The Storyteller has read a Great Illustrated Classics of Moby Dick. He read it in a couple of hours while we waited for bureaucrats to move us through their system, giving me cause to wonder if he may have been ready for the original. He seems to have enjoyed it. He was quite absorbed. How do I decide such things?
The Scientist and myself have begun the original. I can't say either of us are really enjoying it yet. It's hard to get into a novel when you know the ending and so much about it. I just read Frankenstein, starting after being told there is much difference between the original Shelley and the cultural references to it that abound on cartoons and in Halloween costumes. That was true. The introduction made me curious to read it. I'm not sure how to make myself curious about Moby Dick, or how to pass that on to the Scientist.
I've read a picture book version to the Hero, who was also very interested. We talked about the illustrations for a good long while. I wish I still had my old Staircase of History timeline. I'll have to make the little guy a new one so he can begin to order events in his mind.
We've been singing mid-19th century sea songs. We've been reading about whaling and about types of ships. Suddenly everyone has learned a surprising lot about history without meaning to do so.
In the discussion, I know, comes the learning about literature. That I can not begin until we have all read it, though. I am eager to see how we do. Just reading doesn't feel like enough now that they are bigger.
Walt Whitman is next. Looking over the biography I have checked out from the library, I see so many fascinating historical interplays that I am sure we will learn just as much history accidentally again.
I almost wish I had chosen exclusively American authors. Our targeted history lessons for this period are much broader world studies. I worry that the boys will be disadvantaged when faced with any references to their own nation's story.
Oh well. We will read and talk and soak up many things, no matter how we do it.
(This is David) I love "Moby Dick". I would watch the movie with Gregory Peck after reading the novel, which is quite well done. There are a lot of good books about whaling/whaling culture that I've read. Whaling changed the whole culture of the South Pacific, (that is, the island societies were pretty well wrecked.) I'd like to talk more about this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recommendation. Can you recommend a book on the way it affected the South Pacific?
ReplyDelete