Winter Skies & Christmas Books

Doesn't this picture —

— remind you of this author's work?

It does me (it's also a lovely inspiring Christmas read).

The Hunt Is On!

The Haggis Hunt, that is. More specifically: Farquhar's Revenge. Plenty more haggi where that came from!

Who Doesn't Need A Beak Warmer?

Just the thing for the Angry Bird on your Christmas list!

A Not So Dark Horse

If you're familiar with the film Love Actually you might know something of the obsession that afflicts Britain this time each year: the coveted place wherein a musical single, usually performed by some good-looking youthful quartet, tops the charts at Christmas time. Playing an aging rock star intent on a comeback of sorts, Bill Nighy muses, in one of the more sublime moments of the film, during a radio interview, "Wouldn't it be great if number one this Christmas wasn't some smug teenager but an old ex-heroin addict searching for a comeback at any price?" Wonder of wonders (spoilers!), he achieves his Christmas number one, in spite of himself.

This Christmas another group is attempting much the same sort of takeover for the Christmas spot: the Military Wives choir. If you've seen this series you will know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, well, you've missed some seriously brilliant television and I advise you to get yourself to it immediately. I'm a fervently devoted fan of Gareth Malone, the boyish choirmaster who likes to take on decidedly unmusical situations, so when I saw his latest series - The Choir: Military Wives - I watched with some interest. It was every bit as riveting as his other efforts; there is something charming about a man who believes, in this age of endless tweeting and too-much-information-via-Facebook, that the simple act of singing can change people's lives for the better.

This single was compiled from snippets of the letters to and from these military wives, women whose husbands were largely in Afghanistan, and put to music. They performed it in November at the Royal Albert Hall, then recorded it professionally in a studio, as you can see yourself in this YouTube clip. If you're as soppy as me, you'll need at least one kleenex. Then make a little wish that this group can get their number one single this Christmas, just like Billy did on Love Actually.

You Know What They Say—

When life hands you lemons, make marmalade out of them.

(I like to twist up these sayings a bit)

Here lie the fruits of my 2 year old lemon trees, along with a couple of sour mandarins from the sour mandarin tree I acquired in the summer. There were enough lemons to make 5 pints of marmalade. If you come to visit I'll be happy to dispense toast and marmalade.

Eating LEGO

Our neighbours across the street put up their Christmas lights today, which prompted my kids to exclaim about our lack of Christmas lights. We have a few advent things inside: an advent candle wreath on the table, the Mary's Walk tableau on the seasonal table, a few paper toys from here (from her book, actually) scattered around the living room. No lights yet. It seems too early.

I bought the chocolate-windowed advent calendars my kids love yesterday, but only when I found them for less than $1.25 each. I toyed with the idea of buying them each LEGO City advent calendar, if only to give my kids a fabulous, once-in-a-lifetime never-to-be-repeated moment to reflect back on when they're older (and I'm either dead or rotting in a home somewhere wondering if they're thinking about me) and they're reflecting (hopefully) fondly on their childhood. "Gosh," they'll think, "Mum was amazing! I loved that calendar."

Sadly for my LEGO-loving kids, I only toyed with the idea. Picture me: a (LEGO-sponsored) devil on one shoulder, whispering "$40 is nothing! Think of how excited they'll be!" while on the other shoulder a prim angel stands, arms folded, tapping one foot impatiently, saying "Ohmygawd, another idiot has lost its village, hasn't it? Sheila, my dear, those kids of yours have enough damn LEGO to sink a couple of planets. Get them each one of those cheap chocolate things and get the hell home. And stop listening to that turkey on your other shoulder. You always were a pushover."

Fortunately I listened to my well-honed guilt complex and rescued our bank account from almost certain death. Cheap chocolate it was. The twins were thrilled with theirs. Max will do what he did last year: pretend he's too cool to have an advent calendar and let it languish in a corner until Christmas morning, whereupon he will pull it out, pretending he has just remembered it, and promptly eat all the chocolates in one go while the twins watch enviously, wishing they had the willpower to do the same.

Can't do that with LEGO.

Reading Aloud : November

I've written before on reading aloud to my kids. It started as a fluke event then morphed into a Thing We Do. I used to read aloud at night, before bed, but the pleas for 'one more chapter' became a wrench, because sometimes it was ME who wanted the one more chapter. Also, when the book was on the, err, dramatic side I hesitated to read it right before bed, because some of us had night terrors. Black riders and blazing eyes in towers don't always go down well in dreamland.

Then I started reading in the mornings, while we were all still soft and malleable from our nighttime dreams. This is a good state for one's audience to be in; it's highly forgiving, particularly if one likes to experiment with thick Scottish brogues or there are songs or poems to be sung within the storyline. That time period clicked, because we could read for more than thirty minutes without the repercussions a lack of sleep invokes. Thus, every weekday morning for the past seven years I have read aloud at breakfast time. We've ploughed through a lot of books this way: books I wanted them to read; books they would never have read on their own; books that were above their reading level; and books that I wanted to read myself. One day in the future, when the kids are long out of the house and I'm tottering around here on my own, wondering how it got so quiet (and clean) all of a sudden, it will be what I recall the most clearly and miss the mostly deeply.

How do I choose a book to read aloud? I have three usual methods:

1) The book is something I read and loved as a kid. This works if you were a passionate reader or if you grew up with a passionate reader (presuming you paid attention to the passionate reader's choices, that is).

2) The book has a Newbery Award imprint on the cover and is languishing cheaply on the shelves at our local Sally Ann. This is probably my number one method of finding books. Someone in my neighbourhood bought a lot of good books for their children, for which I am thankful. Now if only I could find someone in my neighbourhood who would pass on their Williams-Sonoma cast-offs...

3) I've heard about it from someone, or FDPG has heard about it from somewhere and has recalled it for us to read. FDPG has the library collection data base on speed-dial. Kidding? Me?

Another method I am leery of mentioning, because it's not terribly reliable, is using Amazon as a search function: look up a book you know and like, then see what the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" has to say for itself.

Anyhow, Method No. 2 is how we got ourselves onto the James Herriot omnibus this month. I'm 479 pages into the book and we're all just as delighted with it now as we were on page 12. I don't remember being as struck by his prose style when I was a kid, reading it under the covers at night, wanting desperately to be a vet when I grew up, but reading it aloud now it's hard not to notice it. Every word counts in his stories. Not a single note is wasted. Then there's his comic skill; he's a very funny man who is able to tell stories so that the reader can see the humour just as clearly as the writer. At this point I feel quite confident in saying that my kids worship the ground Tristan walks on. Every puff of Woodbine smoke, every pint of beer, every hangover or silly antic, they love it all. He's probably going to down in our pantheon of Dearly Beloved Characters, right alongside Laura Ingalls, Frodo, Harry, Ron, & Hermione, Chrestomanci, Wol & Weeps, White Fang, Howl, John, Susan, Titty & Roger, and the entire Durrell family. But I think what I love most about this series is the resilient attitude the author has about the fact that he had to spend a good deal of his time in very uncomfortable situations: his car has no heat, he has to go out at all hours, he often works in inhospitable surroundings, with recalcitrant patients, and in unforgiving weather. And through it all he has the best of attitudes. These kinds of books are sneaky: they can't help but provide a contrast for my kids about how easy and cosy their own lives are in comparison, but they also show them another, more valuable lesson: life is what you make of it. I like that kind of lesson in a book.

For more on the topic of Read Alouds, click on the "Little House" or "Book Reviews" link on the left hand column of my blog, under Labels.