Freak the Mighty

I've discovered something about my daughter Ellie. She likes scary stories. A friend recently lent us a scary story called Coraline, and Ellie sat through it well even though it was more advanced than the books we usually read.

Ellie has had less patience for reading with me, so I decided to take advantage of my new insight. We read The Monkey's Paw, which is really really advanced. I'm not kidding; there were like 8 words I had to look up in the dictionary myself to explain them to her. Even Linda didn't know the meaning of about half of the words I had to look up.

We are currently reading Freak the Mighty. Linda had it. She has shelves of just really excellent young adult and children's books. I had read this one, but I'd forgotten just how good it is. I'm really impressed. The language is so normal, I don't even feel like I'm reading a book; I'm just telling a story, just talking. Ellie is liking it, and she hasn't even complained that there aren't any pictures.

Tidbits

Linda is still enjoying her new walker. It's the end of semester, and things are getting busy. We had a party (for computer geeks) last night, but it was fun. Somehow geeks seem to attract cool spouses, so there were people for Linda to talk to who didn't want to mention computers. There are lots of social things coming up in the next two weeks. Then the social environment turns to dust. It happens every vacation period, so we're expecting it.