After spending six months getting the president to acknowledge Virginia’s Thanksgiving history with our campaign and book, "Pardon Me. It’s Ham, Not Turkey," it was great to see your story.
It turns out many believe the first Thanksgiving was actually held a year before Plymouth Rock at Berkeley Plantation. And since the President 'pardons' a turkey before Thanksgiving Day every year - you gotta read this year's pardon about the turkey name - the author and a growing number of supporters have been lobbying for a pig to receive that pardon instead. Apparently this pardon ceremony is a tradition that started quite a while ago, although who started the tradition isn't so clear.
So Suhay's book and the website are out to set the record straight with the Pig Pardon campaign.
Since March 1st, National Pig Day, the campaign has been dedicated to setting the historical record straight concerning the first Thanksgiving - which was held at what is now known as Berkeley Plantation in Virginia. President Bush is scheduled to speak at Berkeley Plantation on Monday, Nov. 19th. We're excited to celebrate this historic event.
We've spent a lot of time in the car the past couple of weeks with driving to Grafton Notch State Park twice and Oxford County. But the drives haven't been a hardship with the audio book titles we've been listening to.
Our first car ride to Grafton Notch was spent listening to "Half Magic" by Edward Eager (the kids gave this book, written in the 1950s, a thumbs up).
A few days later we went back down Route 26 to West Paris to dig for gems. During that car ride we started on a new book series, The Roman Mysteries. We all really enjoyed the first book in the series, "The Thieves of Ostia" and the kids were at the library the next day to pick up the next two audio books in the series!
The series is historical fiction set in ancient Rome around 79 A.D. The story is packed full of history about how people lived during that time with details about food, housing and activities. This isn't a time period that the girls have been really interested in up until now. But these books have great characters and the story is fast-paced with lots of suspense and it is right up their alley (and Fino and I are really enjoying the story too).
It's called 'mystery' but my kids say it seems more like an adventure series to them than a mystery. Whatever the case, they are hooked on the series and we are now already on our third audio installment.
After a quick search on the web looking for the author's website to find out how many books are in the series (15 so far with a plan for 17 total), the kids and I discovered that the CBBC has a TV mini-series based the books and it looks really good.
The bummer is that the series is just finishing up it's first season in the UK and no DVD/video recordings and/or broadcast plans are in the works for the U.S. just yet.
But of course YouTube has a couple of trailers, a behind-the-scenes on-location piece and clips from an episode. I think you can guess that my kids are more than a little peeved that the TV series isn't in the states yet! But now they are more motivated to read/listen to the rest of the books in the series.
[Note: The first 4 books in the series are available in audio, the following 2 are not, then books 7-9 have audio versions but after that there is no more audio. It seems weird to me that they would record the books out of order but there you go. But my kids plan to read the titles we can't get in audio because they are clamoring for more, just as a book series should be ;-) ]
Click on the YouTube watermark in the lower right-hand side to view the videos on YouTube (or go here to see them all). A couple of them in this playlist we made have to be watched directly on the site because the person who posted the videos doesn't allow embed code on other sites.
Have any favorite books series - in audio or print - that you like? Tell us about it.
Thursday was the first time I'd ever traveled Route 26 beyond Gray/New Gloucester (Range Pond is about the farthest point we've ever gone on the road). So it was an enjoyable drive along the route to see all the places I've heard people talk about but had never seen first-hand.
For instance, Poland Spring's Preservation Park. There's some historical buildings as well as hiking trails and the kids and I agreed we needed to visit there soon.
Then there's the Oxford Plains Speedway where they hold the drag races. The girls and I thought it might be fun to check that out sometime.
We enjoy flea markets and yard sales and the Undercover Flea Market in Oxford (across from the Speedway) looked right up our alley.
Perham's is in West Paris and the kid's 4-H club is headed there later today.
We've heard Bethel has great cross country skiing and we saw signs for the Cross Country Ski Center at the Bethel Inn.
And of course Sunday River is just off the highway as well.
Then there was the silly stuff. Like the sign we read outside a country store.
I bought a pizza for my wife.
It was the best trade I ever made!
Probably an old joke for those in the area but I had a good chuckle over it and so did L.
L. also spotted a deer crossing sign with a red circle sticker on it's nose.
It turned out that the 2-hour drive to Grafton Notch State Park on the single-lane highway really wasn't so bad. Between the sights and the audio book ("Half Magic" by Edward Eager - the kids gave it a thumbs up!), it was a pleasant ride for all of us.
The kids turned in their summer reading list to the library the other day and a couple of the audio books we listened to while driving to our various outdoor adventures were real gems.
At the top of the list (and was recommended by a librarian at Baxter Library - Thanks Deanna!):
"The Skull of Truth" by Bruce Coville
It was a full cast of great voices and the story had the endearing characters and humor that made it enjoyable for not only the kids, but for their parents as well.
"The Penderwicks" by Jeanne Birdsall was another favorite (summer is the perfect time for this one). It wasn't the typical humorous or magical-type book that the kids usually prefer so I was pleased they expanded their horizons with a title they wouldn't have necessarily picked up on their own.
We also listened to a few books that the kids weren't so enthusiastic about. They really liked "Bright Shadow" by Avi right up until the end of the book when one of the main characters dies. The audio was great and kept their interest and they both said they understood about not getting all your wishes but didn't think the author had to kill anyone off. They were angry about it and there was no talking them in to agreeing it was a good book otherwise.
I can appreciate always wanting a happy ending. I'm pretty much an escapist reader myself.
I also took a chance on a classic, "The Enchanted Castle" by Edith Nesbit that was written in the early 1900s. The audio quality was terrible with the copy I had and the reader spoke too quickly. It was a bad combo. We kept with it until the 3rd disk before the kids said they'd had enough. We might try another Nesbit book but I'm going to have to more carefully preview it to make sure the reader and quality are better next time.
The kids 'reviewed' their favorite audio books for their YouTube channel and while there were some digressions with mentions of flying chickens, chatter boxes, Dulce the kitten and bad jokes, they did talk about the books too.
Well, they are kids and they like books enough to make a video about them.
Couldn't ask for more than that.
Favorite audio books (with title and author info at the end)
If you have a favorite audio book for kids, tell us about it! We're looking for new titles for the fall.
NOTE: I know I'm a geek and this has NOTHING to do with being outdoors with children. But I can't resist sharing the info with other parents looking for books to read with their kids this summer ...
PPL's new feature on their homepage - Tumble Book Library (you have to click the link off the library's home page to access it though) - looks really fun for young children. It's a kid-friendly site of children's picture book titles in audio book format WITH the book's actual illustrations. It's pretty cool and includes a lot of titles I recognized that my kids read when they were younger.
We have accessed Rosetta Stone learn a language feature on the library's site and found it to be kid-friendly. It's free (for PPL card holders) and doesn't require you to go to the library to register for it online. My kids haven't made it too far into the Rosetta Stone program but they're thinking about getting back to it this summer just for fun (because they really think it is).
But one of the features that caught my geek-minded attention today was LibriVox. It's a site for adult and young adult readers who want to listen to the classics in audio book format without any hassles (no registration or 'check-out' policy like the library's other audio book site). My kids are getting older and although aren't all that interested in reading a lot of the classics on their own yet, they do like the audio versions.
The cool thing about LibriVox is that all the audio is contributed by volunteer readers. If you like to read and have the basic recording equipment/software (an mp3 player or computer with a microphone) you could volunteer too. And you don't have to record yourself reading an entire book, just a chapter if that's all you want to do.
I've listened to a few chapters from different books on the site and although the recordings are done by volunteers, they're pretty good. The site offers a variety of ways to listen to the recording and by downloading the .zip file of the entire book, you can burn it on CD and take it to go in your car.
My girls liked the Anne of Green Gables movie and wanted to listen to the audio book version this summer. They're participating in our local library's summer reading program and although they plan to read other hard copy books, we thought it would be fun to listen to that one together. And I find that it's nice to have an audio book going in the car because it's a great way to get in some 'reading time' on the way to one of our outdoor adventure locales.
After the kids' experience with their YouTube channel, I can't image recording some audio would be all that hard for them. The trick is finding a chapter from a book on the list that they want to record.
I think it's a great family challenge for us with our summer reading.
Oh and if you have time this weekend, it looks like there are some great children's authors participating in the Maine Festival of the Book today!
OK, tomorrow I will be back to my regularly scheduled outdoor adventures with kids and crazy pets postings...
We were listening to the audio book "Hoot" in the car last week and I have to recommend it based on the humor factor, not to mention its worthy environmental message to kids.
The adult characters in the book, for the most part, are depicted as being dimwitted, which of course the kids thought was great. But at one point, we had to shut off the CD player because we were laughing so hard. The reason: a chicken reference.
As the story goes, the main characters - kids - are trying to save these little burrowing owls from being buried alive on a construction site. The kids talk with the foreman on the project about the owls then see one fly by right in front of them and burrow into the ground. The kids point it out to prove their point but the foreman says, no, there aren't any burrowing owls around. Those things flying around are "wild chickens!"
You gotta read the book - and a little of my blog - to really appreciate why this was so funny to us.
And then yesterday afternoon we were weeding the garden and collecting eggs while the chickens were taking their "dirt baths." They do this all the time but when I looked more closely, I noticed a bunch of holes in the ground. I asked the kids what was going on.
"The chickens dig holes for their baths mommy. You didn't know that?" G. asked.
"Yeah, kinda like the owls from 'Hoot' only the holes aren't so deep," said L.
No, I never noticed that our chickens dig holes in the back yard.
Maybe I should re-read "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" because this place - and the things I've learned here - is like no place I ever imagined I'd be today.
Of course I wouldn't trade it for the world. I mean, you never know when this weird bit of information might come in handy.
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