little pieces of it here and there. Sort of a narration. I wanted to see how much he understood. He got a little confused over who was human vs who was an animal. He thought Miggerly Sow was a mouse for instance. Tigger was fascinated by Roscuro. In fact, he saw a book about Ratatouille the other day and said "Mommy, he looks like, ummm, hmmm," I said "Roscuro?" "Yeah, mommy, he looks like Roscuro, that bad rat."

So, if you can, read or listen to this book. I found it at our local library. Your children will thank you for a great story with adventure, near death experiences, kindness, hate, deceit, good morals and most of all beautiful language. It's well written. No twaddle for any of you Charlotte Mason fans. And if you do get the audio version, a wonderful voice to listen to. His name was Graeme something or other.

I just melted in a puddle of literary bliss.

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