Weekly book shelf, 4/25/14

In history this week we explored ancient Japan (SOTW2, ch. 9). There weren't a lot of good non-fiction book recommendations for this chapter, so we did some research in our encyclopedia and online, and read these two picture books to add some color to our study. The Crane Wife is a retelling of a traditional Japanese folk tale. A man saves a crane's life and is surprised by the way this kindness changes his life. Beautiful story, beautiful artwork.

In the Moonlight Mist is a traditional Korean folk tale. When a man saves the life of a deer, he is granted a wife. They are happy and have a daughter, but what will happen when he doesn't follow the rules of the enchantment? This beautiful and delicate story is coupled with stunning illustrations.

For fun, we also added some origami into our weekly history study. Because...origami. This was a good kit from Dover—three books with patterns of easy to increasing difficulty, and plenty of papers to work with in varying sizes.

In science we are still reviewing BFSU Volume 1.

Calvin's literature study this week was The Borrowers, by Mary Norton. This is the story of a tiny (really tiny) family living in someone's kitchen. They live rather happily, but when one of them is spotted by the full size humans in the house their life as they know it is suddenly threatened. The charm (and for me the greatest annoyance) of this story is the dialectic language of the tiny family. Calvin enjoyed it, because he seems to enjoy everything, but it certainly won't be a long time favorite.