One of the world’s largest birds, the white tailed eagle (also called Steller’s sea eagle) resides in Europe. In Greenland, a record female was measured to have an 8ft3in long wingspan. Although not as enticing to my children as the zebras, giraffes, and hippos in Africa, the pictures of this majestic raptor captured my fancy! We began our tour of Europe looking up “animal pictures,” resulting in Europe being termed a very scary place: badgers, foxes, and bears oh my!

 Our books from Europe helped reshape their imagination. We started with Adele & Simon written and illustrated by Barbara McClintock. The delightful story held my children enrapt and produced innumerable giggles as poor Simon continued to lose his belongings. We enjoyed traveling the neighborhoods of Paris with this book, and even spotted some familiar friends, “twelve little girls in two straight lines. They left the house at half-past-nine, in two straight lines in rain or shine.” This led to requests of “Madeline, please!” only to discover that the book about our favorite Parisian heroine is lost. Instead we broke out another favorite, Chanticleer and the Fox a retelling of (Englishman) Chaucer’s tale by Barbara Cooney. We gallivanted across Europe via books.

 Free maps are shared by the Summer Book Club, and this week we all participated in coloring the countries of Europe. Kenz and Judah easily recognized Italy, “look for the boot!” from a previous month’s study of Italy. The islands of Greece and Great Britain were distinguishable after a quick geography lesson prompted by, “what’s an island?” The other countries will need to wait until the little ones can read!

 Thanks for the memories Europe, catch you next time we are in the area. Asia: Here We Come!