Tuesday, April 28, 2009

our favorite books: denmark

because we read in two languages at our house, we have lots of favorite books. we'll post about the ones in english today and do the danish ones another day.

for a long time, our best and favorite books were all charlie and lola. it's a UK series by lauren child and features cool mixed-media/cartoon characters called charlie and lola. every book begins with, "i have this little sister lola, she is small and very funny..." and all of the books are told by lola's big brother, charlie, but they're really mostly about lola.


the illustrations are good, the text is interestingly placed on the pages and the stories are super cute. there's even a really cool one about fair trade and this new one called "look after your planet."



sabin hasn't even seen that one yet, so when i get home (i'm in oslo for the next few days, working), i'll have to show her. it's a BBC series as well as a bunch of books, but i believe it started as books.  and now sabin can read these herself, tho' they're something we've been reading and enjoying together for several years.

* * *
our other favorite at the moment is anything by roald dahl. we've read so far:
  • george's marvelous medicine
  • the twits
  • the witches
  • the enormous crocodile
  • matilde (we're about halfway through this one)
still on our shelves to go:
  • the BFG
  • charlie and the chocolate factory
  • james and the giant peach
these tend to be bedtime reading that i read to sabin, they're a bit dense yet for her reading abilities, especially in english, since she hasn't had english yet formally in school and i haven't pushed her with it. she needs to solidify her reading skills in danish and then the reading strategies she learns will help her pick up the english.  and it's not that she's not reading english. she can read most of fox in socks.


i'm looking forward to reading the laura ingalls wilder books with sabin, perhaps we'll tackle those this summer. and we've also read the first two harry potter books as bedtime stories, so maybe we'll move back to those when we're done with our roald dahl period. 

2 comments:

  1. Charlie and Lola are a favorite around here - mostly the show which runs daily on one of the many cartoon channels.

    My favorite book is "I am too absolutely small for school" - I love her crocodile suit too.... funny stuff.

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  2. I have a son who's also 8 (Joseph) and Roald Dahl is a favorite in our house. Especially Matilda and the BFG.

    I've been reading this blog with Joseph so that he can learn a little about how other people live, too. Thanks for sharing!

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