Growing Bookworms Newsletter: January 20

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 has refocused a bit recently, and now contains content from my blog focused on growing joyful learners, including bookworms, mathematicians, and learners of all types.

Newsletter Update: In this issue I have a review of a new series of illustrated early chapter books, as well as some detailed notes about the adult nonfiction title Beyond Measure: Rescuing an Overscheduled, Overtested, Underestimated Generation. I have a post with some additional details about my plan for my blog's new direction: growing joyful learners, and a couple of posts with quotes from recent #JoyOfLearning articles. I have a post about my family's experience so far with reading logs, and another in which I kick off a new Mathematical Milestones series. Finally, I have posts wrapping up other links that I shared on Twitter over the past two weeks. 

Also, I didn't directly post about it, but I reformatted my blog last week to change to a mobile-friendly, responsive design. There will probably be other changes, but my clever friend Miles Crakow assured me that no time should be lost in making this change. I do really like it. It's much cleaner. If you click through on any articles, you should find that they load much more quickly, especially on mobile devices. My thanks also to Sheila Ruth for her helpful critique and advice. 

Reading Update: In the past two weeks I read/listened to two early chapter books, one young adult book, and four adult titles. I read:

• Sarah Dillard: Mouse Scouts. Knopf Books for Young Readers. Illustrated Chapter Book. Completed January 10, 2016 (read aloud to my daughter). My review.
• Sarah Dillard: Mouse Scouts: Make A Difference. Knopf Books for Young Readers. Illustrated Chapter Book. Completed January 15, 2016 (read aloud to my daughter). My review.
• Jan Gangsei: Zero Day. Disney-Hyperion. Young Adult Thriller. Completed January 14, 2016. This is a thriller, first of an apparent series, about a girl who was kidnapped at the age of eight, and returns eight years later, when her father is President of the United States. Definitely a page-turner!
• Ken Robinson: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. Penguin Books. Adult Nonfiction. Completed January 13, 2016, on Kindle. I'll be sharing some detailed notes about this book soon. 
• C. J. Box: Out of Range (Joe Pickett, Book 5). Berkley. Adult Mystery. Completed January 14, 2016, on MP3.
• Max Wirestone: The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss. Redhook. Adult Mystery. Completed January 16, 2016, on MP3. This was kind of a quirky mystery about a jobless 20-something who ends up playing at private detective. There was a bit too much gamer/geek detail for me, but I did like the character and find it well-written. 
• Jo Boaler: Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching. Jossey-Bass. Adult Nonfiction. Completed January 17, 2016, on Kindle (though presence of many graphics would have made this a better choice for print). I'll definitely have more details to share about this book soon. I also dabbled in sharing some quotes from this book directly on Facebook and Twitter (example here).

I'm reading The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups by Leonard Sax on my kindle, reading Audacity Jones to the Rescue by Kirby Larson in print and listening to In Plain Sight (A Joe Pickett novel) by C. J. Box. 

The books my husband and I (and our babysitter) have been reading to our daughter in 2016 can be found here. She was home sick one afternoon, and her babysitter read her more than 30 picture books. I do love that books are what she turns to for comfort (well, books together with a caring adult and a cozy blanket). There was also an incident over the weekend in which she was annoyed about something and stormed off to her room. She came back later reaching for the reading log, so that she could document that she had read herself Brownie and Pearl See the Sights. Again, books for comfort. 

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

© 2016 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.