Finished THE WHITE MOUNTAINS by John Christopher

Pretty good "after the apocalypse" sci fi for children.  The apocalypse in this case was the invasion about a hundred or more years ago by alien machines called Tripods, hence the name of the series.  Three children head out for the "white mountains" (Alps or Pyranees), two from England and one from France in search of freedom from the Tripods and, perhaps, resistance to them.  This book recounts their adventurous journey.  A little mundane for an adult sci fi reader's taste, but hopefully it will interest Gabriel.  Teaching is always easier with a book the child(ren) is (are) interested in.



I have now started The Hobbit.  I know, I know.  I taught it to at least one class all 34 years I taught and I practically know it by heart.  But this is a different edition that I am used to.  I had been afraid, since it calls itself "revised" that lots of good part might be left out, but so far, that is not true.  I think the cockney accent of the trolls has been toned down a bit.  My students had a really hard time figuring out what they were saying, and I think this edition is a bit easier, though still somewhat cockney.  That is the only difference I have found so far.  So, I am marking up my copy of this edition as I go (as I did the other books I will read with him) which takes a bit longer.  I'm not even sure we will get to this book this summer--it always took me from spring break until summer to teach it and sometimes we didn't finish (depending how much we were interrupted for testing and assemblies, etc.)  But, my students were terrible about doing homework, so all I ever assigned was outside reading with the supervision of parents (kids with more involved parents did a lot more reading which was, of course, good for them and kids without could still do well in my class by paying close attention during class time.)  Gabriel, on the other had, will do his homework--his mom will see to it!  No worries there.



This is a picture of the 1965 edition.  I can't even find a publication date on the book I have and can't find it in any of the editions included on Goodreads...  This is about as close as I can come, but...NOT.