JANE GOODALL was first, kind of by accident. Sunny saw a book about her by Mike Venezia in a library display - he does the "Getting to Know the World's Greatest ..." series. Composers, artists, and now scientists. Sunny likes his cartoons, so really, it didn't matter who the book was about - she wanted to read it. Conveniently, it was Jane Goodall. Anyway, we read 3 books about Goodall and watched video footage about her from National Geographic and the History Channel, and some clips about chimps on Animal Planet. We saw a mention of her activism-for-youth website in one of the books - Roots & Shoots - and of course Sunny immediately wanted to check it out. And join online. We did. Now to come up with a environmental project for the summer.
We watched a video about JK ROWLING on biography.com and Sunny also read a book about her. She wrote a letter to tell Rowling how much she loves the Harry Potter books and we sent it to the publisher address I found online. I was shocked about 3 weeks later when she got a letter in return. Admittedly, it was a form letter with a scanned signature ... but it was a response. Sunny is still over the moon ecstatic about it. It included a photo of Rowling, and the picture and letter are both now taped up on Sunny's bedroom wall.
We found some really old footage of ANNA PAVLOVA on a Russian Ballet History website. Part of Pavlova's autobiography has been condensed into a children's book titled I Dreamed I was a Ballerina, illustrated with ballet dancer paintings by Edgar Degas. It's a gorgeous book.
MARTHA GRAHAM is our third dancer (since we read about Maria Tallchief in January) - she is also famous for her freestyle choreography that branched off the standard ballet. We haven't yet taken the time to watch video of Appalachian Spring, her most famous work but definitely plan to. Maybe we'll work that into a composer study - the music was written by Aaron Copland.
A book about HELEN KELLER landed in our hands in the pile of books given to us by our neighbor.
LUCILLE BALL was chosen from the A is for Abigail book and she was probably the favorite of the month for the girls. The highlight was finding an anniversary special on youtube - The Top Ten I Love Lucy Episodes, showing clips from ten different shows. It was awesome. The girls had never seen anything from I Love Lucy, and now they want to watch it all.
And then Mom went all history and politics on everyone, and brought home books about CLEOPATRA, SACAJAWEA, ALICE ROOSEVELT LONGWORTH, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, and POCAHONTAS. Definitely less exciting. But in my defense, they chose Sacajawea and Pocahontas, and the Alice book was pretty funny. She was Theodore Roosevelt's daughter and he very famously said, "I can control Alice, or I can run the country. I can't do both." That sounds sooo familiar with my Gang of Five.
An even dozen! We're shooting for 40 on the year, so we still have a long way to go. But it's fun! And the girls actually like it too. We're reading books and watching videos online. What's not to like?
For my reading, I finished the Betty MacDonald memoir, and am very slowly going through the Katharine Graham book. My goal for the Graham book is only 2 pages per day because my kids have this thing for interrupting me when I'm reading. It's going to take me all year, for sure.
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