I don’t normally post YouTube videos; but this one has been haunting me and I felt I should share. It’s a song by a French Canadian folk band called Mes Aieux, which means “my ancestors” or “my forebearers”. The song is called “Degeneration” and is subtitled in English. (Sorry can’t figure out how to do the accent marks.)
I read Swallows and Amazons last year to my 3 oldest (2 girls and a boy) as part of the curriculum we were using. We all enjoyed it. I didn’t know what to expect either when we started it, but I was most impressed by the fact that it portrayed a large family in such a positive light and that the children all took such good care of one another. I was also impressed by the mother, how she trusted them, but still watched out for them.
My eldest daughter got the second book from the library but didn’t get into that as much. Maybe I’ll have to see if I can find We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea. That sounds exciting.
Jessica
“I was most impressed by the fact that it portrayed a large family in such a positive light and that the children all took such good care of one another. I was also impressed by the mother, how she trusted them, but still watched out for them.”
Definitely. She stands out as one of my favorite mothers in literature. Right up there with Ma Ingalls. I love the way she plays “savage”, knowing when to enter into her children’s fantasy world and when to firmly be the mother; and I love how she makes sure her kids have fresh milk for breakfast even while they are camping but manages to make fetching it part of the adventure; and how she gives them the (terrifying) freedom to imagine, explore, and learn from their mistakes.
Sounds like a book I need to read…I could use some of the more playful tendencies and loosening up a bit on being terrified by too much exploration and freedom!
We *love* Caddie!
I loved Caddie Woodlawn when I was younger. Though I haven’t read it for a number of years, I can’t count how many times I read it as a girl! I’ve heard of Swallows and Amazons, but I’ve never read it – I’ll have to put it on my list.
Be careful with timing. My daughters both loved “Caddie Woodlawn”, but I gave the younger “Calico Bush” before she was ready for the language (it is an older book), and she couldn’t finish it. Maybe she would be interested now (in high school). Two of mine have loved “Swallows and Amazons”—and read several more, although not the whole series.
One word of caution about older books in general. They take their time getting started, and I have had to urge my children to give them fifty or a hundred pages to get going, rather than the ten to twenty in more modern books. The rewards are well worth it (i.e., “Swallowdale” was welcome), but an awareness of the issue is important. And these are homeschoolers who have lots of time to read. I imagine it’s even tougher with kids who go to school.
A good word of caution. When I was younger I was so much of a bookworm that I’d read just about anything so I seldom encountered a book I wouldn’t finish. Not all kids are that way, though. One of my resolutions as I’m looking forward to homeschooling is to be very careful about not pushing books at Bella before she’s ready but letting her grow at her own pace. I do wonder if reading the books aloud to children would make it easier to get past those first slow pages. There’s something magical about hearing something in another’s voice that makes it easier to pay attention to the details that are boring when you read them to yourself.
I just finished Ransome’s The Big Six, not one of the Swallows and Amazons, but also a book about kids and boats. I did notice it took quite some time to get going. I almost put it down in the first 100 pages or so. I did make a mental note of that. It was definitely worth it to push through, however. Once the story got going it was a thrilling ride.