What I Read: October 2022
Better (really) late than never, I guess?
Hi. It’s not the end of October anymore, but I finally sat down to write this newsletter and decided that sending it a week late was better than never sending it at all.
I have just a few perfectionist tendencies, and if I miss a day of something I tend to decide I can’t pick it back up because now it can never be perfect. Sending a way-late newsletter is, I guess, a small step in a more healthy direction.
Here’s What I Read in October:
The Magician’s Elephant & The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
by Kate DiCamillo
The DiCamillo saga continues! And what great books. I have it on good authority that The Magician’s Elephant is one friend’s favorite of DiCamillo’s books, and I agree that it ranks right up there with Louisiana’s Way Home for me. For a slim book, it packs a lot in, which seems to be a hallmark of DiCamillo’s fiction. It’s also the perfect book to read when it starts to snow, so add it to your winter list, for sure.
And The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is told from the perspective of a china rabbit — who cannot himself move or speak — and so his adventures take on a truly magical air as his life happens to him, and he decides whether or not to change to accommodate them.
The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World
By Andy Crouch
I love Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family, and I expected no less here. Whereas Tech-Wise discuss some real life things to *do* in regards to drawing boundaries for you and your family’s tech use, this book discusses more of the theory of how technology has reshaped our social landscape and what our posture needs to be in order to reclaim relationship inside the families and communities that surround us. I really enjoyed it, even if my reading was punctuated with lots of breaks across the summer. It’s one I’m sure I will return to again, and I’d be interested to read it with other people in my physical community and see what changes could follow.
The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child's Education
by Ainsley Arment
I can’t decide quite how I feel about this one. It’s sort of part memoir and part nonfiction, where the author shares her story in choosing to homeschool her children, but also dives into a bit of the research about why homeschooling is good, and then demonstrates how it works in her life and the lives of those around her. I feel like I give this critique to most nonfiction these days, but the book could be 100 pages shorter and still get its point across. It also feels very much like an Instagram-to-Book deal: Arment runs a popular online homeschool community that sells monthly bundles to help homeschool moms (specifically moms, not parents), plus has podcasts and a yearly conference, etc. — and it’s all pretty and well-photographed. I find parts of her argument compelling (clearly, we chose to keep Arthur home for kindergarten this year before I ever read this book), and other parts fell flat to me. The book felt like it had a very narrow (and privileged) audience, and it would be a hard one to recommend to anyone looking for an academic argument for schooling children at home; this one feels more like an aesthetic argument for it.
Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
by Dr. Becky Kennedy, PhD
I accidentally read two parenting books back-to-back, which is odd because I feel like I *might* usually read one per year. I also don’t know how to talk about this one—Dr. Becky’s theory of raising humans is very, very different from how I was raised and how I have been conditioned through my own upbringing to raise my children. And the reason I picked it up is because Scott and I feel like we have been going through a hard parenting season and nothing we are doing is working—so why not try radically different? It’s too soon to tell if implementing any of her methods is helping (largely because Scott still needs to finish the book so we can implement as a united front), but I am looking at parenting very differently right now than I did two weeks ago, and that feels like a win regardless of the behavioral outcome.
What I’m Reading with the Kids:
The Kate DiCamillo saga continues! We’ve raced through all three volumes of Bink & Gollie, and made it through Books 1 & 2 of the Tales from Deckawoo Drive spinoff series to the Mercy Watson books we already love. Everything DiCamillo write is a gem. Everything.
Tennyson is enjoying a new-to-her book in the Sparkhouse faith series called Ava & the Big Ouch. We have really enjoyed all the books we’ve read from that line so far.
And of course we’ve been adding to our Seasonal Reads with Kids: Fall list (many of them pictured above!) as we watch the trees shed their summer coats and dig into what this season means here in Wisconsin and around the world. The crowd favorite so far is Acorn Was A Little Wild!
Looking ahead? We’ve got a list of picture books for Winter and Christmas, too!
Need a hand with Christmas Shopping?
I’m 90% done over here because I’ve learned that my brain needs it out of the way before Thanksgiving if I want to enjoy the season of Advent. Which is great for YOU because now I’ve got the space to help other people shop, too.
If you’re looking for books to gift, I’ve got some lists by category over at Bookshop, and you can always hit “reply” to this email and tell me who you are buying for and what kids of things they like and I can see if I have or can track down the prefect book recommendation for them.
I’ll be back in your inbox in just a few weeks with everything I’ve read in November. Thanks for reading!
I always look forward to these no matter when they are sent! Kate DiCamillo is my favorite follow on Facebook, a platform I hardly use otherwise. I had very similar feelings around Wild and Free. Very. Similar. 🙃