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 five book reviews (picture book and early reader) and one post with my daughter's latest literacy milestone (screening books for my blog). I also have two posts with links that I shared recently on Twitter, and one more detailed post with quotes and responses from recent #JoyOfLearning articles.
Reading Update: In the last three weeks I finished three middle grade novels and two adult novels. I read/listened to:
- Elizabeth Eulberg: The Great Shelby Holmes: Girl Detective. Bloomsbury USA Children's Books. Middle Grade Fiction. Completed April 16,2017. This was a very fun mystery featuring a young white girl as Holmes and a slightly older black boy as Watson, set in modern-day Harlem. I look forward to the next book, after which I expect to write about the series in more detail.
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Michael D. Beil: Agents of the Glass: A New Recruit. Knopf Books for Young Readers. Middle Grade Fantasy. Completed April 21, 2017. This is the first of a new fantasy series involving a secret organization that fights evil, and seemingly ordinary boy who is recruited to help.
- J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Scholastic. Middle Grade Fantasy. Completed April 26, 2017. Read aloud to my daughter.
- Brett Battles: Survivor (Rewinder, Volume 3). CreateSpace. Adult Science Fiction. Completed April 22, 2017.
- William Kent Krueger: Iron Lake (Cork O'Connor, No. 1). Atria Books. Adult Mystery. Completed April 25, 2017, on MP3.
I'm currently listening to Boundary Waters by William Kent Krueger (second book in the Cork O'Connor series) and reading The Uncommoners #1: The Crooked Sixpence by Jennifer Bell on my Kindle. Reading the third Harry Potter book aloud to my daughter was a fabulous experience - I think she grew a lot as a reader from listening to and discussing the book. It's hard to wrap one's head around time-travel even as an adult - quite challenging for a seven-year-old. But we made it through. We are now reading a lot of picture books while considering what novel to read next together. It won't be the next Harry Potter - we are ready for a break, and the next one is pretty dark. I was hoping for Charlotte's Web, but she rejected that one because she saw the movie at after-school care. Sigh.
My daughter is spending a fair bit of time reading chapter books on her own. She tends to dip in and out of books and doesn't finish all that many, but she's definitely forming a habit. We had a recent family vacation to Massachusetts that involved various drives to New Hampshire and Rhode Island and such. We ended up having to borrow and buy extra books, because she finished the three that I had brought. Lesson learned there! I'm just so happy she can (and does) read in the car. You can find her 2017 reading list here. She especially enjoys the A to Z Mysteries these days. I also just ordered her Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham - I think she's going to like that one. Other recommendations welcome!
Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms.
© 2017 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.