Today I had the pleasure having an online book discussion with Clever Heather’s son. E and I share a love of books and even though he’s young, he gets them. You m
ay remember me chatting about him when we met at my Ugly Holiday Sweater party last fall?
We’ve been keeping in touch ever since and we agreed that today we would meet online to discuss the Newbery winner, The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli.
Just so you know, Clever Heather homeschools her children, and E, like most homeschooled children, reads above grade level. He was reading the book as part of an online novel class and I thought it might be interesting to piggyback off of what he was discussing in that class. To my surprise, Heather told me that the class discussions were not as extensive as the the conversations I’ve had with E about books in the past.
Surprising, right? So I felt free to discuss whatever I wanted! We discussed the types of names that people had in those times, like how Robin called himself Crookshanks; I asked E what name he would choose for himself and we discussed how these names evolve into real last names. Naturally, the discussion led to brief chats about my dog, and other frivolous things; but E volunteered to read his tall tale from a school project, which I loved and thought fit perfectly with the idea of choosing a name based on a physical quality.
We agreed to meet again next month to discuss The Voyage of Dawn Treader. Who’s in?
And you know what? Now that I think about it, this book was published before March 2013 so it qualifies as part of my Take Control of Your TBR Challenge, right?
riiiiiiiiight!