Lightning Lit grade 8 - two titles I am unfamiliar with?

[Hoggirl]

Can someone tell me about A Day of Pleasure and My Family and Other Animals? I am not familiar with these books. If you have used this program did your dc enjoy them?

[MIch elle]

My Family and Other Animals : http://www.penguinreaders.com/downloads/9780582416833.pdf

If you join (it's free) you can get the answers:

http://www.penguinreaders.com/pr/resources/level_3.html

[Lori D.]

Similarly, we had never heard of either of those titles before doing LL8 -- and both were great!

A Day of Pleasure
is a series of short vingettes or antecdotes by the author Isaac Singer about what life was like growing up in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw Poland in the years just before World War I. His father was a rabbi, but leaned somewhat towards superstition and Jewish mysticism, while his mother was the daughter of a very scientific/rational rabbi. Even as a child, you see Isaac Singer was very poetic and drawn towards the fantastical almost fairytale aspects of the Jewish literary tradition. The book is not long or difficult, is beautifully written, and contains wonderful portraits of a wide variety of the people who lived within Isaac Singer's childhood. Our boys were fascinated by it, and I would call A Day of Pleasure an "unexpected pleasure of a book to read." :)


My Family and Other Animals
reminded a *lot* of All Creatures Great and Small (used in LL7). Our boys thought this book was almost as hilarious as All Creatures. My Family is also autobiographical boyhood antecdotes, of an English boy, the youngest of 4 siblings, whose family lives on a small Greek island for several years during the 1930s. Humorous sketches of each family member, plus some of the local island inhabitants, and the various funny misadventures which ensue. There are a very few four-letter words (d***), and the teenage sister seems obsessed with getting a boyfriend -- but it's all on the same level of as All Creatures.

Enjoy! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[Zoraida]

My Family and Other Animals was on Masterpiece Theater a year or two ago. It was about a boy who collected a wide variety of animals. He has an eccentric family and eccentric guests come to stay at the family's villa. It was very humorous and enjoyable.

Blessings

Zoraida

[Hoggirl]

I am glad to know that these books were well-liked and have boys as main characters.

[Jen R]

We are using LL this year and my dd loves it. I have to laugh because the student binder is quite large and when I suggested she break it down into smaller sets she said that she likes the binder big like that. As far as the two books, we haven't read My Family and Other Animals yet but we loved A Day of Pleasure. Our only complaint - we wanted it to be longer!

[mooooom]

My Family and Other Animals. It is so well done! Doesn't follow the book exactly - they have to change the timeline a bit to make it fit, but we all thought it was marvelous, quick paced and hysterically funny.

I had my kids write papers comparing the book and movie, and it had to be the best piece of writing they did that year.