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Growing Bookworms Newsletter: April 12: Baby Bookworm's 7th Birthday Edition

April 12, 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 relatively brief issue I have four book reviews (picture book and middle grade) and one post with my daughter's latest literacy milestone (making inferences). I also have two posts with links that I shared recently on Twitter. I've had a bit less time for blogging than usual because I've been busy helping my daughter celebrate her 7th birthday. I'll also be taking some time off for her upcoming spring break, and expect to be back with another newsletter in three weeks.

Reading Update: In the last two weeks I finished two young adult novels, two adult novels, and one adult nonfiction title. I read/listened to:

Chris Weitz: The New Order (The Young World, Book 2). Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. YA Science Fiction. Completed March 31, 2017, on Kindle.
Chris Weitz: The Revival (The Young World, Book 3). Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. YA Science Fiction. Completed April 3, 2017, on Kindle. I had read the first book in this post-apocalyptic trilogy a couple of years ago, but somehow never went back and read the other two books. These were just what I needed during a quiet weekend in Lake Tahoe. While I don't plan a formal review, I do recommend this series to fans of YA dystopia. It's set in a post-plague New York City, after the plague has left only teens alive, but with a ticking clock for each of them. There are warring tribes of kids, grim battles, and scientific efforts to find a cure. The cast is nicely diverse, too, with shifting first person viewpoints between a number of distinct characters.
Angela Duckworth: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Scribner. Adult Nonfiction. Completed March 29, 2017, on Kindle. I've been familiar with the concept of grit for a while. My takeaway from reading the full book was the importance of the passion element - I think we tend to think of grit as just endless persistence. But it's really persistence towards something that is personally important. Grit held my interest, and I do continue to think about it now, a couple of weeks after finishing it.
C. J. Box: Vicious Circle (Joe Pickett series). G.P. Putnam's Sons. Adult Mystery. Completed April 3, 2017, on MP3. Although I've been hooked on this series for a while, the bleakness of it is starting to wear on me a bit. I don't think that the next one (presumably due out next year) will be an automatic purchase, but I think it will depend on my mood when the time comes.
Charlaine Harris: All the Little Liars (Aurora Teagarden, No. 9). Berkley. Adult Mystery. Completed April 7, 2017, on MP3. I am also now caught up with this series, which I enjoyed. It's the only one I've read by Harris that doesn't include supernatural occurrences, and I quite like the librarian main character. In the books, about 8 years pass for the main character between books 1 and 9. In real time, something like 26 years have passed. Harris handles this by merely referencing the most current technology in each book, and not getting too hung up on the details, which does pretty much work. I've been reading other series that started quite some time ago, and I just find it interesting to note how authors manage this (e.g. Sue Grafton, who has basically stayed in the 80's with her character).

I'm currently listening to Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger (first book in the Cork O'Connor series). I'm reading This Is Just a Test by Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang in print and reading Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World by Michael Harris on my Kindle. I'm still reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling to my daughter. We are about 3/4 of the way through, and it's been a great reading experience. I think we're going to take a break after this, though, before moving on to even longer and darker books in the series.

My daughter has also continued to enjoy the Squish series by Jenni Holm and Matt Holm. The other day, instead of opening some recently arrived birthday presents, she elected to go upstairs and read Squish: Captain Disaster in my bed. Needless to say, I did not object. She's also reading the Fantastic Frame series by Lin Oliver (a recommendation from a friend). Her newest picture book recommendation is Vampirina at the Beach by Anne Marie Pace and LeUyen Pham, which she liked very much and suggested that I review (and I will). You can find her 2017 reading list here.

Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms.

Posted at 10:43 AM in Newsletter | Permalink | Comments (2)

Comments

Reading Update: In the last two weeks I finished two young adult novels, two adult novels, and one adult nonfiction title. I read/listened to:

Chris Weitz: The New Order (The Young World, Book 2). Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. YA Science Fiction. Completed March 31, 2017, on Kindle.
Chris Weitz: The Revival (The Young World, Book 3). Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. YA Science Fiction. Completed April 3, 2017, on Kindle. I had read the first book in this post-apocalyptic trilogy a couple of years ago, but somehow never went back and read the other two books. These were just what I needed during a quiet weekend in Lake Tahoe. While I don't plan a formal review, I do recommend this series to fans of YA dystopia. It's set in a post-plague New York City, after the plague has left only teens alive, but with a ticking clock for each of them. There are warring tribes of kids, grim battles, and scientific efforts to find a cure. The cast is nicely diverse, too, with shifting first person viewpoints between a number of distinct characters.
Angela Duckworth: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Scribner. Adult Nonfiction. Completed March 29, 2017, on Kindle. I've been familiar with the concept of grit for a while. My takeaway from reading the full book was the importance of the passion element - I think we tend to think of grit as just endless persistence. But it's really persistence towards something that is personally important. Grit held my interest, and I do continue to think about it now, a couple of weeks after finishing it.
C. J. Box: Vicious Circle (Joe Pickett series). G.P. Putnam's Sons. Adult Mystery. Completed April 3, 2017, on MP3. Although I've been hooked on this series for a while, the bleakness of it is starting to wear on me a bit. I don't think that the next one (presumably due out next year) will be an automatic purchase, but I think it will depend on my mood when the time comes.
Charlaine Harris: All the Little Liars (Aurora Teagarden, No. 9). Berkley. Adult Mystery. Completed April 7, 2017, on MP3. I am also now caught up with this series, which I enjoyed. It's the only one I've read by Harris that doesn't include supernatural occurrences, and I quite like the librarian main character. In the books, about 8 years pass for the main character between books 1 and 9. In real time, something like 26 years have passed. Harris handles this by merely referencing the most current technology in each book, and not getting too hung up on the details, which does pretty much work. I've been reading other series that started quite some time ago, and I just find it interesting to note how authors manage this (e.g. Sue Grafton, who has basically stayed in the 80's with her character).

Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms.