The Trumpet of the Swan

I am horrible about calendars. No, really. I tend to put everything into my head and then usually remember the night before. It's amazing I ever made decent grades in school. Despite the fact that we have book club every other week I still have those weeks were I look at the calendar and think, again? So soon? Then we run out and get the book, drop all other assignments and spend the whole day in our pajamas, eating popcorn, rolled up in blankets, and reading. Hmmmm, maybe I subconsciously do it on purpose ;)

This week was The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. A story of a swan without a voice. I remember reading this book as a kid and liking only certain aspects of it. I remembered the swan breaking a window to get a trumpet. I remembered him playing his trumpet in front of a swan boat and staying in a hotel. That was about it. After reading it to my kids I realized why I couldn't remember much more. I was too young when I read it. The book has a lot of passages where the cob (male swan) is making a speech and for a five year old they go on a little long. There are also a lot of little facts that sort of threw the five year old off. My seven and nine year old however loved it and got the humour. As an adult I enjoyed the antics, the problems, and the little quirks (the arithmetic lesson and the boy Applegate being two). I think John Updike reviewed it best,
 "While not quite so sprightly as Stuart Little and less rich in personalities and incident than Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan has superior qualities of its own; it is the most spacious and serene of the three, the one most imbued with the author's sense of the precious instinctual heritage represented by wild nature".
So much for the review, now on to the activites. The woman hosting this week had a basket of plastic eggs that each child got to draw from. They then went around in a circle and got to break their egg and answer the question inside. She then had a 'slate board' or white construction paper glued to black construction paper with two holes punched atop and threaded with yarn. The kids took a crayon and had to write their names with their feet and put the slates over their necks. They then got to hear and see a real trumpet and each got their own little toy trumpet. They divided into swan families by answering questions; those who play a musical instrument to the left, others to the right....and so forth until they were about evenly divided. The first group would use the trumpet to call to the other group and back and forth until they were loud and hungry. Overall, the kids had a blast and I got to listen to the little tweets of toy trumpets all the way home.