what we are reading

I have packed an awful lot of our book collection away. This was hard to do, because we tend to visit the book cases every day for information and inspiration.

It wasn't until I started packing that I realised how many books and book cases we have. In the living room there were three floor to ceiling Billys, three wicker baskets, an apothecary table full and a trolley containing Lb's favourite board books of the moment.

In the kitchen there was a full size Billy and a half Billy, both full to bursting and another wicker basket full. In the hall there was a writing desk with two shelves of books. Each of the kids rooms have a book case full, as well as a couple of shelves.

We are now down to one book case and the writing desk.

To counter act the (what feels to me) visible lack of books, we've been making use of our local library service.

In the library basket at the moment there is:

The Kingfisher Book of Mythology
Incredible Quests : Epic Journeys in Myth and Legend
Card Games for One
My Royal Story : Cleopatra
Biggles Learns to Fly
The World Came to My Place Today

We also went to a story telling event last week, which I would dearly love to have photographed but there was a no photo policy in place. When we walked in there was a man dressed in neolithic clothes, blowing a cow horn, not what we normally see in the library. He also had artifacts with him that were thousands of years old, which the children got to handle. We've been re-enacting the story telling at home, and Od in particular has shone at this.

This is the first "My Story" book that we've tried out, and it seems pretty good. It opens with two attempts on Cleopatra's fathers' life, which is quite a good dramatic opener. We've only read two chapters so far, so I'm not sure how historically accurate they are, or whether they will hold the kids interest as a read aloud. If it does, we'll be reading the rest of the collection here.