All Those Secrets of the World

In November we rowed All Those Secrets of the World and talked about Veterans Day. This book is out of print, but I was able to get a used copy fairly cheaply and easily and really felt it was worth it. Jane Yolen based this book on her own experience of when her father went off to war.

Jack was stunned to find out that he had sent his own dad off to a war--and we even had pictures. "I thought he went to the desert!" was his reaction. Being medical in the military is kind of a different category, so we never mentioned anything about a war since Jack was only three at the time.

We learned a lot about family history with this book. Two of his great-grandfathers served in World War II--my mom's dad on the left and Jay's mom's dad on the right.

One day my grandma told him all about life back home when four of her six brothers were away at war. She was about 12 or 13 at the time--about when this picture of her and her twin sister was taken. I am pretty sure the thing Jack will always remember is that she accidentally broke her dad's thumb when she threw some hay into the loft and didn't know he was there. Jack looked at her like he thought she was some kind of 81 year-old ninja, out breaking appendages with a flick of some straw.

We talked about horizon lines and tried out watercolor pencils for the first time.

The story takes place near the Chesapeake Bay, so we talked about estuaries. I used this site to find pictures of different animals in the Chesapeake Bay and we put their pictures where they would live in the bay.

We also listened to music from the 1940s and tied in our current artist study (Norman Rockwell) with a discussion of "Homecoming."

If you can find this one, you really should read it. It is very sweet and I teared up at the end when her dad comes home every. single. time. It's good.