>>-My Father's Dragon
>
>Author is a family friend (lol I know what you're thinking).
>We stayed in her house and she read it to them. She's got a
>barn which she calls the little people's barn because she
>built out a whole little village inside of it. So much fun
>for the kids.

I knew those books were written starting in the late '40s. Sounds like a great experience for the kids, though.


>Whole other topic, but what do you think of minecraft?

I simply don't get the appeal.

I guess in some ways it should be good for problem-solving, setting goals and figuring out how to achieve them. But it usually seems to devolve into running around smashing things.

>>One of the things I like to do is compare the same story as
>>told in various mediums...

>We did that with Harry Potter, and it was great just watching
>them complain about how much was left out of the movies. Sure
>they still enjoyed them, but I think it was a quick lesson on
>the value of books.

It's *always* a lesson in the value of books. Unless Hayao Miyazaki made a movie out of it.
I think the best success in this area was The Wind in the Willows. We listened to a great audiobook, read the comic adaptation, and watched three different movie versions (and didn't even get to the Disney one.)
Also good was the Roald Dahl books, bringing into the conversation why Dahl didn't like any of the movies that came out while he was alive. (And if you listen to the Charlie audiobooks, they're narrated by Eric Idle and are superb.)


>How do you feel about audiobooks in general. They actually
>were able to bring my son and daughter together on reading
>where before my son (younger) was starting to despise all the
>time his sister was spending reading. But he's still not
>quite about the reading on his own thing and I wonder if
>audiobooks could actually be stifling that.

I think they've been awesome for us and have spurred the kids toward creative reading choices instead of Warriors or Captain Underpants or Rainbow Fairies or whatever other crap.
One problem is that we've been listening to novels since they were in kindergarten (or before) so there's been a lag of sorts between the kinds of stories they were capable of understanding and the kinds of stories they are capable of reading on their own. We'd still read picture books or comics (still read a lot of comics, actually) together at bedtime, so they weren't being deprived of that stuff.
The other problem, of course, is that they don't get the musical education in the car that I got as a kid and would like them to get. We have other ways of working on that, though.

Other choices I forgot to mention:

-Shiloh (recent classic)
-Rascal (old classic I never read as a kid)
-The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place (current series, also very good)