Of Plymoth Plantation

I have looked at this book for several years and finally decided to order it, just in time for Thanksgiving. My goal was for our family to have this read by the big day. For those of you not familiar with Of Plymouth Plantation, it the historical account of the Plymouth Settlement by William Bradford. When we sat down to read it the first night I explained to the children that the language would be challenging for them because of when it was written. If they did not know a word, I wanted them to ask. If they did not understand something, I wanted them to question it.

Well, they did as I asked and it took us an hour and a half to read 7 pages. Whew! They were paying attention. The hard thing was that each sentence is a paragraph long so there is not a natural stopping point to define a word. By the time we reached the end of the sentence there were twenty other words that needed explained. It has been a week and we are now on page 27. There have even been three or four words that have stumped me! We are reading this book with the aid of dictionary.com! I am guessing that we won't have it finished by Thanksgiving. Maybe by Thanksgiving 2008.

On a side note, I am amazed at the language of the literature. For all our education and technology, our command of English pales in comparison to previous generations. We are listening to the unabridged version of The Swiss Family Robinson and it is the same way. It is a feast for mind to just listen to the vocabulary.