Book Tag

I was tagged yesterday by Louise of Home is Where The Heart Is to participate in a book tag. Louise lives in West Sussex on the South Coast of England and has a very beautiful blog full of interesting information and wonderful pictures. I love how she has the sidebars of her blog filled with pictures, poems, cartoons, quotes, etc. It's lots of fun to browse.


Here are the rules of the book tag:Pick up a book of at least 123 pages
Open the book to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence
Post the next three sentences
Tag five people to do the same

I love the Brooklyn Public Library, and I visit my local branch at least once a week to borrow DVDs, CDs, books, and magazines. This week I found this intriguing book:

The Well Educated Mind -- A Guide To The Classical Education You Never Had
by Susan Wise Bauer

Here is an excerpt about this book: "About The Well-Educated Mind--Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven’t because they seem too daunting? The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise. In her previous book, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a roadmap of classical education for parents wishing to homeschool their children. That book is now the premier resource for homeschoolers. In this new book, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them for adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading."
Turning to page 123, five sentences down, I found that these were the next three sentences:
A second convention marks almost all African American autobiography; entry into a world of reading and writing. When Frederick Douglass was a child, his mistress began teaching him to read. But her husband halted the lessons: "Learning will do him no good, but a great deal of harm," he told his wife sternly, "If you teach him how to read, he'll want to know how to write, and this accomplished, he'll be running away with himself."
This passage came with this footnote: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself (1845), chapter 6
Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. Isn't it wonderful that he did learn to read and write? He was a brilliant man who worked with President Abraham Lincoln to allow free blacks to join the Union Army, and after the war, he campaigned for civil rights and women's suffrage. His autobiography was on the best seller list after it was published, and you can read excerpts from it here.

That was fun and educational, Louise! Thanks for asking me to participate!

Now I am going to ask the following bloggers if they'd like to join in --but only if you'd like to --no worries if you don't wish to, or don't have the time. Thanks!

Beachys Cape Cod Cupboard

Lisa's Retro Style

Gingerbread

Days Missed on a Hammock

Counting Your Blessings