NOW will you read to your kids 20 minutes?

"Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."
C. S. Lewis (who else?) Quoted in Innocence and Experience: Essays and Conversations on Children's Literature, p. 437.

The Whole Story

What would it take to get kids to read the children's classics? This series might do it. Printed on glossy paper with durable stitched bindings, The Whole Story series should grab and hold the attention of many who would otherwise pass on these books. Each includes the unabridged text, "with striking illustrations and extended captions that provide background information modern readers could otherwise access only through a broad range of supplemental research." The series includes Treasure Island, The Call of the Wild, The Jungle Book, Around the World in Eighty Days, and others. Some titles are still in print; all are worth watching for and paying good money for, used.

Alejandro's Gift

Two things about what at first glance might appear to be just another run-of-the-mill picture book: Having spent the first fifteen years of my adult life in the Arizona desert, I am stunned by the authenticity of Sylvia Long's illustrations. She did extensive research for this book, and it shows-right down to the curly "hairs" on the agave.
The other amazing (and encouraging) thing about this book is that author Richard Albert wrote it for his great-grandchildren when he was 83 years old!
Smithsonian says Alejandro's Gift is "a book enthralling beyond words." That's a little much... but just a little!
Alejandro's Gift keeps on giving.