We just finished reading The Swiss Family Robinson.  What a delightful story...especially for my boys!  We finished it in less than three days!  They were thrilled.  I am so pleased when I see my children get excited over great literature.  When they relate to the characters, they will "play" the story lines out themselves.  I find it can be more difficult to engage my sons in a story because they must sit still and listen and they would rather be "doing something".  We have read some fantastic books for boys this year, though.  When the story moves quickly and contains action and a strong plot, I find that boys can sit much longer.  This was the case with Swiss Family Robinson. 

Now, we are reading The Stories of the Pilgrims.  We read this every year in November.  The children look foward to it...the boys and the girls.  In fact, Nicholas was the one who reminded me that we had better get started on it! 

Some other books we have been enjoying with the youngest ones this past month have been all of the Francis books by Russel Hoban.  Gabriella enjoys them tremendously!  Of course, our very favorite stories come from The Beatrix Potter Collection...our copy is falling apart and is now missing the hard cover!   We have also been reading through the poems in "A Child's Garden Of Verses".