Catching the Reluctant Reader
Miss Chief is a right-brained reluctant reader with a fondness for doing things out of sequence.
She is also a HUGE history buff. Apples, trees (daddy is an associate professor of US History). When I discovered her history fixation, we suddenly had a much easier time finding books she'd sit still for. She didn't want any of those silly dragon stories big sister liked. Miss Chief wants Indians (Kaya -- the Nez Perce American Girl -- was a favorite for a while, and we've read gazillions of early American biographies of figures from John Deere to Helen Keller; right now we're reading through Little House on the Prairie).
Anyway, this is just a shout-out to say that I think I may have found the perfect series for Miss Chief. I picked up this book for her the other day. It's a "You Choose" book -- this one's titled "Westward Expansion" -- and it's a history book that's structured like a choose-your-own-adventure book. After a brief introduction, you choose whether you want to be a traveler on the Oregon Trail, an ex-Confederate soldier looking for work out west, or a Sioux Indian, and you make choices for each of those characters that lead to various ends, based on historical events.
It's a fascinating concept that, to my mind, neatly solves some of the problems of presenting history from multiple viewpoints in a way that's fun and interesting.
I wanted to point the series out, in case there's a history buff in your sphere of influence who would really dig these books, because I've never seen anything like this before.
She is also a HUGE history buff. Apples, trees (daddy is an associate professor of US History). When I discovered her history fixation, we suddenly had a much easier time finding books she'd sit still for. She didn't want any of those silly dragon stories big sister liked. Miss Chief wants Indians (Kaya -- the Nez Perce American Girl -- was a favorite for a while, and we've read gazillions of early American biographies of figures from John Deere to Helen Keller; right now we're reading through Little House on the Prairie).
Anyway, this is just a shout-out to say that I think I may have found the perfect series for Miss Chief. I picked up this book for her the other day. It's a "You Choose" book -- this one's titled "Westward Expansion" -- and it's a history book that's structured like a choose-your-own-adventure book. After a brief introduction, you choose whether you want to be a traveler on the Oregon Trail, an ex-Confederate soldier looking for work out west, or a Sioux Indian, and you make choices for each of those characters that lead to various ends, based on historical events.
It's a fascinating concept that, to my mind, neatly solves some of the problems of presenting history from multiple viewpoints in a way that's fun and interesting.
I wanted to point the series out, in case there's a history buff in your sphere of influence who would really dig these books, because I've never seen anything like this before.