TT - Top Ten Favourite Read Alouds

 Welcome to Tuesdays Treasures.  I started these posts as a way of sharing great books in honour of my friend in New Zealand who would arrive with the treasures she had unearthed at her weekly trip to the library!

There are so many wonderful books out there hiding on shelves so I invite you to blog about a book on your shelf, one you're reading or one you found at the library and add your post to Learning All the Time Favourite Resource Link Up .

This weeks topic is inspired by 10* in 10* (Ten Weeks of Top Ten Lists) over at iHomeschool and hosted at Many Little Blessings.


My Top Ten Favourite Read Alouds
Last week I shared with you Ten of my Favourite Homeschooling sites.
Top of the list was Sonlight who introduced me to most of my favourite must have read alouds. 

Little Britches
Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 260
Vendor: University Of Nebraska Press
Publication Date: 1991
ISBN: 0803281781
ISBN-13: 9780803281783
Sonlight:  Core D & E

Carry on, Mr. Bowditch 
Author: Jean Lee Latham
Illustrator: John O'Hara Cosgrave II
Date Written: 1955
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Boston
Current Pub. Date: 2003
Pages: 256
Edition: illustrated
ISBN: 978086020864-8
Sonlight:  Core D

The Phantom Tollbooth

Reading level: Ages 10 and up
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Bullseye Books; 1st Yearling edition (October 12, 1988)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0394820371
ISBN-13: 978-0394820378
Sonlight:  Core  G & W

The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Reading level: Ages 12 and up
Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Laurel Leaf (May 15, 1978)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0440995779
ISBN-13: 978-0440995777
Sonlight: Core D

A Little Princess

Reading level: Ages 9 and up Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins (December 9, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0064401871
ISBN-13: 978-0064401876





Follow My Leader
Reading level: Ages 5 and up
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Puffin (December 1, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0140364854
ISBN-13: 978-0140364859

Sonlight:  Discontinued. 

Mountain Born
Reading level: Ages 9 and up
Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: JourneyForth (September 1, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0890847061
ISBN-13: 978-0890847060
Sonlight Core B

Elsie Dinsmore
Format: Paperback
Vendor: Hendrickson Publishers
ISBN: 1598564005
ISBN-13: 9781598564006
Ages: 10-14
Series: Original Elsie Classics

Escape From Warsaw
Paperback: 218 pages
Publisher: Scholastic (January 1, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 059042534X
ISBN-13: 978-0590425346
Sonlight:  Core H

Whatever happened to Penny Candy ?
Author: Richard Maybury
Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 159
Vendor: Bluestocking Press
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 0942617622
ISBN-13: 9780942617627
Series: Uncle Eric Books
Sonlight: Core F


What are your Top Ten Read Alouds ?

Blessings

52 in 52 - A Stolen Life

I am playing catch up on my 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge
 
This is book five for the year

My Mom in law belongs to a book club in Hoedspruit and while I was there they had their monthly meeting.  It was so much fun catching up with the ladies of this group I used to belong to 15 years ago.  One of the great things was having access to so many great books.

A Stolen Life
Jaycee Dugard



Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 12, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 145166494X
ISBN-13: 978-1451664942
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces




From the back cover: "In the summer of 1991 I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother who loved me. I was just like you.
Until the day my life was stolen.


For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse.
For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation.


On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I don’t think of myself as a victim. I survived.
A Stolen Life is my story—in my own words, in my own way, exactly as I remember it." - jaycee dugard.

That's just how the book is written.  It has not been written by a ghost writer.  It is frank and honest and at best compelling.  I couldn't put this book down.  I was shocked and surprised at her frank honesty and the excellent quality of her writing considering she was abducted at the age of 11 and had no more formal education.  She must be an incredible young woman to already have written this account.  She shares extracts from her journal written in captivity.  If you are looking for a feel good book then this is NOT the book for you as it is frank and honest about the invasion perpetrated on this young woman for 18 very long years.

Jaycee has started a foundation called the JAYC Foundation. (Just Ask Yourself to Care) Our mission is to be of service to families that have suffered a familial or nonfamilial abduction or other trauma and to spread the word of compassion and awareness through educational programs. We connect families to support and services they need in order to recover from the abduction or other traumatic events, such as returning from military deployment or a major natural disaster.

I rate this book: *****
Sexual content: yes
Linked to: BW24: RIP Ray Bradbury

52 in 52 - Five Chimneys

I am playing catch up on my 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge
 
This is book four for the year

Recently while on holiday in South Africa I found this book on the mantle that called out to me to be read.

Five Chimneys

Olga Lengyel

• Format: Paperback
• Number of Pages: 221
• Publishers: Academy Chicago Publishers; 2nd edition (October 1, 1995)
• Publication Date: 1994
• ISBN:  0897333764
• Author Olga Lengyel

This book is an account of one of the woman who survived Auschwitz. It was first published two years after World War II ended so I was a little surprised to see that it is still in print and available for purchase from Fishpond and Amazon.  

This book is written in the first person and is a personal account of the author's experience in Auschwitz.  It was the sort of book that held my attention and let my heart witness the heart ache of Auschwitz.  Olga is a trained surgeon who looses her whole family (parents, two sons and her husband) in World War II. In her homeland she dismisses the stories of war as a figment of someones wild imagination and not true until her and her family are shipped off to Auschwitz.

Her descriptions of the processes and environ are stated as matter of fact and without emotion. As you read you follow Olga's downward emotional spiral due to the depraved circumstances and living under the 'Blond Angel" (Irma Grese), until she is recruited in the prisoner resistance underground movement and handed a motive to fight for survival.  She was assigned the role of information gather to speak for those who would loose their lives to the war.

She fulfills her assignment through writing this memoir of World War II.  I found her descriptions rather heart wrenching especially that to do with pregnancy and birth in camp.

This is an excellent book allowing the reader a 'safe' glimpse into life in Auschwitz.  It is not recommend for immature or young audiences due to it's graphic content.

For a thorough breakdown of the book you can head over to Wikipedia.

After the war Olga migrated to America where she started the Olga founded the Memorial Library and Art Collection of Second World War, chartered by the University of the State of New York.  She died in 2001.

"You have done a real service by letting the ones who are now silent and most forgotten speak." - Albert Einstein  


Rate: *****
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Linked to: BW24: RIP Ray Bradbury