My apologies for the delay on getting the read aloud for the next chapters of The Last Archer up and running. We left on such a cliffhanger too! Here is the link to The Last Archer: Chapters 5-8
I’ll be getting the next parts recorded soon, so be sure to just check the Virtual Bibliopolis category to find all the posts with links to our read alouds!
Hope you all are hanging in there, enjoying your homeschooling, and also enjoying the spring weather outside.
Hello, everyone! I’m excited to announce our next read aloud will be The Last Archer: A Green Ember Story. It is a “companion novel” to the Green Ember series. Companion novels take place before or after the main story, or off to the side of the main story. So for The Last Archer, it is set in the same world as the Green Ember novels, but it focuses on the period before the main story of The Green Ember, and on a different set of characters. Our main character here is Jo Shanks. I’m happy to report there are four of these Green Ember stories, which we’ll be able to read together!
You’ll hear names of characters and places you recognize, and we’ll learn more of the back story of all that happened in Heather and Picket’s world. Click here to listen to Chapters 1-4. I’m already appreciating some of the life lessons I’m learning from Jo Shanks in the first chapters. Hope you enjoy!
After last week’s read aloud, I was thinking about what to read next. Lately people have been asking me about whether I’d heard of this series called The Wingfeather Saga, so I was going to read book #1 for you all. I had already done my first few chapters! But like many authors during this time of quarantine, Andrew Peterson (yes, that Andrew Peterson, the Christian singer-songwriter) is posting nightly story time videos you can check out here. So the author himself beat me to it!
I was also curious to know why the series was coming up in conversation more often these days, because this was a series that came out more than ten years ago. And here is what I discovered. The books have been re-released with a brand new cover, and there was a fair amount of publicity about the series.
Here are the original covers of the edition I’ve had ever since Bibliopolis opened five years ago. I have had very little success “selling” these books to people.
Perfectly respectable covers, but not very eye-catching, I guess. It’s a classic look that would only be compelling to more…mature (read: old) readers. Even my most avid readers have done the slow, drawn out, “Uuuuum…weeeeeell…” which is their equivalent of “No, thanks.”
And here are the 2020 covers for books 1 and 2:
More modern and epic fantasy series looking, wouldn’t you say? I don’t know if you realized books get little refreshers like this, but it is necessary to keep drawing in new generations of readers. Ironically enough, timeless classics remain so by modernizing their covers! We say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but publishers and authors know the power of the cover.
All this to say, I do hope more readers will take up this series, as it is quite engrossing! As for my read aloud, stay tuned. 🙂
Have you read the series? What are your thoughts?
Acts2 Books 