Growing Bookworms Newsletter: Milestones, Not Overscheduling, and Favorite Picture Book Sequels

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 recently, and now contains content from my blog focused on growing joyful learners, including bookworms, mathematicians, and learners of all types. The newsletter is sent out every two to three weeks.

Newsletter Update: In this issue I have two book reviews (one picture book and one middle grade) and three posts about my daughter's latest milestones (one regarding literacy, one math, and one art). I also have one post about the virtues and difficulties of not overscheduling kids. I also have two posts with links that I shared on Twitter, and two more with quotes from and responses to links about to the joy of learning. Not included in the newsletter, I shared an announcement about a new award from Hallmark for great picture books. 

Reading Update: In the past two weeks I read/listened to one middle grade and four adult titles. I read:

• Lauren DeStefano: The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart. Bloomsbury USA Children's Books. Middle Grade Fiction. Completed May 17, 2016, print ARC. Review to come, closer to publication. 
• Mette Ivie Harrison: The Bishop's Wife. Soho Crime. Adult Mystery. Completed May 7, 2016, on Kindle. This was an unusual story told from the viewpoint of the wife of a Mormon bishop. I learned things I didn't know about Mormom beliefs and customs, and quite liked the protagonist. I do expect to read the next book in this series. 
• Jacqueline Winspear: Journey to Munich: A Maisie Dobbs Novel. Harper. Adult Mystery. Completed May 11, 2016, on MP3. The Maisie Dobbs series creeps closer and closer to World War II, as Maisie visits 1937 Munich for a dangerous undercover mission. 
• Thomas Perry: Forty Thieves. Mysterious Press. Adult Mystery. Completed May 14, 2016, on Kindle. This standalone by Perry features two husband and wife sets of viewpoint characters, one a pair of former cops working as private investigators and the other a pair of assassins for hire. I found the mystery intriguing, but sometimes got confused as to which wife was narrating. 
• Charlaine Harris: Night Shift: A Novel of Midnight, Texas. Ace Books. Adult Mystery. Completed May 17, 2016, on MP3. This is the third book in a new series by Harris, a distant spin-off of the Sookie Stackhouse books. I quite like the small town full of quirky supernatural characters.

I'm currently listening to Murder on St. Nicholas Avenue by Victoria Thompson and reading The Importance of Being Little by Erika Christakis. 

The books my husband and I (and our babysitter) have been reading to our daughter in 2016 can be found here. We have discovered that not one, not two, but three of our very favorite picture books have sequels out or coming soon. I purchased The Not-So-Faraway Adventure by Andrew Larsen and Irene Luxbacher, sequel to The Imaginary Garden (reviewed here). I have a review copy coming for Sophie's Squash Go to School by Pat Zietlow Miller and Anne Wilsdorf (review of the first book here). And I have Louise and Andie: The Art of Friendship by Kelly Light on our wish list (review of Louise Loves Art here). I was also just quite pleased to overhear my daughter reading Elephant and Piggie books aloud, back to back, to her stuffed animals. 

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.