Growing Bookworms Newsletter: January 18: Middle Grade Reviews and Listening to Harry Potter
January 18, 2017
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 growing joyful learners, mainly bookworms, but also mathematicians and learners of all types. The newsletter is sent out every two to three weeks.
Newsletter Update: In this issue I have four book reviews (picture book and middle grade), one post with my daughter's latest literacy milestone (being read Harry Potter), and two posts with links that I shared recently on Twitter. I also have a post with excerpts from and responses to two #JoyOfLearning related articles that I read recently.
Reading Update: In the past two weeks I read one middle grade, one young adult, and two adult novels. I read/listened to:
- Jonathan Stroud: The Creeping Shadow (Lockwood and Co., Book 4). Disney-Hyperion. Middle Grade Fantasy. Completed January 15, 2017, on MP3. I agree with Charlotte that this book is better than books 2 or 3, and well worth a read.
- Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows: My Lady Jane. HarperTeen. YA Fantasy. Completed January 10,2017, on MP3. I enjoyed this reimagining of the story of Lady Jane Grey (complete with people who turn into animals) much more than I had expected. It is very fun and well-suited to the audio format.
- Thomas Perry: The Old Man. Mysterious Press. Adult Thriller. Completed January 8, 2017.
- Megan Abbott: You Will Know Me. Little, Brown and Company. Adult Thriller. Completed January 9, 2017. Suspenseful if implausible. I read this one quite quickly because it kept my attention, which is really all the endorsement you should need.
I'm currently listening to The Final Day, the conclusion to the John Matherson trilogy by William R. Forstchen (an apocalyptic series about what happens to America in the wake of a devastating EMP). I'm dipping in and out of several nonfiction books on my Kindle, and haven't selected a next fiction read yet.
My daughter's reading list for 2017 can be found here. It's not terribly lengthy so far, but we did just finish reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling. You can read about our experience below. My favorite moment from the final chapter was when the house cup was awarded. My daughter jumped up and down shouting: "We won!!!" It pleased me very much to see her so invested in the story that she felt like part of the "we". We have already started to read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. She also read the first Dory Fantasmagory book by Abby Hanlon on her own, and is currently reading the second.
Thanks for reading, 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.