Posted January 18, 2005
Well, I think this week is pretty much shot for homeschooling. Noah caught the bug last night, and doesn’t feel like doing school. Natalie is probably okay enough to do it, but still very cranky and I’m not sure I want to put myself through that! Because I plan our lessons out weeks in advance, it is actually easier to just switch the dates a week ahead than to try and scoot each day’s lessons a couple ahead, if that makes any sense. Oh, well, Natalie is reading like crazy cause she doesn’t feel like doing anything else, and she wrote a letter to a friend yesterday — that counts as Language, right? Plus we watched “Skylark”, the sequel to “Sarah, Plain and Tall” so that counts as history. Watching the movies has been a reward for Natalie for reading all three books in the trilogy. I’ve found that if she’s seen a movie, she doesn’t want to read the book — which makes me really wish I hadn’t bought “Stuart Little” on DVD for the kids! From now on, we’ll read the book first!
Speaking of books, I just finished “Peace Like a River” by Leif Enger, and it was excellent. I was disappointd when I couldn’t find anything else by him listed at Amazon — this must have been his first novel. Here’s an example of his craftsmanship, a description of the main character Reuben, riding horseback with his brother Davy:
“Cresting a long hill we stopped a moment while Fry blew and stooped and clipped at the snow as though for a browse. I let go of Davy to sit straight. I can’t describe what we saw. Here was the whole dizzying sky bowled up over us. We were inside the sky. It didn’t make the stars any closer, only clearer. They burned yellow and white, and some of them changed to a blue or a cold green or orange — Swede should’ve been there, she’d have had words. She’d have known that orange to be volcanic or forgestruck or a pinprick between our blackened world and one the color of sunsets. I thought of God making it all, picking up handfuls of whatever material, iron and other stuff, rolling it in His fingers like nubby wheat. The picture I had was of God taking these rough pellets by the handful and casting them gently, like a man planting. Look at the Milky Way. It has that pattern, doesn’t it, of having been cast there by the back-and-forward sweep of His arm?
“‘Up Fry,’ Davy said. ‘Let’s go. Rube, it’s pretty, isn’t it?’
“I was pleased — it was okay to talk. ‘Do you picture God tossing them out there like that or setting them up one by one?’
“We were heading downslope, a more comfortable job.
“‘Are you waxing poetic on me now?’ Davy said.
“‘No — I don’t think so.’
“‘Well, you’re waxing something.’”
Enger creates pictures with his words — I want to write like that. This book was beautiful and haunting, and I was sad to turn the last page.
Carrie
Current reading: “Mom’s Everything Book For Daughters” by Becky Freeman, and “Heaven” by Randy Alcorn
