Growing Bookworms Newsletter: May 1

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 1531 subscribers. Currently I am sending the newsletter out once every three weeks.

Newsletter Update: In this issue I have five book reviews (three picture books, one middle grade, and one young adult titles), one children's literacy roundup, and one post about the new RIF Book People Unite public service announcement / call to people to pledge for literacy.

Reading Update: Since the last newsletter, I read 5 middle grade, 2 young adult and 2 adult novels. I had a child-free weekend last weekend (when my husband took Baby Bookworm away for a father-daughter trip), and I got quite a bit of reading done.

• Kate Messner: Eye of the Storm. Walker Children's. Completed April 9, 2012. My review.
• Gennifer Choldenko: Al Capone Does My Shirts. Puffin. Completed April 21, 2012. I listened to this book on MP3 from Audible, and enjoyed it, but don't plan to write a formal review.
• Trenton Lee Stewart (ill. Diana Sudyka): The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict. Little Brown. Completed April 28, 2012. Review to come.
• Zilpha Keatley Snyder: The Witches of Worm. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. Completed April 30, 2012. Originally published in 1972. Although I am generally a big fan of Snyder's older titles, I didn't care for this one. I respect what she was trying to do with the book, but the protagonist is quite unlikeable.
• Delia Ray: Here Lies Linc. Knopf Books for Young Readers. Completed May 1, 2012. Review to come.
• Sheba Karim: Skunk Girl. Penguin. Completed April 13, 2012.
• Rachel Ward: Numbers 3: Infinity. Chicken House Books. Completed April 29, 2012. My review.
• Jacqueline Winspear: Elegy for Eddie. Harper. Completed April 23, 2012. This is the latest book in the Maisie Dobbs series. This wasn't my favorite of the series (too much inner turmoil for Maisie), but I still enjoyed it.
• Nancy Atherton: Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree. Penguin. Completed April 28, 2012. The latest in the Aunt Dimity series. A fun romp, though not much of a mystery (and no murders at all).

I also, of course, continue to read picture books and board books aloud to Baby Bookworm. We're currently about 1270 books read aloud for 2012. Current favorites include Uh-Oh! Oh No! by Ann Hodgman (reviewed below), Beach Day by Anahid Hamparian, and Pinkalicious by Elizabeth Kahn and Victoria Kahn. Although she still requests many of the same board boards (over and over again), she is starting to have the attention span for longer picture books now, too. 

I'm currently listening to Miss Buncle's Book by D. E. Stevenson on MP3 and about to start reading The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone. I was also thrilled to just discover that Sourcebooks is reissuing Miss Buncle's Book as a paperback on September 1st. D. E. Stevenson's novels are among my favorite comfort reads, and I would love to see more of them in print (I would also love it if someone would publish them as e-books - I want them to be around forever).

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

© 2012 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved.