Hobbit houses

Leo's dad is reading him The Hobbit; both of them are enjoying it immensely.  There is something special about reading a favorite childbood book with your own child.  I'm not a Tolkien fan myself (I'll be reading the Narnia books to the kids, thank you), but I'll make an exception for The Hobbit:  I would love to live in a hobbit house.  This one, built to house someone's collection of Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, is my favorite.  Check out the interior shots of the round door, the "butterfly" window, the fireplace, and the library.

While googling "hobbit house" I turned up a reference to a hobbit house practically in our own background.  The kids and I went looking for it at the Winkler Botanical Preserve in Alexandria, VA this morning.  I had never even heard of the place, but I'm so glad we stumbled on it.  There was a network of wooded trails; a stream, waterfalls, and a lake; a Craftsman-style building called the Catherine Lodge; and a mysterious series of book-boxes at strategic points along the trail, each inscribed with a single letter.  Our real-life adventure seems to have criss-crossed with someone else's!  What could be going on at the Winkler Botanical Preserve?

Oh, we also found an abandoned hobbit house, just Milly's size (she went in).  It was nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

School's out, or A scary magical adventure

Our last-day-of-school tradition involves a trip to the bookstore to sign up for the summer reading program (we signed up for the one at the public library already) and pick out a brand new book. This year Leo, who has always liked realistic fiction (think Andrew Clements), surprised me by wanting what he described as "scary magical adventure books." Scary? That didn't sound like Leo. It did, however, sound like some of his friends. Fortunately there were a lot of scary (but maybe not too scary) magical adventure books to choose from, and in no time he had acquired a tall stack and was inspecting them before deciding which one to buy. He decided on 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson, on the strength (I think) of its gorgeous green cover. He hasn't read it yet.

I wanted to show you a picture of the stack of books in question (so shiny!), but a bookseller politely informed me that photography was prohibited in the store. Company policy. To keep customers from buying the books online or checking them out of the library, maybe? I was mortified, apologetic, defensive, and finally understanding, if also unconvinced. Anyway, before I photograph the stack of scary magical adventure books we did check out of the library (ahem), please let me know what you would recommend in that genre, for an almost-9-year-old boy going on his very first one.

[Updated to add: Charlotte is looking for 70s-era fantasy books for a nine-year-old girl today.  I am partial to the 70s myself, having done some growing-up during them; and I think fantasy books cross over gender (and time) well.  Check out her recommendations!]

Anticipating my Thirteenth Child

Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child (Scholastic, 2009) has been on my to-read list since early spring, when I first heard it described as Little House on the Prairie meets Harry Potter.  Since then, I've heard it described as a lot of other, more problematic things, primarily due to Wrede's decision to eliminate Native Americans from the North American ("Columbian") continent: there are mammoths and other megafauna instead.  [Pause.]  A copy is waiting for me on the hold shelf at the library; I'm anxious to read it, if not for the same reasons I had been, and judge for myself.

Reviews by Jo Walton at Tor.com (many comments), Charlotte's Library (I heard it here first), and A Fuse #8 Production (Review of the Day).

Have you read it yet?  If not, does this controversy make it more or less likely that you will?

Wee Free Men

I am whiling away my time on the hold list for Terry Pratchett's Nation (I've had it on hold since it was reviewed in the Washington Post Book World last fall; I'm now at number 31 on the list) by reading The Illustrated Wee Free Men: A Story of Discworld, illustrated by Stephen Player (HarperCollins, 2008).  I first read The Wee Free Men in a mass market paperback edition, and it's somewhat disconcerting to be rereading it in an oversized one, with glossy pages and full-color illustrations throughout.  But Tiffany is how I had imagined her, and I love the occasional gatefolds that show (for example) Tiffany stepping through the arch and into the snow.  But I would still rather be reading Nation.  Should I just buy it already?