Working on encouraging my children to read, I discovered Bartleby. It is a free online reference for proverbs, phrases or verses found in classics, literature and nonfiction.
This is where they can go to for explainations. For example, if they come across the proverb, "If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad will go to the mountain", and they do not understand it, they are less likely to continue with the book, right?
Moreover many free online story books from public domains that I have suggested are written in ways that are not easy to comprehend. So, if they come across one, they can click on "Fiction" to locate the phrase they are looking up. Here is a very good example of a passage from a fable by Aesop:
The Cock and the Pearl
A COCK was once strutting up and down the farmyard among the hens when suddenly he espied something shining amid the straw. “Ho! ho!” quoth he, “that’s for me,” and soon rooted it out from beneath the straw. What did it turn out to be but a Pearl that by some chance had been lost in the yard? “You may be a treasure,” quoth Master Cock, “to men that prize you, but for me I would rather have a single barley-corn than a peck of pearls.”
This is how it is interpreted on Bartley: “PRECIOUS THINGS ARE FOR THOSE THAT CAN PRIZE THEM.”
There are many more useful links on this website. I hope they will see be able to see the treasures that I see there.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment