What We're Reading.

We're reading a book that is kind of about Mexico, called Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan. It's very good. I took the precaution of prereading it before doing it as a read-aloud. There are some things I skip in some of the books we read. I'm not ultra-conservative, but if it's going to make my 8 and 10 year olds not be able to sleep at night, I skip it. We read Hatchet last year, which is really a good adventure story about a boy surviving alone in the wilderness with only a Hatchet, but, it had some grossness about the pilot of the crashed plane that I left out. I left out the monkey massacre in Swiss Family Robinson. Naomi Leon is written for the 9-12 year old group so there's not anything I've had to take out. It does deal with alcoholism in a way that kids can understand, I think. My younger 2 kids seemed to have a little difficulty at first, thinking that the kids mother in the book, was not the best person to take care of them. I think it took a few minutes to wrap their brains around the fact that a child might need to be protected from his or her mother. They are into it now, though, begging me to read more chapters. It's interesting to me to see them so into the story.