Last night Isaac was sitting next to me visiting while at the same time holding his little bag of golden coins. Recently Michael has taken to getting his cash in these dollar coins instead of paper money, and Isaac is fascinated with them. Last night Isaac traded in all of his paper money for a stack of golden coins.

As we were visiting, I told Isaac that he reminded me of Silas Marner. Of course, Isaac had no idea what I was talking about, so I told him the story briefly, while trying not to give away the end. I first read the story in high school and thought it was so interesting at that time. Since then I’ve seen the movie with Steve Martin called “A Simple Twist of Fate” which is a modernized version of Silas Marner.

The story of Silas Marner is one of my favorite novels. On a whim, last night, I said to Isaac, “Let’s Google Silas Marner and see what we find.” Early in our search we found the complete text of the novel online at Bibliomania.com. I started reading the first few lines of the story to Isaac, and before I knew it, we were both hooked. He sat there completely silent and listening while I read the entire first chapter. The story (by George Eliot) was written in 1861, so the language is terribly old fashioned, and the sentences are so long I sometimes can’t figure out where we’ve started and where we’re going. But despite the vocabulary that leaves all of us wondering, and despite extreme wordiness and elaborate descriptions, the story has us hooked.

As I shooed Isaac off to bed last night, he begged me to wake him up early so we could read the next chapter. I told him I’d think about that idea. So this morning, once I had my cup of coffee in hand and realized that my two little morning companions were content eating dry Kix cereal leftover from our potty-training snacks, I went and nudged Isaac. He popped out of bed so fast and was in the kitchen ready to listen almost before I got back there myself!

We read the second chapter, and maybe even the third… I can’t remember… before I finally told him to get ready for the day and start his chores.

As soon as we had another break in our morning, we piled onto the couch and read some more chapters of Silas Marner. By now we had everyone else in our little homechool in the audience, and I wondered how much anyone was understanding of this archaic text, but they sat quite interested, and the younger three played happily (mostly) while I read.

Tonight, once the final chores were done, I agreed to read just a little bit more. Again we slogged through the big words and long sentences, but the story kept pulling us along through the tedious parts. Each time we sit to read, I review with the children what the story has been thus far, and we speculate on where it’s going. Any time I think they might have missed something interesting, I stop reading and explain what was just said. Then I read that part again so they can hear it in the original language. All in all, we’re having a great time! Tonight we found the word diffidence, and Laura asked, “What does that mean?” I admitted that I did not know, but offered, “Would you like me to look it up?” Laura answered emphatically, “NO! Just keep reading!” I smiled and started to take a breath when Luke answered, “Yes, look it up so we can stay up later!” I decided I liked Laura’s answer better than Luke’s, so we just kept reading.

I told Isaac last night that there is a dramatic version of Silas Marner put out by Focus on the Family Radio Theatre. Michael told me to go ahead and order it, so I went to my new favorite source for books and audio stuff and made an order. I think I’m going to try to finish reading the print version of the story to the kids before I let them listen to the audio drama, but I must confess that I’m so eager to hear it, I might give in to the temptation before we’re done reading.

Have you read Silas Marner? If so, what do you think of it? If you haven’t read it, let me encourage you to check it out. And if you really can’t tolerate the old-fashioned text version, be sure to watch a movie or listen to the audio drama. It’s a story you’ll never forget.