Growing Bookworms Newsletter: December 3
December 03, 2014
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 one easy reader and one young adult), a post with a litmus test for knowing when a book isn't working for my daughter, and one post with literacy and reading links that I shared on Twitter recently. (I did not do a links post over Thanksgiving weekend, so will have quite a few links next time.)
Reading Update: In the last two weeks I completed one middle grade and four adult titles. I read/listened to:
- Jennifer Allison (ill. Michael Moran): Iggy Loomis, A Hagfish Called Shirley. Dial Books for Young Readers. Early Middle Grade. Completed December 2, 2014. Review to come.
- Rhys Bowen: Her Royal Spyness: Royal Flush. Berkley Press. Adult Mystery. Completed November 20, 2014, on MP3.
- Atul Gawande: The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right. Picador. Adult Nonfiction. Completed November22, 2014, on Kindle.
- Rhys Bowen: Her Royal Spyness: Royal Blood. Berkley Press. Adult Mystery. Completed November 30, 2014, on MP3.
- Peter Thiel: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Crown Business. Adult Nonfiction. Completed December 2, 2014, on Kindle.
After two weeks with little progrress, I had to abandon Lockwood & Co. book, The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud. It's not that it's bad, but for whatever reason, I cannot keep my eyes open when I am reading it. This has actually been happening to me lately with most books, and is the reason why the majority of books that I've completed have been on MP3 or Kindle. I listen when I am out walking and I read on Kindle when I am on my exercise bike. I'm going to try The Whispering Skull on audio soon, in fact. Perhaps I should try getting more sleep.
The books that we're been reading to my daughter can be found here. We have started working our way through our stack of Christmas books, with Snowmen at Christmas becoming a new favorite. I think that Leslie Patricelli's Fa La La board book remains her all-time favorite, though. We've also been reading a set of 11 Fly Guy readers (a recent Scholastic Book Club request) over and over again. She adores them! She was also pretty excited to learn how to spell "book" recently.
I have, in the course of my reading as a Cybils judge, discovered an easy way to tell when a book isn't working for my daughter. We read it, and then a couple of days later I again place in the stack of potential bedtime books. If she says: "I already read that one" I know that the book did not impress. Because the books that she LIKES? Those we can read over and over (and over) again. "I already read that one" is a dead giveaway.
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.