Wishing You All A Happy and Book-Filled New Year
December 31, 2014
I'm just taking a break from the holiday festivities to wish all of you a happy and book-filled 2015, and to share a bit about my plans for the blog in the coming year.
If you need reading suggestions, the Cybils Finalists will be announced tomorrow, New Year's Day, at 7:00 am Pacific Time on the Cybils blog. I've seen a preview and let me just tell you that there are fabulous lists of kid-friendly, well-written titles in eleven categories, from picture books to nonfiction to graphics to poetry. Stay tuned!
As for my own reading, I had an informal goal of reading 50 middle grade, 50 YA, and 50 adult titles this year. I ended up finishing with 55 middle grade, 38 young adult, and 48 adult (on top of hundreds of picture books). Reasonably close. You can see the complete list here. I struggled the most with reading YA this year, and had to abandon several titles unfinished. It's not that there weren't plenty of amazing young adult books published this year. It's just that I spent much of the year rising very early to exercise, and found that the shorter length and lighter density of middle grade titles worked better for me for bedtime reading. Most of the adult titles that I read were ones that I listend to while walking in the mornings, so staying awake wasn't a problem there. It just turned out that my overall goal to "read more, sleep more, exercise more" had some internal conflict that I hadn't anticipated.
I also logged 1763 books read aloud to my daughter by my husband and myself. That one is a lower bound, as it doesn't necessarily count books that we read when we were traveling, or that her babysitter read to her. Still, that's nearly 5 per day on average, which isn't bad. I'm guessing that the overall tally will be lower next year, as we invest more time in reading chapter books vs. picture books. But hopefully we'll spend just as much time, or more. She's breathtakingly close to really reading on her own, I think, and we continue to enjoy the journey.
In that light, I would like to point all of you to a fabulous post from Ami at Bunkers Down on The Best New Year's Resolution You Can Make. This, according to Ami (and I agree with her) is: "Read to your kids." Ami outlines several of the reasons why reading to your kids is the best thing that you can prioritize for 2015. Like this:
"Children who read frequently develop stronger reading skills. Did you know that students who do more reading at home are better readers and have higher reading AND math scores? However, as our kids get older it is easier and easier for them to stop reading for fun. Increased activities, more access to technology, and developmental pitfalls all take a toll on reading for pleasure. Sadly, studies show that when our children stop reading then the benefits that come from the printed word stop as well. Reading to our children,regardless of their age, is one of the best ways to prevent our offspring from losing out."
This is a personal essay. Ami doesn't cite sources for her various arguments, but they are all things that I've seen over the years, and believe to be true. And they come together well in this heartfelt plea for parents to read aloud to their kids, regardless of how young or how old they are. I agree 100%. Go read it!
I also would like to wish a particularly Happy New Year to the reader of my newsletter, a librarian and mom who took the time to email me on Christmas Day to tell me what she finds most useful about my blog. Somehow, to my great regret, in the course of my travels over Christmas (and fight against the deluge of spam), I deleted this email from my phone, and have not been able to respond. (Please write me again!)
But this woman's kind and useful words have stayed with me all week, and I continue to ponder the direction of my blog for 2015. This reader told me that what she finds most useful about my blog is the curated content, my gathering and categorizing of the links that I've shared on Twitter each week. And I've realized that this curating of resources shared by so many of you, like Ami's post above, is what I enjoy most about blogging these days. It doesn't feel like work, in the way that book reviews sometimes do of late. So I'll be thinking about ways to expand on that a bit (perhaps breaking out more of the "growing bookworms" links and blurbing those, for example), as we head into 2015. Feedback welcome!
My thanks to anyone who has read this far, and been with me on my blog's journey. I wish you all a safe, peaceful, and Happy New Year!
© 2014 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.
Now we have a moose who wants to be an astronaut in This Is a Moose by Richard T. Morris and Tom Lichtenheld. 
Imani's Moon is a new picture book by JaNay Brown-Wood and Hazel Mitchell about a little girl from the African Maasai tribe who is determined, after hearing stories from her mother, to touch the moon. Imani is the smallest child in her village, and is ridiculed by the larger children ("She's no higher than a lion cub's knee", etc). Every night, her mother "lift(s) her spirits with stories". The story of Olapa, goddess of the moon, in particular catches Imani's fancy. She tries various ways to get to the moon (climbing a tree, building wings, etc.). Eventually, after being inspired by seeing young warriors of the village perform a dance jumping dance of celebration, Imani tries jumping (and jumping, and jumping), and meets with success. 
I'm A Dirty Dinosaur is a picture book by Janeen Brian and Ann James, imported from Australia by Kane Miller. It's a short book aimed at the youngest of listeners. The very simple plot involves a dinosaur who gets progressively more dirty from page to page, and finally take a bath in a swamp at the end of the book. What lifts this book above the ordinary is that after each new progression of dirtiness there is a page with bouncy sounds to which kids can learn to sing along. For example:
Top 20 Books of 2014: 15-11 from 
SLJ’s Top 10 Latino Books of 2014 
Today's Featured 
25 
Have You Seen My New Blue Socks? is a highly read-aloudable picture book by Eve Bunting and Sergio Ruzzier. It's the story of a little green duck who, as the title would suggest, is unable to find a new pair of blue socks. He knows that he put them somewhere nearby, but can't remember where. He asks various friends for help, but no one knows. Until a helpful peacock finally spots a glimpse of a blue sock. 
Newsletter Update: In this issue I have seven book reviews (mostly picture books, plus a couple of early middle grade novels), a post about my daughter's latest literacy milestone, and two posts with literacy and reading links that I shared on Twitter recently. I also have an infographic from Scholastic sharing survey results on what kids enjoy reading, and a post about my blog's 9 year anniversary (today!). 
I'm currently reading 
I enjoyed Jennifer Allison's 
This review will contain spoilers for the first book. 
A Chick 'n' Pug Christmas is the latest installment in Jennifer Sattler's Chick 'n' Pug series. Pug is somewhat reluctantly dressed up as Santa Claus, and finds himself teaching the more enthusiastic Chick about the holiday. At Chick's instigation, the two friends set out to spread some Christmas cheer, running into friends, and one nemesis, from prior books. In the end, Chick comes up with the perfect holiday gift for his nap-loving companion, and even finds something that can substitute as a sleigh. 
A read-aloud review of one of my favorite books 
Some great titles in: 7 Picture Books I Loved (But Didn’t Review) in 2014 @
Today's Featured 
Stacked: Let's Move Beyond the Gender Binary: Guest Post by I. W. Gregorio 
It's time for 