Lexi, The Word Wrangler

My grandsons were so excited to have their new baby sister, Lexi, come home!  I really enjoyed thinking up fun things to do with them so their Mommy could rest.  Googling around, I found a fun picture book about another Lexi (but with an E on the end)!

My five-year-old grandson is just starting to read (he loves the beginner set of Bob Books), and I knew when I read the description that we had to get Lexie the Word Wrangler by Rebecca Van Slyke (with illustrations by Jessie Harland).

Lexie is the best wrangler west of the Mississippi—word wrangler, that is. She watches over baby letters while they grow into words and ties shorter words together into longer ones; she herds words into sentences, hitches sentences together, and pens them all in to tell a story. But lately, something seems off at the ranch. First the D goes missing from her bandana, leaving her with a banana to tie around her neck, and soon afterward every S-T-A-R in the sky turns into R-A-T-S. There’s no doubt about it—there’s a word rustler causing this ruckus, and Lexie plans to track him down . . . even if it means riding her horse through the sticky icing of a desert that’s suddenly become a giant dessert.

The book quickly arrived in the mail. My grandson loved the humor and wordplay! After we'd read it a couple of times, we got out his magnetic alphabet letters and did some wrangling ourselves on his chalkboard! 

Made for quite a fun afternoon!  And his Mama had a nice nap.  :)

I highly recommend this amusing book for ages 5-8.  Perfect for a reluctant or enthusiastic reader!

FAMILY READ ALOUD: LITTLE BRITCHES

“Ralph Moody's books should be read aloud in every family circle in America” — Sterling North.


This treasure is not to be missed!  During a recent stay at my sister's house, my 10- and 12-year old nephew and niece told me I had to read and review one of their family's favorite read alouds, LITTLE BRITCHES, by Ralph Moody, for my blog.  Inspired by their excitement (and the fact that another of my blog readers had also recommended this book), I started it immediately.

LITTLE BRITCHES: Father and I Were Ranchers, is the recounting -- by a boy -- of simpler times living on a ranch in Colorado in the early 1900's; but like the LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE books, simpler doesn't mean easier.  The tremendous difficulties this family faced and overcame are unfathomable by today's modern standards, but weren't all that out of the ordinary for families living out West a hundred years ago!

Denver & RioGrande Railroad

The book's author and main character, Ralph Moody, was the second of six children born in New Hampshire to Charles and Mary Moody.  The story begins in 1906, when Ralph is eight. His family buys a small ranch (sight unseen) in Colorado, hoping the dry climate will ease the condition of the father's tuberculosis. The farmhouse is in such bad shambles that Charles and Ralph are forced to spend many days scavenging for materials.  While they make repairs, the rest of the family lives in a Denver hotel. On the day the family finally takes the train to their new home, their two horses are frightened away by coyotes and become entangled on a railway trestle. So begin the adventures and life lessons that Ralph recalls more than forty years later.

The main theme of the book is the deep love and trust between a father and son, with some humor, lots of hard work, school mischief, a tornado, horses, cowboys, and roundups thrown in. (Boys, especially, will love this book.)

Colorado roundup

A true hero, Ralph is not perfect, and is always learning from his mistakes.  You can feel the joy in Moody's retelling of his childhood days, as well as the ache in his heart when recalls his patient father..."I wish I knew how Father was able to say things so as to make you remember every word of it.  If I could remember everything the way I remember the things Father told me, maybe I could be as smart a man as he was."

I was riveted throughout the whole book and shed tears at the end. (Don't worry, the gripping story continues in the next book of the series: MAN OF THE FAMILY). I loved LITTLE BRITCHES because without being overly sentimental, it relates the gallantry, love, and perseverance of families who settled some of the most challenging frontiers of our country.

"My goal in writing is to leave a record of the rural way of life in this country during the early part of the 20th century, and to point up the values of the era which I feel that we, as a people, are letting slip away from us." -Ralph Owen Moody


Source for this post: Littleton History.

Go to Beautiful Feet Books for information about all the books in the series, for 3rd grade and up.  (Note about the language:  the cowboys and some of the ranchers use a bit of rough language that is realistic to the time, but which can easily be edited, if you're not comfortable with that during family read aloud time.)