Around the Campfire

A great audiobook makes a car ride go from “Are we there yet?” to “I hope we drive long enough to finish this.” If you have a long drive planned before Labor Day, you will want On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming, read by a full cast, with you to make the hours sail by.

The 10 stories, threaded together by the main character, Mike Kowalski, a high school junior who’s drawn to a cemetery by a mysterious passenger he picks up late one night, will keep the whole family enthralled. The voices create the feeling of sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories (which, actually, they are—though without the campfire).

The mix of boy and girl narrators will hold the attention of both brothers and sisters, and the stories roots in folklore and history make them interesting for Mom and Dad, aunts, uncles and grandparents, too. There’s plenty of humor mixed in with the haunting, too. It’s a nice change from everyone watching his or her individual DVDs, to have a common listening and literature experience.

Listening is an underrated skill. We’re all accustomed to so many distractions—iTunes, cell phone rings, text messages—that it’s nice to sit back and let the words of a spellbinding story wash over you. If you like that one, try Jack Gantos reading his Newbery-winning Dead End in Norvelt. That’s another great one for the entire family, set in the actual town of Norvelt, Penn., created as a model community during the Roosevelt years (and named for Eleanor Roosevelt – Nor-velt) when the coal mines closed during the Great Depression. Young Jack’s caught between a mother who loves the it-takes-a-village motto of the town, and a father who sees it as a dead end.

And of course, perhaps the greatest listening experience in recent history is the Harry Potter audiobooks, read by Jim Dale. You can start at the beginning and go through all seven titles and have enough for a cross-country road trip. So here’s to traveling in style over the miles.

The Rewards of Perseverance

The hero of Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier has an indefatigable spirit. Practically from his birth, he has encountered obstacles at every turn. Still, he perseveres.

He does not know who his parents are. He has a dim recollection of birds pecking out his eyes; his blindness forced him to develop and pay attention to his other senses beyond the norm of sighted people. He survives on the streets through his keen awareness of what’s happening around him and by stealing food and other valuables for the exploitative Mr. Seamus. Yet Peter has not become hard-hearted. In fact he comes to the aid of another in distress, Sir Tode, a human-kitten-horse hybrid under a hag’s spell, and brings out the best in him. Sir Tode rises to bravery that he had hitherto run from in his human knight form.

This terrific book for boys and girls (a significant girl character comes along a bit later in the book) brims with action, magic, far-off lands, kings and queens. But it also deals with real-life challenges, such as blindness, hunger and poverty. The author treats those obstacles realistically but also shows readers that there’s a way out if, like Peter, you have an unflagging will to rise above your circumstances and seize the chance for a better life when it arrives.

Peter shares much in common with Harry Potter in that respect. Sometimes, when you persevere and the moment of opportunity presents itself, it can feel like magic.

A Dose of Reality in a World of Magic

I used to think I was not a fan of fantasy books. I now know that’s not true. I just hadn’t read the right ones yet. The fantasies that draw me in are stories in which tightly constructed worlds that seem on the surface to be completely unlike my own cause me to think about my own world differently.

What would it be like to wake up one day and realize you were truly gifted in some way you’d never imagined? That premise could apply to any number of fantasy books (Harry Potter, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief ). The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Angela Barrett, however, puts a slightly different twist on this idea: a magical being is rendered rather ordinary, because she cannot use her wings after a bat accidentally crumples them. Flory must figure out how to get from here to there, find shelter from her predators, gather food one cherry at a time because that’s all she can hold. And she must do all these things without her wings.

For Flory, now nearly everything in Nature poses a threat. She is, understandably, angry. Things are not going the way they were supposed to go. And yet she figures out how to take care of herself in this new predicament. She grows accustomed to her new routine. She begins to accept her situation as it is. And that turns things around for Flory. She opens up to the possibilities around her, for friendship and forgiveness and flights on hummingbird wings. This is the paradox: as Flory begins to accept her new reality and the world the way it is, she also sees a world of opportunities in front of her.

Reading Aloud: A Shared Adventure

When I first launched Twenty by Jenny back in April, I mentioned that some of my favorite memories of growing up involved my brother and me sitting on either side of my mother as she read aloud to us. She often read books that would have been difficult for me to read by myself at the age of seven or eight, and my brother wasn’t reading yet. But as long as there were plenty of photos or illustrations, we both had a way into the story or subject.

Similarly, when I was teaching third grade and I read aloud to the students, I always tried to select books that were slightly more challenging than what they might choose on their own. In reading class, naturally, we read together books that most of the children could comprehend and read aloud themselves with relative confidence. But when I read to them, I wanted to pick books that would expand their vocabulary and take them to new places, both literally and figuratively.

Reading aloud was a big part of our holiday celebrations. In a tradition that began with my father’s family, everyone who came to celebrate with us at both Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve had something to read. We family members all had established readings. My father always read “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers” by Felicia Dorothea Hemans, and his brother Chris always read “When the Frost Is on the Pumpkin” at Thanksgiving. For Christmas, my mother always read “Dear Virginia,” and her mother would read “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas” with all of us cousins flanking her on the couch so we could see the pictures--Heather, the youngest, sat on Gramma’s lap. Immediately, even first-time guests felt a part of the celebration (shy guests could choose a four-line poem with a punch line).

All of this to say that the holidays are a perfect time to read a good book together aloud. (If you’re feeling hesitant, here are a few tips.) Harry Potter reminded us how wonderful it is to dive into another world with the entire family along for the journey. A break from school and some time off from work creates another opportunity to enjoy a book together as a family, and Yummy and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon are two books that the entire family can enjoy. Each has self-contained shorter sections, too, which allow you to dip in and out or read the whole book—depending on whether it’s a bedtime ritual or an afternoon-long adventure (in the case of Mountain—Yummy you could still finish up rather quickly). If you will be spending the holidays with older children, ages 12-up, then The Book Thief is an excellent read-aloud choice. Remember: You are never too old to be read to.