Growing Bookworms Newsletter: December 5

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 1454 subscribers. Currently I am sending the newsletter out once every two weeks.

Newsletter Update: In this issue I have five book reviews (one picture book, one middle grade, and three YA). I also have one children's literacy roundup (with additional detail available at Rasco from RIF), and a post about my current status in reading Cybils fiction picture books. 

I also posted four reviews of Cybils-nominated picture books in the past two weeks. I have NOT included the full reviews in the newsletter, because I thought that it was getting a bit too long. However, here are the links to the Cybils reviews (all four of the books are wonderful):

• Patrick McDonnell: Me...Jane
• Lane Smith: Grandpa Green
• Tim Wadham (ill. Kady MacDonald Denton): The Queen of France
• Cybele Young: A Few Blocks

Reading Update: Since the last newsletter, I finished three books, one middle grade, one 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):

• Jeff Kinney: Diary of a Wimpy Kid 6: Cabin Fever. Amulet Books. Completed November 24, 2011. My review.
• John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle: Let It Snow! Three Holiday Romances. Speak. Completed December 1, 2011 (my third annual holiday read of this book). My previous review.
• Lee Child: The Affair (A Reacher Novel). Delacorte Press. Completed November 29, 2011, on MP3. This book looks back at how Reacher became the wanderer that he is. I enjoyed it very much (considerably more than I liked the previous book in the series).

I'm now listening to Rick Riordan's Son of Neptune on my MP3 player, and I'm still listening to Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright when Baby Bookworm is with me. I'm currently reading Hill's End by Ivan Southall (an older title, recommended by Charlotte).

Baby Bookworm's current favorites are:

• Leo Lionni: Little Blue and Little Yellow
• Karen Katz: The Babies on the Bus (which I knew was the perfect book for toddlers - she makes me sing it to her at least 3 times a day)
• Masha D'yans: Razzle Dazzle Ruby (a very fun, and now much-taped, pop-up book)

How about you? What have you and your kids been reading and enjoying? Thanks for reading the newsletter, and for growing bookworms.

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