Extra Credit

Luke loves listening to stories on cd and being read to.  He is in the middle of 3 books at the moment, long books and he keeps up with all of them.  One, Aliens on a Rampage, I read to him at bedtime while Randy is away.  They usually read Lord of the Rings.  We are near the end and hope to finish before Randy gets home tomorrow.  It's a fun book about a bed and breakfast outside of Bellingham that hosts aliens on vacation.  The first book in the series was Aliens on Vacation (we read that this summer).  It's laugh out loud fun.  Not the greatest for bedtime :)

In the car we are on our 5th Andrew Clements book and nearing the end of it.  It's called Extra Credit.  It's about how this 6th grade American girl is in jeopardy of being held back because she doesn't like school or doing her homework so she has to take on an extra credit penpal project to make up some work she has missed.  She sends a letter to a small village north of Kabul, Afghanistan and since the smartest kid in the school is a boy it is decided that his sister should write back and he should help her.  This morning we were listening and it was really intense.  While walking home from school he decided to take a short cut and got grabbed by a man in a turban (lucky for him not a Taliban) who found the letter with American stamps on it and went off on the boy telling him how American was ruining their traditional values, girls shouldn't be allowed to go to school, America is poising their country and killing their people.  Luke was so still and so quiet I thought he was asleep.  When we got to school and I turned it off I asked if he was listening and he said, "yes, I was listening very hard!".  I don't think our kids really understand when we tell them they are lucky.

I've been thinking a lot about Malala. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/opinion/kristof-her-crime-was-loving-schools.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0