Growing Bookworms Newsletter: December 17

Today I will be sending out a 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. I currently send the newsletter out every two weeks.

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!). 

Reading Update: In the last two weeks I completed two middle grade and three adult titles. I read/listened to:

• Lisa Graff: Absolutely Almost. Philomel Books. Middle Grade Fiction. Completed December 9, 2014, library copy. This book is wonderful! I love that it's about a boy who is not smart. Not disabled, not "special", just a kid who has to struggle academically. So refreshing!
• Holly Goldberg Sloan: Counting by 7's. Dial Books for Young Readers. Middle Grade Fiction. Completed December 16, 2014, personal copy. This book is in many ways the opposite of Absolutely Almost, about a girl who is gifted. She has quite a unique, quirky viewpoint. 
• Rhys Bowen: Her Royal Spyness: Naughty in Nice. Berkley Press. Adult Mystery. Completed December 5, 2014, on MP3. This series is still fun, kind of a dessert/guilty pleasure of a series. 
• Sophia Dembling: The Introvert's Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World. Perigee Trade. Adult Nonfiction. Completed December 8, 2014, on Kindle. I enjoyed this book very much, and read it compulsively, but I did feel that it read more like a series of essays than like a book with an overall structure. 
• Tana French: Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3). Viking. Adult Mystery. Completed December 13, 2014, on MP3. This was one of those books that had me spending extra time exercising, because I was so immersed in the book's world. 

I'm currently reading Noggin by John Corey Whaley and listening to Broken Harbor, the next Tana French book from the Dublin Murder Squad series. The books that we're been reading to my daughter can be found here. 

What are you and your family reading these days? Thanks for reading the newsletter, and for growing bookworms. 

© 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.