Back in January, I took advantage of Sonlight Curriculum’s annual clearance sale, and bought a number of books at 50% off. One that I considered buying but didn’t get to in time before someone else purchased the last one at that price was The Mozart Season. A few weeks later, someone here in New Zealand offered it for sale; she had accidentally bought two of them! She had just borrowed a stack of books from me, so I bought that one and she put it with my books, to send all at once when they were finished. It’s here now, and I’ve added it to my stack to read before putting it on the shelf–I have no idea what the story is like!
Just before that same person mailed our books back, she advertised a number of other books. One that caught my eye was William the Conqueror, so I asked her to send that one along, as well. Again, I have no idea what it is like, so it, too is on my TBR stack. I’m planning to do the Read Your Bookshelf Challenge again this year, and one of the prompts is “Royalty.” I hadn’t found a book yet for that prompt, so was delighted to find one I wanted to read about a king. (I decided that for this year’s challenge, I was going to try to find books for each month from my stack of ones I want to read before they go on the shelf–and I found one on that stack for each of the twelve prompts!)
One evening, a neighbor stopped Gayle and asked if we homeschool. When Gayle, wondering what this was about, answered that we do, the man said that he is the caretaker of the local area school (just behind our house). The teachers were in the process of doing a cleanout and had instructed him to burn piles of old, unwanted books, so he wondered if we wanted them. We took them, and I sorted through them. Two big boxes were old maths textbooks, multiple copies of each, which I am not interested in. Another box was other maths supplementary books, which I don’t need for the most part. There were also many reading and phonics and spelling books, but my last child is learning to read right now and I don’t need them. (I’m trying to give them away!) Then, there were stacks of dictionaries and thesauruses. We were delighted to find a thesaurus that is easier to use than our Roget’s, so we kept one of those, and a fascinating Reverse Dictionary. Esther flipped through that and found a page of French terms. She was quite amused by the definition I circled in this picture.
Another book I kept was this one full of brain teasers. I copied a page of it and, without telling anyone, taped it to the whiteboard in the kitchen. It quickly got attention, as various people sat down and worked out the problems. I plan to post more, at random times, for anyone who wants to work them out. It’s a fun family activity, as it turns out!
There were around 15 copies of each of these picture books, so I kept one of each. They are simple, but beautiful; they’ll make a good addition to our shelf of New Zealand picture books. If you live in New Zealand and want either of these, pay me the postage and I’ll send you a copy of each!
One evening, I noticed someone selling almost the complete set of the Anne of Green Gables books on a Facebook page. I knew Esther wanted them, so I showed her, and she bought them. She already had a copy of the one that was missing, the first book. It didn’t match these–but one of her brothers had one that did, so she swapped with him and now, much to her satisfaction, she has the whole set in print.
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