OK, KC

We're having a little difficulty figuring out which member of the KC clan won One Beetle Too Many. I have the original comment that the winner posted, and it has information on it that can help me confirm who it is. Unfortunately, it's nothing as straightforward as name or email address. But if the people who think they may be the winners can please post comments here, I can see who matches up with what I already have.

You can post here as many times as you need to, if you're not sure which username you may have used.

And I'm still hoping to hear from prlgl and Linda C. Please send your mailing info to deborah @ 2ds dot org

Where are all me lovely lads and lassies?

I'm mailing out the giveaway books, as well as the new issues of the mag! Still waiting on a few mailing addresses from some lovely winners. Please forgive me if you already sent them, but I can't seem to find addies for the following winners (and I wasn't able to contact them via email):

KC, for One Beetle Too Many

Prlgl, for 365 Ways...

Linda C., for the Berlitz Spanish verb book

Please drop me a line privately with your mailing info, and I'll get these prizes right out to you! My email: deborah @ 2ds dot org

The things I'll do for the people I love

Having written at least some of, read, reread, proofread, and galley-proofed this new issue, the last thing I feel like doing is giving it another glance. But for you, o cool and groovy reader, I will summarize the articles contained therein, so that ye may decide if they are worth your hard-earned buckaroos.

We have letters, hooray! Including some actual hate mail. Haven't had any of that for a while. Helps me keep it real.

Also, letters from the editor. The Daily Mail felt my wrath (oh, yeah, they were scared), as did ABC News (ditto).

Some of the ranting in "Here We Go Again" was no fun at all for me, especially the stuff about Robin West's horrifying anti-homeschooling article. But I thought it needed saying, plus once I start raving it's hard to stop.

Just to balance that out, we had some amazing overachievers in "Hot Chocolate!", including several young and brilliant individuals plus the entire homeschooling population of New Hampshire.

Brandy Bergenstock, a frequent contributor, gave us an intriguing article about the importance of letting our children fail now and then, painful though it is.

Sue Landsman, a terrific humor writer, wrote "Until We Reach the Sea," a short piece that is both funny and touching.

The Bitter Homeschooler (remember her?) spouted off about how sick she is of people who start apologizing all over the place when they hear that she homeschools. This is one of the free-to-read articles.

Three short pieces about the home education situation in England -- a press release from one of the fighters on the front, an interview with a Northern Ireland home edder, and some letters from English home edders about what their choice means to them.

Home Scholars has a lovely selection of nonfiction, poetry, and comics.

I took a trip down memory lane and put together some ideas that worked for me about enjoying homeschooling in the early years.

The hilariously sweet Nancy Gauvreau shared more of her family's homeschooling adventures in "Homeschooling Is Our Way." This is a great article -- not just a day in the life, though we always love those, but inspiration and honesty from someone who has tried both school and homeschool, and who is always a delight to hear from.

For those readers who remember Tina Smith, lone homeschooler in the Netherlands Antilles, we have an update on her legal battle.

Teenaged homeschooler Sjanna Liptak offers advice and insight about homeschooling and the college admissions process.

Yours truly finally wrote that article she's been working on about teaching the Bible for cultural literacy. I hope that the ideas I offer may be of some value to every homeschooler, regardless of philosophy. Plus there's Legos. Erm, "bricks." This one’s also free to read.

Michelle Dalrymple offers readers the benefit of her own experience with homeschooling a child struggling with dysgraphia.

And there are product reviews!

Pretty packed, if I do say so.

And now I'd better get to work mailing it out.

Finally...

First: the winner of the last giveaway is...

K.C.! Who has to share with the Sunshine Band! If you got that joke, you're over 40!

Congrats, and send your mailing addy to deborah @ 2ds dot org

More soon, but now I must call the printers. They may have the long-awaited issue #10 ready for me.

Looks as if I'm going to have a LOT of mailing to do in the next few days...

On the eleventh day of giveaway...the editor ran out of stuff. (For now.)

A lot of enthusiasm for that last giveaway! Thank goodness for good old random.org, where I'm going right now in order to discover that...

...Rowan is the winnah! Thanks for playing! Send your mailing addy if I don’t already have it: deborah at 2ds dot org

Okay, so it's only eleven "days." (Some of those days lasted longer than others.) But it's free stuff, so I'm sure you'll all forgive me for not making it all the way to twelve. Especially since we made that last one a double.

The last book in the giveaway is a new, hardcover copy of Kathryn Lasky's picture book One Beetle Too Many: The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin.

I got this as a review copy, and it's a little young for my son. And my bookshelves are threatening to go on strike if I don't start doing some culling. So I'm forcing myself to part with it.

This book gives an overview of Darwin's life and adventures from childhood to old age. It's beautifully illustrated and does a good job of presenting how and why Darwin's ideas developed over time.

Post for a shot at winning. Previous rules apply regarding putting an extra number in the hat.

On the tenth day of giveaway -- a double whammy!

Business first. The winner of Weapons of Mass Instruction is...

Jean!

Congratulations! Send your mailing addy to deborah at 2ds dot org (if you haven't already -- I'm keeping track on paper, but am an airhead in person).

This next one is a two-books-in-one giveaway. The books can technically be read and utilized separately, but it seems a shame to break what is essentially a pair. The books are a hardcover copy of A Thomas Jefferson Education, by Oliver Van DeMille, and a paperback edition of A Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion, by Oliver DeMille, Rachel DeMille, and Diann Jeppson.

A friend of mine gave me these -- not as a wrap-it-up-with-a-bow kind of gift, but just because she thought I might be interested. When I admitted that I had my own copies, she made no move to take these back. I believe her words were something along the lines of my being able to read them twice now. I suggested instead that I could find a good home for them among the SHM crowd, and she looked relieved. As so many of us often do, she was trying to clear off her shelves a bit, and really didn't want to bring these back home.

The DeMilles are not secular, and these books make mention of religion. They also subscribe to some ideas that I don't agree with: about women, about education, about life and meaning.

That said, these books have some good ideas and (more important to me) some great book lists. They're in good (not new) condition.  

Post here for a chance at winning. Double chance if you send me a link to a new posting you made about any aspect of SHM. Triple shot at winning if you mention that we need articles.

Good luck!

On the ninth day of giveaway...

...the winner of the eighth day is...

Kriston!

Boy, can I say right now that it's a really good thing I've got the random.org site working for me on this giveaway. It would be impossible for me to choose on my own, especially when people say such wonderful things in their postings. I have to go somewhere that the dice are guaranteed not to be loaded, and make a solemn vow to only roll them once per drawing. (That's a fun site, by the way. Bring your kids over and teach them how to gamble. I mean, teach them about probability.)

Anyway: Congratulations! And thank you!

I expect to get screamed at for this next one. Not because of the book itself, but for the reason I'm giving it away.

The book is a new, hardcover copy of Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto.

This is a review copy I received. I wasn't able to review the book, so the least I can do is offer it a good home.

I expected to admire Gatto and enjoy his work. Now that the pressure's off me to either review or admire him, I may be able to finish reading this book (my library carries it, I already checked), and I may even have some interest in doing so. However, when I tried to in preparation for writing about it, I was so infuriated by something on almost every page that I simply couldn't bring myself to either finish reading or attempt to put my anger down on paper.

Gatto is, in his own words, anti-Darwin. To my mind, he’s anti-science and, like Miniver Cheevy, longs for good old days that never were.

I'm sorry to use such unfriendly words to preface a giveaway. I'm a lousy liar. A lot of people admire Gatto's work. I know he's been an inspiration to some who hadn't even thought of homeschooling until they read his early writing. But there it is. As Austen put it so beautifully in Emma, "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other." Just because a book doesn't work for me doesn't mean that it shouldn't make someone else happy.

So: come and get it! And if you still like me, spread the word about SHM for an extra chance to win this book!

On the eighth day of giveaway...

...which is only going to take a year and a half to finish at this rate...

Okay, not really. I have now written all the giveaway postings out ahead of time (other than the who won part, of course), and will really, truly be able to post them in something like a timely fashion so we can all get on with our lives.

So, first off: the winner of I Am Learning All The Time is...

Wendy!

Congratulations! Send me your mailing addy!

And now, the next book for giveaway:

This is an anthology of unschooling essays, originally published in Life Learning magazine -- Life Learning: Lessons from the Educational Frontier, edited by Wendy Priesnitz.

I especially enjoyed Renata Rooney's essay "Letting Go." In fact, I have to say that part of the reason I can part with this book is that I'm carrying this piece around in my heart; and although I found many of the other essays interesting, intriguing, and educational, this is the one that had a permanent impact on me. I don't know how often it happens that a piece of writing can manage to grab and shake one's sensibilities while also offering warmth and reassurance, but that's what happened to me.

If you are interested in exploring unschooling, already unschool and would like some reassurance about your choice, or just need some good reading, this is the book for you. It might also be a good book for unschoolers to lend to skeptical relatives. I did dog-ear (and then guiltily unfolded) two corners, but other than that, this trade paperback is in good shape.

Post for a chance to win! And since the results have been so wonderful already (thankyouthankyouthankyou), I'm going to go ahead and give extra bonus numbers in the hat to anyone who gives a new shout-out to SHM's need for written material. I'm quite accustomed to being broke, but in terms of time spent, I need to be able to do more editing and less writing. My son is my first priority, and he just turned 12 and needs me a lot lately.

So spread the word, and post here for a chance to win!