Growing Bookworms Newsletter: November 22

Today I will be sending out the new issue of the Growing Bookworms email newsletter. (If you would like to subscribe, you can find a sign-up form here.) The Growing Bookworms newsletter contains content from my blog focused on children's and young adult books and raising readers. There are 1450 subscribers. Currently I am sending the newsletter out once every two weeks.

Newsletter Update: In this issue I have seven book reviews (five picture books, one middle grade, and one YA). I also have one children's literacy roundup (with additional detail available at Rasco from RIF). All of my posts for the past two weeks are included in the newsletter.

Reading Update: Since the last newsletter, I finished six books, one middle grade, four YA, and one adult title (as well as various picture books read for the Cybils, and picture books and board books read aloud to Baby Bookworm, here, here, here, and here). I had a big trip over the past couple of weeks, which gave me some extra time for reading. However, I've been ill and pretty much without childcare since I returned, so the reviews will be a while. But here are the books:

• Sarah Prineas: Winterling. HarperCollins. Completed November 17, 2011.
• Gabrielle Zevin: All These Things I've Done. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). Completed November 8, 2011, on CD.
• Debbie Duncan: Caller Number Nine. Completed November 14, 2011 (iBooks eBook).
• Peter Abrahams: Reality Check. HarperTeen. Completed November 14, 2011 (Kindle eBook from the library).
• Mike Mullin: Ashfall. Tanglewood Press. Completed November 20, 2011. (Kindle eBook, purchased).
• Alan Bradley: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Bantam. Completed November 17, 2011 (Kindle eBook from the library).

I'm still listening to Lee Child's latest Reacher novel, The Affair, on my MP3 player, and I've also started listening to Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright (one of my all-time favorites) when Baby Bookworm is with me. I'm currently reading N. D. Wilson's The Dragon's Tooth: Ashtown Burials #1 and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid #6: Cabin Fever.

I've had some trouble keeping up with my Cybils reading of late, because of my travels, although I have crossed the half-way point of the 264 nominated titles in Fiction Picture Books. At least my store of reviews has helped me to keep content going on my blog. Review copies have started coming in from publishers, though, (for books not available at my local libraries) so once I can scrape up some time, I'll have plenty of picture books to read.

How about you? What have you been reading and enjoying? Thanks for reading the newsletter, and for growing bookworms. Wishing all of you in the United States (or from the United States) a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

© 2011 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved.