Nov. 9, 2007
Farmer Boy
Posted in Book Reviews
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We borrowed Farmer Boy (Wilder) from the library on CD for the car. We’ve been listening to the kids’ CDs from their choirs basically every time we’ve been in the car for the last two months, and I needed something different. We’ve read Farmer Boy and listened to this recording in the past; only J remembers it, but he loves it. Before listening to it, J asked me what “You can’t lie to the earth” meant. (He heard this quote somewhere, and was puzzling it through.) I asked him what he thought—a practice I don’t usually remember to do, but I’m trying to learn. He thought for a bit and said, “It means that even if you think no one sees, the earth sees if you throw trash in the river.” Good, I said. Then he said, “And I think an example is that story from Farmer Boy where Almanzo’s father tells him about the boy who said he had sown the seeds but didn’t, and then only weeds came up.”
I love hearing my children make connections. This is absolutely one of the benefits of Charlotte Mason’s narration technique. Because I’m not the one digesting the books we read for the children—to distill them down to the five most important points—the children are required to do it for themselves. And they are making connections between what we read, and what they see and hear, and are learning to express them. |
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