Hosted this week by Janice Campbell. Great theme. I think our kids do most of their reading in summer too.

I’m delighted to host the June 22, 2010 edition of Carnival of Homeschooling! It may be summer, but homeschoolers never stop thinking and learning. To celebrate the season, let’s imagine that we’re at a lovely beach with waves breaking, a gentle breeze blowing, and palm trees rustling. Now…. relax and read while your dear children build sand castles! Read more…

Hosted this week by Janice Campbell. Great theme. I think our kids do most of their reading in summer too.

I’m delighted to host the June 22, 2010 edition of Carnival of Homeschooling! It may be summer, but homeschoolers never stop thinking and learning. To celebrate the season, let’s imagine that we’re at a lovely beach with waves breaking, a gentle breeze blowing, and palm trees rustling. Now…. relax and read while your dear children build sand castles! Read more…

National Review Online has a piece about Sharron Angle – a homeschooling pioneer from Nevada that’s the GOP candidate for senate. There’s a lot about her homeschooling roots and struggle for parental rights that first thrust her into politics. She started homeschooling after her son “failed Kindergarten”:

“After he failed kindergarten, I put him back in for that second year and he was completely demoralized,” Angle explains. “What I had was a six-year-old dropout. I knew that I needed to do something different for this kid, to kind of put him back on his wheels and get him started again. I decided to homeschool him.”

As other parents joined her in homeschooling, they finally ran up against a flexible interpretation of Nevada homeschool law.

“A judge said, ‘I know it’s the law that you can homeschool in Nevada, but the law should be that you can’t, unless you live more than 50 miles away from the nearest school,’” Angle says, shaking her head at the memory. “At that point, I realized that the government had interfered with my family. It was kind of like a mother bear and her cubs: Don’t get between me and my cubs, or you’ve got trouble.”

Read more…
Hat tip: Chris Good

National Review Online has a piece about Sharron Angle – a homeschooling pioneer from Nevada that’s the GOP candidate for senate. There’s a lot about her homeschooling roots and struggle for parental rights that first thrust her into politics. She started homeschooling after her son “failed Kindergarten”:

“After he failed kindergarten, I put him back in for that second year and he was completely demoralized,” Angle explains. “What I had was a six-year-old dropout. I knew that I needed to do something different for this kid, to kind of put him back on his wheels and get him started again. I decided to homeschool him.”

As other parents joined her in homeschooling, they finally ran up against a flexible interpretation of Nevada homeschool law.

“A judge said, ‘I know it’s the law that you can homeschool in Nevada, but the law should be that you can’t, unless you live more than 50 miles away from the nearest school,’” Angle says, shaking her head at the memory. “At that point, I realized that the government had interfered with my family. It was kind of like a mother bear and her cubs: Don’t get between me and my cubs, or you’ve got trouble.”

Read more…
Hat tip: Chris Good

Queen Amaryllis of the Oakenfolk is a 350-year-old faery on her deathbed.  It is there she infuses her remaining magic to Linden, the youngest faery of the folk and commissions her with a vital task: to seek out as ambassador another group of faeries to help restore their dwindling magic.  Their loss of magic is all do to a faery named Jasmine, who cast a spell on the Oakenfolk so they would no longer need to take human mates to continue their population, but would repopulate themselves with eggs.  But in doing so it spent their magic, and now they need it back if they are to survive.  But this task is not an easy one.  Though she has gained the queen’s magic, Linden must leave her safe haven and face the dangers of the world.  She does gain an unlikely ally, a teenager named Timothy, and together the duo work towards saving the Oakenfolk.
Discovering a faery and believing her story wasn’t too far-fetched for Timothy.  He had suspected something fishy at his cousin’s place when he went there after a two-week suspension from school.  But believing in Linden was just the first step.  Timothy then learns of others being faeries, and they are in fact all around him.  Some have good intentions, others not.  And, it seems an evil empress is ruling the faery world.  Who can be trusted, and how can Linden and Timothy convince the good faeries to help?
I really enjoyed this clever fantasy.  It was well plotted and had nice twists I wasn’t expecting.  It blends the fairy world with the modern world nicely, and explores such topics as trust, faith, family, friendships, traditions, and loyalties.  Regarding faith, Timothy goes through questioning of his own.  A child of missionary parents, he has come to a path in his life where he is unsure of his own beliefs.  He goes through a soul-searching time as he embarks on the quest with Linden.  His character goes through quite a growth process as the story progresses.

“I guess I just…some beliefs make more sense to me than others.  I don’t want to ever hide from the truth, you know?  I want to know how things really are.”  Owen Jenkins leaned forward earnestly.  “Not a thing wrong with that, ” he said.  “To look at the world as it is, study it with the mind God’s given you, and believe: That’s faith.  But to hide from hard facts, or hide them from others, because you’re afraid of where they might lead you…” He sat back again.  “That’s just ignorance.”
“So if I’m questioning by beliefs.. you think that’s actually  good?
Owen Jenkins peered at him from beneath his bushy brows. “Better than never questioning them? I’d say so.  Nut you can’t go on questioning forever.  Sometimes you’re going to have to stake your reputation, maybe even your life, on what you believe.  And when that moment comes…then you’ll know where you really stand.”

I think Wayfarer will appeal to a wide range of readers – young old, male, female, fantasy, and adventure fans.  It’s not often a read a book that is so versatile, and I think this one is just so – a very enjoyable story.

Author’s website:
http://www.rj-anderson.com/

Note: the prequel to Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book for this review.

Here are the participating bloggers on this book tour: Whispers of Dawn, The Book Cellar, The Hungry Readers, My Own Little Corner of the World, KidzBookBuzz.com, Reading is My Superpower, Book Crumbs, Becky’s Book Reviews, Fireside Musings, A Christian Worldview of Fiction, Homeschool Book Buzz, Homespun Light, Book Review Maniac

Queen Amaryllis of the Oakenfolk is a 350-year-old faery on her deathbed.  It is there she infuses her remaining magic to Linden, the youngest faery of the folk and commissions her with a vital task: to seek out as ambassador another group of faeries to help restore their dwindling magic.  Their loss of magic is all do to a faery named Jasmine, who cast a spell on the Oakenfolk so they would no longer need to take human mates to continue their population, but would repopulate themselves with eggs.  But in doing so it spent their magic, and now they need it back if they are to survive.  But this task is not an easy one.  Though she has gained the queen’s magic, Linden must leave her safe haven and face the dangers of the world.  She does gain an unlikely ally, a teenager named Timothy, and together the duo work towards saving the Oakenfolk.
Discovering a faery and believing her story wasn’t too far-fetched for Timothy.  He had suspected something fishy at his cousin’s place when he went there after a two-week suspension from school.  But believing in Linden was just the first step.  Timothy then learns of others being faeries, and they are in fact all around him.  Some have good intentions, others not.  And, it seems an evil empress is ruling the faery world.  Who can be trusted, and how can Linden and Timothy convince the good faeries to help?
I really enjoyed this clever fantasy.  It was well plotted and had nice twists I wasn’t expecting.  It blends the fairy world with the modern world nicely, and explores such topics as trust, faith, family, friendships, traditions, and loyalties.  Regarding faith, Timothy goes through questioning of his own.  A child of missionary parents, he has come to a path in his life where he is unsure of his own beliefs.  He goes through a soul-searching time as he embarks on the quest with Linden.  His character goes through quite a growth process as the story progresses.

“I guess I just…some beliefs make more sense to me than others.  I don’t want to ever hide from the truth, you know?  I want to know how things really are.”  Owen Jenkins leaned forward earnestly.  “Not a thing wrong with that, ” he said.  “To look at the world as it is, study it with the mind God’s given you, and believe: That’s faith.  But to hide from hard facts, or hide them from others, because you’re afraid of where they might lead you…” He sat back again.  “That’s just ignorance.”
“So if I’m questioning by beliefs.. you think that’s actually  good?
Owen Jenkins peered at him from beneath his bushy brows. “Better than never questioning them? I’d say so.  Nut you can’t go on questioning forever.  Sometimes you’re going to have to stake your reputation, maybe even your life, on what you believe.  And when that moment comes…then you’ll know where you really stand.”

I think Wayfarer will appeal to a wide range of readers – young old, male, female, fantasy, and adventure fans.  It’s not often a read a book that is so versatile, and I think this one is just so – a very enjoyable story.

Author’s website:
http://www.rj-anderson.com/

Note: the prequel to Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book for this review.

Here are the participating bloggers on this book tour: Whispers of Dawn, The Book Cellar, The Hungry Readers, My Own Little Corner of the World, KidzBookBuzz.com, Reading is My Superpower, Book Crumbs, Becky’s Book Reviews, Fireside Musings, A Christian Worldview of Fiction, Homeschool Book Buzz, Homespun Light, Book Review Maniac

Carnival of Homeschooling is hosted this week at The Informed Parent.

“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” -L. M. Montgomery Read more…

The Carnival of Homeschooling is hosted by Homeschooled twins this week. Sorry, I’m a few days late in posting this because we were on vacation without computer.

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. Compiling this carnival has been a welcome break from the remodeling we are doing. Homeschooling and writing about homeschoolers is so soothing to me compared to making all the choices about countertops, granite, faucets etc, that I have been making.

I am truly thankful that I scheduled the remodeling to be done from May to August. I can’t imagine being stuck in the house with remodeling during winter. My brain is so fried by all the decorating choices I have been making that I could not come up with a theme for this carnival, so instead of having a theme, I broke the posts up into topics and have placed pics of my delightful offspring at random spots within the copy. We start this topic off with posts that recap this last school year. Read more…

The 331st edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling is hosted this week at No Fighting, No Biting! Pictures and stories of dance recitals are interspersed among the contributed homeschooling posts.

At the end of May and beginning of June you can’t miss being invited to a music or dance recital. The recital is the culmination of a year or decade of work in one of the arts and many homeschoolers are part of the crowd in the audience as well as the talent up on stage. Our children are in the midst of recital mania with the girl’s ballet recital last week (actually 3 shows) and piano later this week. Read more…

ABC News has aired another news report featuring “Radical Unschooling” apparently after enjoying the attention the last report garnered. I don’t disparage anyone for their educational choices, but ABC is focusing on the extremes like a tabloid gossip sheet.