Where's Wallace and More!

One of the books we got as a prize from the Library's Summer Reading Program is Wheres Wallace?   By Hilary Knight. We have enjoyed this book so much!  It is about a little Orangutan whose keeper talks about going places and then somehow Wallace escapes the zoo and the keeper has to go and find him at whatever location he happens to have chosen.  But it also is a matter of finding the little guy hidden in the picture on the page!  We liked this one alot. It was written in the late 1940's and is therefore clean, and fun in it's pictures and words.  Total bonus! I have learned to love Hilary Knights illustrations.  In addition to this one, he illustrated the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books that we loved!

We also got The Quite Contrary Man . I liked this one too.  Actually, I liked all the books we picked as prizes.  This is a true story, or at least based on a true story of a man in new england in colonial days who spent a year in prison because, essentially, he refused to shave his beard.  It'sa a fun book with fabulous pictures!

We got The Mitten by Jan Brett.  I'm sure I've said this before, but I am a huge fan of her work.  The story of course is old, but the pictures and scene setting are absolutely fabulous!  I can't recommend it enough. Read anything by her, you won't be disappointed!


And finally a fun little book called Blue Chicken .  Bruce and I really enjoy this one.  It's a simple story, great pictures, and I have always loved when the book is about a book.  It's fun to watch animals come alive like they do in this book.  Fun fun fun!


What books have you added to your bookshelves lately?

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The Books of 9/6

Last week we read some really good books.  I enjoyed them all, and so did Stella.  What a rare treat!


 Starting with the least favorite this week was Liberty's Journey .  It was a cute story about the Statue of Liberty.  I expected it to be about her journey to the U.S.  It wasn't.  It was about her picking up her skirt and trekking to the west coast!  Cute, good, but on a week full of good books, it was the least read!

Then Something's Happening on Calabash Street .  We really liked this one, about a street fair where every family made a traditional dish from their culture and shared it at a street fair.  The only thing I wished it had, was the country of origin for each dish.  Most of them I could figure out, but some... I needed a little more info.  There are 13 recipes in the back of this book, so you could make the dishes yourself if you wanted!  Some of them looked really good.

Meet Samantha was next.  I introduced Stella to the American Girl books with this one last week.  She enjoyed it.  It's a great early chapter book.  My goal is to introduce each of the "girls" in the next few weeks.  This was fun and I forgot how much I enjoyed them.  The historical facts in the back of the book were more fun for me than for her. But she enjoyed the story.


Our favorites this week were The Jester Has Lost His Jingle , which was a fabulous tale of finding laughter even when you don't really feel like laughing.  It was a great story with a rythmic, rhyming text and fun pictures.


 And Last but not least, the most read book of the week was West Texas Chili Monster .  We had so much fun with this one.  The somewhat old-fashioned, definitely Southern language of this book, combined with the bizarre idea of an outer-space monster consuming all the chili was a blast. Stella even adopted a phrase from the book, though it did take a little teaching for her to be able to use correctly!  We loved this book and how fun it was.  The pictures were great, the story better!  It's one I wouldn't mind having on our bookshelves permanently!

What did you read your kids this week?

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A short break and a long "week"

Sorry for my brief blogging hiatus!  I had very good intentions of blogging several times last week, but an unexpected death in the family and subsequent trip to Florida threw a wrench in my plans. You know, "The best laid plans"... and all that.  In any case due to our trip we kept our books for an extra week.  I am glad we had good ones, and a few extra!


 We finished the last Mrs Piggle-Wiggle book this week.  Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm .  Just as fun as the rest were and I think that this was the best one next to the first, that is.  There is relatively little magic in this one.  The animals are all a little too human, but not to the point of talking, except for the parrot, And the cures are all situational.  Giving them a taste of either their own medicine or the consequences of their actions.  Still, both my Kindergartener and I enjoyed all 4 of these books, and I think they will be ones we'll revisit in a few years when she's reading on her own!

We had Moosekitos : A Moose Family Reunion , a funny book about a moose family vacation and the longest "moostache" ever.  We had a Christmas book with the same moose last year and enjoyed it as well.  Fun stuff.


 Princess Lulu Goes to Camp   was Stella's favorite of the week.  A spoiled little princess gets sent to camp to make a friend.  It's a little rocky at the start, but she does make a friend, and the conclusion is that "no princess should be without one."  Not a bad moral, but it's not really a great book.  Stella, the four-year-old Princess-wannabe thought so.

I picked up the wonderful Sarah, Plain and Tall this week too.  We read it all in one day.  It's a simple, easy read.  It had some heavy themes that I had forgotten about, but is a fabulous story nonetheless.  Told from the perspective of a young girl, Anna, maybe around 12 years old, whose father placed an add in the papers for a wife.  Sarah comes to stay for a month to see if she would want to come and marry Anna's father.  The story is delicate and wonderful.  We read the first 7 chapters in one sitting.  We were both absorbed in the story.  This is another one that I hope we revisit when the kids are old enough to grasp some of the heavier themes.

 
Rabbit & Squirrel: A Tale of War and Peas had me laughing from the title forward.  It's just a clever little story of how things can escalate when we don't stop to make sure we have all the information.  It doesn't end with a neat and tidy resolution of the feud either, but suggests the beauty of what could be.  I liked that too.  We only read this a few times, but I wish we'd read it more!

The last two we didn't read much either.  Bruce enjoyed Moo in the Morning more than Stella did, but it was geared a little more for the 2 year old set.  Stella called it the noises book, and it was.  City vs Country noises.  And how the noises in the country can seem just as loud because of their unfamiliarity to the city trained-ears of a boy and his mother.  Fun for the little guys and if you have a noise or animal lover... so a boy.

And finally Hurry Up and Slow Down .  This was a cute take on the tortoise and the hare.  The little rabbit is all "hurry up hurry up," right up until nap time when the tortoise who cares for her is ready to sit down with a hot cup of tea.  Then it's "read me a story" and a race through it and then it's "slow down"  when it's the tortoise who is hurried!  It was cute and as the mother of two who still nap (or at least have quiet time) it was a familiar story.  We did all enjoy this too.

What are you reading to your little ones?


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The Books from August 15

We had some really fun books this week.  In fact, they were all good.  That's rather rare!  This week felt busy and we read a little less than is typical, but we still read plenty!  We started the week with the very fun A Camping Spree With Mr. Magee .  It was a cute little story about a man and his dog, a camping trip and a near-sighted bear.  Lots of fun, with great rhyming text!


 Next up is Jack and the Giant: A Story Full of Beans .  Again cute.  A fun little cowboy twist on Jack and the Beanstalk.  We really enjoyed how silly this was.  The pictures were fabulous and Jack was a great little hero.

Oh, Boxes for Katje .  I really liked this one.  So did Stella.  I know because she started using some of the names of the characters in her playing!  I was admittedly a bit out of sorts this week, but this one made me cry.  In a good way.   It's a story based on true events from after WWII.  Two little girls become pen pals and it affects both the Dutch Village, and American town of the children.  It was a sweet story that reminds you that there are good people in the world.  And also how you can repay kindnesses even when it seems as though you have nothing.

And last but not least, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic and Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle .  We read the first Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle book last week and loved it so much that we got two more this week!  I love these fun little chapter books.  I think they are ones I would eventually like to own.  In addition to being fun for both Stella and I, these are the first books to elicit the ever-so-special and much sought after exclamations of  "One more chapter please!" from Stella.  I love it! 

Summer Reading Program

Our Library joins with all the other libraries in the County for a Summer Reading Program every year.  This is our second year participating.  I love it.  Partly because I remember enjoying a similar program as a kid, and partly because it's fun, and partly because it's great incentive to read through the summer.  It runs from mid-June to mid-August.  It ended this week.

How does it work you ask?  Good question.  You record the books you read on a little card and every 5 books earns you a "dollar." Every 1-50 pages counts as a book (so a 125 page book counts as 3 books). They don't have to be library books to count.  You can also count e-books, or books you read at grandma's house, as long as it's the first time you read it. We don't get many longer books at our house yet. 

We earned, between Stella and Bruce, 33 dollars this summer.  I was pretty impressed by that.  I did a little math and figured out that 33 tickets equals 82.5 books read this summer (  (33x5)/2= 82.5  and I did that by hand not calculator).  F

There are prizes to buy with your dollars too.  They can get a snack for a dollar, or a trinket for 1,2,5,10, 15.  Or for 5 dollars they could pick a book from a collection they had on a table by the circulation desk.  I didn't give my kids many options, and held onto their dollars for them until last week.  Then we found the books and picked out 2 each.  They were excited to bring home books from the library to keep.  This week we counted up the rest of our dollars and Stella picked a prize and a book (she actually got two cheap little throw away books about My Little Ponies, not my first choice in reading material), and I picked out three books for Bruce. 

All told from the summer reading that we would have done anyway we "earned"  7 good books, 2 cheap books, and a large bouncy ball.  Not a bad summer! 

Do you participate in a summer reading program?

August 8 to 15

The books this last week were pretty good. There were a few that caught on a little later in the week.  And a few that we loved straight-away.  Like every week there were a few that we enjoyed but didn't love.

We read Country Fair .  It was strictly average.  I think it's just so outside their experience, and the book was not very engaging.  There was nothing technically wrong with it, but it was a book about the fair, not a story set at a fair.

We read Curious George and the Ice Cream Surprise . This was cute, in the manner of all Curious George books.  I do enjoy George and we liked this one.  It didn't quite make the top of the list though. 

We read I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and Other Stories (Classic Seuss) by Dr. Seuss.  They were cute, clever stories.  Not his finest work, but still quite reasonable.  I think we only read it once.  We just weren't that into it, and with the other books we had this week, that was alright with me! 

We did love Fire! Fire! Said Mrs. McGuire 1st edition by Jr, Bill Martin published by Harcourt Children's Books Paperback .  Stella and Bruce both loved this one.  It was a very simple read, very rhythmic and it rhymed!  Stella had it almost memorized in 2 reads.  She could "read" it to Bruce after that.  That's a bonus in a book right now!  I liked the names and the fact that there were all types of women in all types of professions.


But our absolute favorite this week was Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle .  We had such a good time with this little chapter book.  Well, Stella and I did.  It was printed in 1947 and the traditional family values of the time are quite evident.  Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle cures all sorts of childhood "illnesses" for the childrens parents.  There is the "Never-Want-to-Go-to-Bedders" Cure and the "Answer-Backers" Cure, and several others.  Stella giggled and giggled at the antics of the children and the silliness of the cures.  I liked the idea that these are problems that need to be solved, and that the parents didn't tolerate the misbehaviors.  We learned a few new words, and just enjoyed cuddling up together to read this one.  It's on my highly recommended list!  We even picked up 2 more books in this series for this week!