January has been the month of "recovering from Christmas!" What a month. I'd love to say that we're back in our normal routine BUT between illnesses and snow days that cancel school, it hasn't happened yet. Thank goodness we're a flexible group!

This month, instead of listing every book we read, I'm going to highlight several and leave it at that.

I wasn't wrong.

I finished the entire story, minus a few chapters in the middle because I was in a hurry more than anything else. I knew way too early in the story what was going to happen. Maybe not all of the exact details of how it would happen, but the what was not a mystery to me.

That part bummed me out.

I love it when a story holds me in its thrall all the way through -- thrall meaning that it keeps me curious to the very end. I finished more because the story was well done than that I was in thrall over it.

I haven't picked up the next books in the series. I do plan to read them, I'm simply not in a hurry.

My seven year old brings home a new Mo Willems book every week as her AR book. We read the book -- typically she reads it to me or her father, sometimes if the book is harder or longer, we will read it to her again. The next day she takes an AR test on it.

Mo Willems books can be long -- like up to 60 pages. But there isn't a lot of text to read on any one page. This makes the books fairly ideal for a beginning reader, like my first grader. Still, I was getting sick of them. I mentioned my growing distaste to the teacher. That kind, loving woman took my hand and said, "But she loves them."

I got it. Better for my child to love the books she is reading than for me to enjoy them (especially on the second or third time through). Most Mo Willems books are great to read. My aversion is typically because I'm also making dinner and dealing with a hunger induced meltdown by the 3-year old.  I've found reading the book after we eat dinner makes it vastly more enjoyable.

Above are the 3 Mo Willems that we read this month, including the one sitting on my dining room table as I type. That's I Love My New Toy!, if you're interested.

Below is a link to Mo Willems' Amazon Author page. If you click that link, or any other link in this post, I earn a small amount from Amazon for recommending it to you.

That's the short list for January. I hope your January was amazing. Let me know what your favorite book to read in January was in the comments section. Thanks.

This week has been crazy. Monday was a school holiday. Tuesday and Thursday turned out to be regular days, abet cold ones. Wednesday and Friday were weather induced non-school days. In case you don’t feel like counting, that’s 3 days without school during a typical school week.
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To keep with the 3 of things theme, most of this weeks Grimm tales involved the number 3.

​Not that wife.

She up and decides to kill her loving husband while cheating on him with a morally questionable ship’s captain.

The good news, her husband’s servant witnesses the murder and goes to rescue him — taking with him the snake leaves. Our poor hero has new life but now has to deal with the treachery of his wife.
The bad news, well it’s only bad for her. She gets what her actions earned her.
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In a way, this was a stark difference from plenty of Grimm tales. I was kind of viciously pleased to see an ending where the bad guy got caught and dealt with.

​From her palace window she sees three ugly sisters walking. She asks them if they will spin the yarn for her. The women agree so long as the girl invites them to the wedding.

A few days later, the girl presents her spun yarn to the queen and is told that the wedding will happen.

Now, in a lot of Grimm tales, you expect a twist here. A tale of sudden greed. A tale of going back on her word. And, radically, that doesn’t happen.
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The girl invites the three spinning sisters to her wedding, claiming them each as cousins. The prince is rather appalled at their appearance and, once he learns it is a result of spinning, forbids his wife from ever touching a spinning wheel again.

Are you laughing? 

​That girl got her dream come true happy ending and she did it without backstabbing anyone. Awesome!

Well...I still have to finish Week 4's tales. I'll circle back to this in my next post... The other 2 reads of the week are The 3 Little Men in the Woods and Hansel and Gretel. Guess I’ll deviate and post mid-week to catch up. With 3 days and no school, I’m behind on more than writing and reading.

​If you’d like to read previous posts, the direct links are below:
#GRIMMread2019 Week 1
#GRIMMread2019 Week 2
​#GRIMMread2019 Week 3

This week I was a little ahead of the game having already read Rapunzel. We read it again, just because. My darling daughters are still more concerned with what happens to Rapunzel’s twin children than anything else. I’ll reiterate that Grimm’s Rapunzel is nothing like Disney’s Tangled. (This is the link if you want to read the original Rapunzel post.)

The other tales for week 3:

• Little Brother and Little Sister
• The 12 Brothers
• The Pack of Ragamuffins

Without further ado, let’s get started…

​The little sister and her deer brother grow up in the woods. One day a king is hunting and follows the deer brother home. The sister opens the door expecting her deer brother and finds the king who immediately decides he has to marry her. Of course she says yes. I mean who wouldn’t say yes to marriage to a king after years of scrapping by caring for a deer?

But that is not the end of the tale. Nope. The evil witch/step-mother hears that the girl has married a king. This is not acceptable. Off the evil witch goes with her one-eyed daughter (Grimm takes a lot of effort to describe how ugly she is) to kill the new queen and claim her happiness for that of her ugly daughter.

And they succeed! They kill the young queen just after she’s had a baby son.

​All is not lost. The fake-queen does her best to pretend but the ghost or spirit or something of the real queen comes every night to nurse her son. The nanny tells the king about the nightly visits. He decides to check things out for himself, realizes the “visitor” is his real wife, and suddenly she’s back in the flesh.

​True love concurs death!

​I’m sure that’s what the kingdom’s newspapers all reported. The evil witch and her ugly daughter die. The deer turns back into the brother and they live happily together. I want to say “what a sweet ending,” but I just can’t. This is a rather gruesome tale about the lengths people will go to be mean. Good returning from death is quite biblical and a bit too farfetched.

Or maybe I’m simply projecting….

At any rate, mommy dearest can’t keep a secret and tells the youngest son. All of the boys escape into the woods and an enchanted house where they promise to kill any maiden they meet.

Dwell on that for a minute anyone who questions their father’s logic now! Murderous band of boys rampages through the woods — pretty sure that’s the headline in this kingdom.

Years pass and their beautiful sister grows up to have a kind heart and a star on her forehead. She eventually learns about her brothers and goes in search of them. She finds the youngest, who protects her by obtaining a promise from the other brothers “not to kill the first maiden they see.”

Strike that earlier headline. Obviously maidens had a ton of common sense and stayed way far away from these woods. You know, except for their sister…

Well, it's now a grand old family reunion. Sister and youngest brother keep house and all is good until she cuts the flowers in the yard. Then, poof, her dear brothers are turned into ravens.

Remember the enchanted house? That’s the reason given. Perfect explanation.

Sister has to spend 7 years to the exact second she cut the flowers in silence. Not even laughter is allowed. And, of course, a king discovers her living in the woods and marries her. Her mother-in-law is evil and poisons her loving husband’s vision to the point that the poor, silent sister is tied to a stake to burn.

The seven years ends right as the flames are licking themselves up her dress. Her brothers transform from ravens into themselves and save her. FYI: there’s literally no mention of these raven-form brothers hanging around during those seven years. They just magically appear and transform when the seven years are up.

Oh, and they all live happily together for the rest of their lives but the mother-in-law dies a miserable death. Personally, I want to know what happened to dear old mom and dad. Did sister and her 12 brothers ever go confront them? Or were they simply content to hang out in someone else’s kingdom while their’s rotted away? Maybe there’s a reason those male inheritance laws came into existence…

Someone was tippling when they wrote this tale…

None of it makes sense. Animals talking to humans and inanimate objects. It’s extremely surreal. I can’t even begin to explain the looks on my kids’ faces. Even with their huge imaginations, this story did not make sense.

Next week I’ll be reading Three Little Men in the Woods, Three Spinning Women, Hansel and Gretel, and The Three Snake-Leaves. I’m sensing a theme with three of those (palm to face).

If you’d like to read previous posts, the direct links are below:
#GRIMMread2019 Week 1
#GRIMMread2019 Week 2