Saturday, June 13, 2020

Voyage of the Basset

"Believing is Seeing..."

With everyone spending so much time inside and at the house, Arthur and I have plenty of time for reading! This summer we are exploring the boxes of books I have from my mother's collection of children's books.  Robin passed away before Arthur was born but the books she collected remain as a memory of her and her love of illustrated children's books.

I got out the first box of the summer and one of the first books to catch our eye was "Voyage of the Basset" by James C. Christensen.  Its a big beautiful book and a long story of a young girl's fantastic travels with her father on a ship manned by dwarves and gremlins. Using the H.M.S. Beagle as inspiration, Christensen weaves an involved story of discovery involving many mythical creatures like Minotaurs and even Medusa herself.

Arthur mainly looked at the pictures. Its probably a better book for a long period of bedtime readings.  He may revisit it but we have some many options it may only get a few additional glances at the wonderful illustrations.

Here are a few of Arthur's comments,

"A nine year old girl doesn’t care about what ordinary people think - she only cares about adventures and mysteries so she sets out on the HMS Basset - and discovery all kinds of fantastic creatures like mermaids, miniatures and dragons. Her father and mother are ancient history buffs and fuel her interest in all things magical. They all travel aboard the HSS Basset with a crew of dwarves and gremlins to preserve what’s left of the fantasy world of the imagination.

I think Medusa is weird and I have seen her in Roblox before - at least her head… it was one of the Admin Command games where you can make yourself Spongebob or Ironman.  

I saw the trolls and they were poorly dressed and looked weird."

Friday, June 5, 2020

Reading Narnia


I read the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis to Arthur for bedtime over the course of last year and now he is reading them himself.  Truth be told, I didn't finish the last part of The Last Battle. I tend to cry at the end of children's' books anyway and I knew what was coming so we just kind of trailed off towards the end and I found something else to start reading instead.

As Arthur got back into the series I did an interview with him to get his lead in to each of the stories and I have faithfully transcribed that here.  He was particularly interested in the "..." aspect of the overviews and wanted to encourage people to read the books by not giving too much away.  See how you think he did!


Most people thing the first book isn’t part of the series. Most people think its the Lion the Witch and the Wardrom. Its really the magicians Nephew. Its about a boy and a girl who discover that the boy’s uncle ha something he found from Atlantas that can teleport you to other worlds. They accidentally bring the “White Witch” into their worlds. They soon discover she isn’t nice and is evil and she casts a spell on her world the turns everything to stone.

When they put on the yellow rings to transport they also need to take a green ring but the first person didn’t bring a green ring and now both have two rings of both colors. When they get to the first space they forget who they are and they feel like they have been there forever.


IN this book, the LWW is about four brothers and sisters the oldest one is Peter who is 12 years old, Susan is 10 Edmund is 8 and Lucy is 6. They were sent away from London because of the war and the bombing air raids. They went to stay with their Uncle who is an old professor that lived in the heart of the country.

There they discover when they are placing hide and seek a workroom that leads to another dimension where animals talk and Aslan is the roller and king but there is also the evil white witch…


Shasta is a boy that lives with a fisherman that he thinks is his father but he isn’t. One day someone asks how much he could buy the boy for he left his horse loose ly tied and got away. It turns out he was a talking horse named Bree. Bree wants to return to his home in Narnia and he takes Shasta with him. When they are going trough the desert they meet up with a noble girl and her talking horse and they want to go to Narnia too. Then succeed getting there by going through villages and they are chased by Lions and hurt by something I forgot and when they went to get healed there was a healing place right at the bridge to Narnia. They used the Centaurs to move around fast. When they were healed the left the centaurs they made it to Narnia. …


Prince Caspian is about a boy who is a prince and when his father dies he made his uncle the king so prince Caspian has to fight for his crown. Prince Caspian left the kingdom in search of an army to help fight. Instead of finding the army he comes across two buys and two girls, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. 

Time works differently in Narnia - many centuries could go by in one day in our world. When they came across the four kids, Caspian realize they were the first rulers of Narnia and had beaten the White Witch to drive her out of the land...


In the beginning of the book Edmund and Lucy are staying with their cousin Eugene, who they don’t like. They see a picture in one of the rooms of a boat in the ocean and then the picture becomes the room and they are swimming in the ocean next to the boat. They get hoisted onto the boat of Prince Caspian.

Prince Caspian is searching for his father who traveled east in a boat many years ago and never returned. He has left his kingdom to his trusted advisors and gone off to discover what happened to his father…


Eugene and his friend Jill are getting chased by bullies and they run through a hedge and come out the other side on Aslan’s mountain where he sends them to rescue a prince that has been captured.

They told you of the time keeper giant, who is asleep underground and there is a hole world underground that they have to find….


(Final…) The Last Battle is about when all of the people that have ever visited Narnia come to help a Prince destroy an Ape and another person because they say Tash and Aslan are the same thing and they call it Tashlan. And then a bobcat goes in and he jumps out and couldn’t talk anymore… and all of the animals that could talk Aslan warns them that if they ever you talking against the world that they will be banned from the world...

The Chronicles of Narnia is a great bedtime series to read with your children. Though the last book has a tough ending, the stories are rich with adventure but still not too scary.  Once you have read them as nightime books they seem to have enough staying power for your kids to still want to read them on their own when they get older.


Friday, May 8, 2020

Music - Listening and Playing

I am a good bit older than my son so our musical tastes span several generations. I love hearing some of the newer music that he and his friends like... or at least what a 8 year old listens to, but I also try and expose him to older stuff that his mother and I like.

What does he like?  In addition to game music sound tracks, which he loves, he likes 21 Pilots, Panic at the Disco and even Billie Eilish.  When we use to ride around in cars I would listen to the Grateful Dead channel and SiriusXM's Lithium channel for all of your 90's favorites.

While we like listening to music, I also try and get him creating as well.  We have "played" Garageband for years, where he has an iPhone or an iPad and I have one and we play loops or beats together.  That's a lot of fun and pretty easy to do.

He started cello lessons when he was very young and eventually begged to stop. I didn't want him to hate music so I agreed with the idea that he will have to start lessons at school in the 3rd grade and that I might be able to help him with the guitar or get piano lessons.  He wants to play drums, which is also fine but we don't have the ability to do that right now... maybe someday.

I have been playing more guitar and bass with the work at home situation and I recently learned about a new brand of instruments called Harley Benton and I bought a bass and a guitar as a present to myself for my upcoming birthday.  I am SUPER EXCITED. I am tracking to shipping and hope they will be here soon.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Third Eye and Dragon Masters


We read a lot of books and now more than ever I find it comforting to read with my son.  He is reading books that I use to read to him when he was littler like the Dragon Masters series by Tracy West.  He also enjoyed the Unicorn Society but blazed through them pretty quickly.

At some point I will write about our off and on again experience with Harry Potter.

One of the best things that we do is read at night.  His mother said that I needed to let that go that he was too old for me to read to him at night.  That's when I pulled out the Common Sense media link"10 Reasons you should read aloud to Big Kids too." Since Common Sense is like a bible to her we didn't have any more issues readying at night.

Or we haven't had any issues but now we are reading some books that I read as a child and if we were over heard talking about astral travel and reincarnation I might need another Common Sense link! Our current books are by the famous walk-in, T. Lobsang Rompa.

I like these because they are an off-the-beaten path coming-of-age story that opens the world up to other cultures and religions in a way few books do.  We are reading The Third Eye right now and will move on to my favorite, Cave of the Ancients and then The Doctor from Lahasa.

Games I play with my son

Switch Chip
My son is going to be 9 this summer and with all of the shelter at home and a general love for computer games we have been spending a lot of time in world!

We started playing Minecraft years ago but now he likes Roblox more.  I would love to find some other games that are more about music and would like to play more on the Oculus Quest that I bought BP (Before the Pandemic.)

We are a Playstation family and event though the PS5 is coming out soon, Arthur got a PS4 Pro from his grandmother for Christmas.  He also got a Nintendo Switch, which I questioned but he seems to like it.

His primary game device is a iPad Pro 12" that I gave him when I got a new smaller one this year.   We mainly play Roblox now. I don't like it as much as Minecraft because the graphics seem less refined and the games are very repetitive but he likes the variety and its easier to play with his friends.

Voyage of the Basset

"Believing is Seeing..." With everyone spending so much time inside and at the house, Arthur and I have plenty of time for reading...