Children's Book Week 2013: Best Public Domain Books for Middle Grade Readers

This year for Children's Book Week, I'm sharing some of my favorite public domain children's books. Today, I'm wrapping up with my picks for some of the best public domain books for middle grade readers ages 8-14:

 The Alice Books by Lewis Carroll

Project Gutenberg has Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, and Carroll's original version of the first Alice book, Alice's Adventures Underground available online. For some reason it's difficult to find an online edition with the classic illustrations by John Tenniel, but Arthur Rackham's version is quite nice as well!

Children's Book Week 2013: Best Public Domain Books for Young Readers

This year for Children's Book Week, I'm sharing some of my favorite public domain children's books. Today, here are my picks for some of the best public domain books for young readers ages 4-8:

The Tales of Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter's picture books have been beloved by young readers for over a century. You can read all of her books online at Project Gutenberg, complete with her lovely watercolor illustrations.

Children's Book Week 2013: Introduction

Illustration by Jessie Wilcox Smith

Children's Book Week starts today, and as usual I'll be devoting this week to celebrating the best in children's literature. In 2011 I shared some of my favorite children's books that can be enjoyed by readers of all ages, and last year in 2012 I highlighted some wonderful children's book series.

This year, I'm getting in touch with Sparrow Tree Square's roots by sharing some of the best children's books available in the public domain. The copyrights of these books have expired, so they can be shared and reprinted for free. Websites like Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, and the Online Books Page from University of Pennsylvania allow anyone with access to an internet connection to read some of the greatest works of literature ever written.

In past years I've posted daily Monday through Friday during Children's Book Week, but I've decided to condense things a little bit this year. My picks for the best public domain books for young readers ages 4-8 will be going up on Wednesday, May 15, and my picks for the best public domain books for middle grade readers ages 8-14 will be going up Friday, May 17. I hope that you check back on those dates, and that you enjoy Children's Book Week!

Bookish Fun IXX

Last time on Bookish Fun, I shared some things that I found via Tumblr. Since then, I've actually created a Tumblr account for myself. It's vaguely linked to my personal blog, but features a lot of bookish finds interspersed with fan images from Gilmore Girls and Doctor Who.

This first link comes from a wonderful Tumblr I follow, Oxford Academic. Run by Oxford University Press, it features all manner of book-related pictures and articles. Oxford University Press recently released a beautiful new edition of Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies, and their Tumblr featured some images from a talk about the book:

Images via Oxford Academic Tumblr

Charlotte Mason Monday: Habit May Supplant 'Nature'

This post is part of a series that discusses the educational methods of Charlotte Mason. Each post will consider Mason's philosophy as she describes it in Volume 1: Home Education of her series of six books on education. The complete series is available for free at Ambleside Online if you'd like to read along!

I had a lot of issues with the way Mason approaches children's 'natures' in the last chapter, and after some reflection I think I can explain more clearly what bothers me about it. To me, someone's nature is their truest, most fundamental self--their personality, their "soul." The negative characteristics Mason attributes to "nature" are, in my opinion, behaviors--actions and attitudes separate from the fundamental self.

I think that this is an important distinction that Mason fails to make, especially when you consider how her advice might be applied to children with learning disabilities, developmental disorders, neurobehavioral disorders, and neuropsychiatric conditions. For instance, I have auditory processing disorder, which can make me seem forgetful or inattentive. I would hate for someone to think that forgetfulness or inattentiveness were negative tendencies born from my "nature" instead of behaviors stemming from a problem with the way my brain processes sound, and treating the problem as one of "nature" wouldn't help me at all. Obviously problems such as auditory processing disorder weren't well understood in Mason's time, but I bring up these conditions to illustrate how Mason's association of behaviors and "nature" is problematic.