Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling

I read HP 1 a few months ago and kept meaning to read them all before we went to the Harry Potter Studios in England, but didn't end up having time. And I just didn't want to read number 2 for some reason, so I skipped to this one. I love this book--I feel like this is where the series really starts to get good (although I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the first book and think it is amazing too). I think the ending of this book with Buckbeak, Sirius, and the Time-Turner is one of my favorite parts of the whole series. It totally blew my mind as a kid and I still really like it now (even if there are plenty of issues with why that couldn't work). I'm definitely going on to read number 4 next.

Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis

Another perfect read-aloud with the boys! I am so happy to be reading these Chronicles of Narnia books with the boys. This one was actually kind of surprising to notice how little action actually happens--it was a lot of storytelling and not a lot of action, but the kids didn't mind. I never minded that either when I read it as a kid. This one is not as good as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I'm betting none of them are, so I can't hold that against it. I am so proud of the boys and their ability to follow this complex story. Graham definitely gets lost a lot, but he gets a lot more than I thought he was, even when he's sitting on the ground flipping through picture books while I read. And Dane understands every bit, even when I think there's no way he'll get what's going on. I'm so excited to read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with them because I know they are going to LOVE it.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

I have never been that interested in Alexander Hamilton as a founding father before (like the rest of the nation, until the musical Hamilton became a thing), but I got this as an audiobook from the library and started listening to it. It's only 36 hours long (ha!), so it took me months to get through (because it got returned to the library, etc.). I wanted to listen to it before we went to England and saw Hamilton while we were there, but I didn't finish it until today. It took so long partly because it is so long, and partly because I dragged my feet finishing it because I knew that it had a sad ending and I didn't want to get into Hamilton's affair being exposed and his son's death in a duel and his own death in a duel.

I was so impressed by Chernow's writing and how he made Hamilton, and so many other founding fathers and mothers, come alive. He really gave them all personalities and gave examples of their personalities through their writing--great examples of uses of evidence, as the composition teacher in me wants to say. Hamilton was so brash and so forthright and opinionated, in comparison with so many of the other founding fathers he worked with and clashed with. Chernow really helped me to distinguish between everyone and their accomplishments. He also gave a totally different perspective than the burnished, perfect viewpoint we sometimes get on so many of the founding fathers, like of Thomas Jefferson being the opposite of Hamilton and very circumspect and reserved and sneaky, and John Adams being so touchy and flighty. I felt like I learned so much about the whole American Revolution and the world in that time from reading this book, and I was really impressed by the amount of research Chernow had to have done to write this all-encompassing biography. Eliza Hamilton was one of my favorite people in the whole book--she was definitely the unsung hero of Hamilton's life (although Chernow definitely tries to correct that problem by singing those praises).

It makes you wonder what Hamilton would have become if he had lived for another 30 years. Would he have become crotchety and made a bunch of other ridiculous mistakes like he did with some of his pamphlets? Or would he have made other positive changes for our country? I was trying to explain to the boys today what he did, and it's hard for kids to grasp the Federalist Papers or the Constitution (I explained it as the "rules of our country," haha), but Chernow definitely makes it clear that without Hamilton, our country would not have been born as we know it today. Thank goodness for great people like him who got our country where it started.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

This was one of my very favorite books when I was growing up, and I still have a deep and abiding love for it. I read it so many times growing up, but I haven't read it since before I started this blog (seems like that's a recurring theme for many of the classics I've been re-reading lately!). It was a total pleasure to revisit this and enjoy the stories about Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and their sweet family. I love the four distinct personalities that the sisters have, and the scrapes and disagreements that they get into. Like most people, I love and identify with the impulsive and tempestuous Jo best. But I especially love the strong, solid family that they are, and the good advice and love that comes from Marmee to each of the girls. Some of it is very old-fashioned (like Marmee saying that a husband is the best thing that can happen to a girl, etc.), but I think a lot of it holds up--the virtues of self-denial and the goals of self-improvement, recognizing our faults and the things we need to work on, are strong in the March family, and I think are a good example of good qualities that we could all work on. They try to focus on their best qualities and work hard to conquer their weaknesses, and these are things we can all work on.

No matter how I try, though, I can never be totally okay with Jo and Laurie not ending up together. I believe Marmee's argument that they would not suit, and would fight and not get along together, but I kind of hate that she ends up with old Professor Bhaer--if only he weren't old! Couldn't he be kind and good and young? And I feel like Alcott could have left Jo a little of her old spunk and fiestiness at the end, instead of calling her "Mother Bhaer" and making her seem like she's an old lady at 30 years old and the leader of her school. But all in all, just such a beautiful walk down memory lane, and I want to buy all the rest of Alcott's books that I loved when I was young too.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

I'd read reviews of this book for the last few years and kept meaning to get around to it, but I never did until I had to finish it for book club tomorrow, where I'm leading the discussion (ha). But it was totally, totally worth squeezing it into this already busy week.

I really enjoyed this and had many things to discuss about it at our book club meeting, but I just don't have time to write about it right now. Definitely thought-provoking, definitely worth a read, super glad I read it.

Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy

I have definitely felt a lot of joy about reading and re-reading all my favorite children's and middle-grade novels lately, especially reading them aloud with my kids. I have spent countless hours so far in my parenting life reading picture books to our kids, and I've read 44 chapter books aloud with Dane so far (and maybe about half of them with Graham too). I really, really love reading books that I loved with them. I get a LOT of joy out of doing this.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel a ton of joy reading Handy's literary criticism of his chosen selection of children's literature. I did really like learning about each of the authors he selected--Margaret Wise Brown was fascinating!--and I liked learning about his analysis of each book. It was definitely worth a read for anyone who reads a lot of kids' books, because he chose a famous genre or author to write about in each chapter and clearly did a lot of research on it.

Some of it dragged, though, and I was very annoyed by his reflex reactions to Little Women and Anne of Green Gables: he didn't like the former and didn't even get through 30 pages of the latter. Of course, he's a grown adult man, which means he's not at all in the target audience for those books, but deciding to read (for the first time ever) these towering classics of children's literature as research for writing a book about children's literature completely misses the point of those books. Of course you won't like them in the way that a young girl would, or an adult re-reading them after loving them as a child. I think the nostalgia factor is huge in my pure joy that I get out of reading children's literature. It's not the only reason I love them--because I have had books that I don't love very much when I revisit them as adults--but I don't think I would love them as much now if I hadn't encountered them a long time ago. I feel like Handy misses the point by discussing their authors' backgrounds and breaking them down (although I did really like learning about them)--those aren't the reasons these books bring us joy. So that made the subtitle of his book a little misleading to me.

But maybe I'm just still offended by how much he hated Anne of Green Gables. How dare he.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

I absolutely, 100% love the Narnia books. I read them dozens of times as a kid, all seven of them. So I am shocked to realize that I've never read them in all the time I've been writing on this blog or keeping track of my reading on Goodreads. I'd never rated them on Goodreads! I keep being surprised by the books I've overlooked on there.

I had the BEST time this month reading the Narnia books with the boys. There is nothing more magical than the first chapter of this book, where Lucy opens the wardrobe door and finds the magical land of Narnia in the back of the wardrobe. I realize now that this story was foundational in much of my imaginary worlds that I would write about and build as a kid--my heroes were always finding secret hiding places in closets or in the woods (that story comes from the Boxcar Children). The very idea of a whole world being hidden somewhere so simple as a wardrobe is so fantastic and wonderful and amazing that it has to be something that every child dreams about and half-hopes for, even after they really know that it won't happen.

I love the rest of the story as well, and the four Pevensie children and their qualities, and I loved seeing the boys get into this story. They loved the first chapter, then felt like it was a little slow in the middle, but once Santa Claus came up and gave them their presents, and the battle with the Witch started to heat up, they were TOTALLY into it and made me read the last three chapters all in one night to finish it off, and begged for me to read the next Narnia book for our next chapter book together. I am of course happy to oblige. There are some books and series that I can't help but want to share with our kids, and this is one of them... I would be so sad if they didn't fall in love with these stories the way I did. On to Prince Caspian next!