The End

I recently published my first edited book,  Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology ,  with  Small Harbor Publishing . It's an anthology of writing from  Literary Mama  staff over the past 20 years. It's a beautiful collection and I am proud of the writers and proud to share the book.  It seems a fitting moment, as I pondered sharing about the book here on the blog, to reflect on my life as a blogger, and acknowledge that it is time to officially end this blog.   I started blogging in about 2007, when my baby was learning to toddle, when I was learning how to be a mother and stepmother, when I was just starting to see my way as a writer. I needed it back then. I craved it. I had a variety of blog iterations--family, art, creativity, writing things I delved into. There's a freedom in blogging, a casualness, an easy familiarity that's lacking (for me anyway) in other kinds of writing. I loved blogging and the words came pouring out.  Over the years since then, some

Martin's Mice

I am a mean mommy.  I spent the summer reading Martin's Mice by Dick King-Smith aloud with Cedar.  But instead of just reading the book to my kid, I made him do all kinds of work with it. 

Inspired by Cedar's Kindergarten teacher, who last year read Charlotte's Web aloud to her class, I adopted her plan for read aloud books. After each chapter I made my little kid draw a picture from the chapter, and then write 2 or 3 sentences about it.  Classic book report style.

The chapters are quite short, and the story just as sweet.  The main character is Martin, a little kitten who loves mice.  He loves them so much he won't eat them, and decides to keep one as a pet.  Just his kitten luck however, the one he catches first is a pregnant, and rather bossy, mouse named Drusilla.  Martin keeps her in an old bathtub in the loft of a barn, and spends his time caring for and getting to know Drusilla.  As the book goes on, many twists and turns take place, and Martin comes face to whiskered face with the practice of keeping pets, good and bad. 

I adored this story.  Very well written and thoughtfully crafted, the book had funny parts for kids, and numerous grown-up jokes thrown in that kept me wanting to read.  It was just such an inventive and creative idea.  (There were a lot of BIG words, which I had to stop and explain.) Cedar too loved the story, when I was reading it to him.  When we finished a chapter, he would moan and fuss that it was too short, and he wanted me to read more.  I, the mean mommy, made him sit and do his writing about the chapter each time.  I reviewed each chapter with him, and helped him along with the process of deciding what to write.  But the idea of a summarizing a four page chapter was clearly beyond my 6 year-old's capabilities.  By the end of the book, he was pretty disgruntled with all that work I made him do, got a bit turned off by the whole thing.  He didn't even want to finish the book.  In the end, we did and now have a Cedar version of Martin's Mice, but it was about as easy as catching a mouse- for a non-feline species.

So we're on to First Grade and our next family story. We are just cuddling up and reading aloud together, and not doing summaries for each chapter.  Which is fine with me.  I am back to being the nice mommy for a while.  But come next summer, mean mommy will be back, with whole new book assignments and piles of work for my little guy to do.

Comments

Sue Heavenrich said…
When I was homeschooling, read-aloud was a huge part of our day.Never did the book review thing, though we often paused to discuss things. And very often the stories would get us talking about (as in case of Martin's Mice) raising pets, training cats to catch mice (ours refused) and them doing a lot of "scientific" observing of the cat & jotting notes & sketches in a journal. Same with Charlotte's Web: a whole bunch of interest in spiders. Books were springboards to wider discussions that would meander over the remainder of the day.
Amanda K Jaros said…
The stories do get us talking. That is why I love books! Thanks for stopping by Sue!