Growing Bookworms Newsletter: July 26: Quoting from Books, Eliminating #Homework + #Kidlit Reviews

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 books through middle grade/middle school) and one post with my daughter's latest literacy milestone (quoting from / acting on advice from a book). I also have two posts with links that I shared recently on Twitter, and one post with more detailed notes / responses to three recent joy of learning-related articles. 

Reading Update: In the last two weeks I finished two middle grade and three adult novels.  I read/listened to: 

• Zack Loran Clark and Nick Eliopulos: The Adventurers Guild. Disney Hyperion. Middle Grade Fantasy. Completed July 20, 2017, print ARC. Review to come.
• Caela Carter: My Life with the Liars. HarperCollins. Middle Grade Fiction. Completed July 23, 2017, on Kindle. I couldn't put this one down. Review to come. 
• Laurie R. King: Lockdown. Bantam. Adult Thriller. Completed July 13, 2017, on MP3. An intriguing story, told from multiple perspectives, about the lead-up to a violent event at a central CA middle school. 
• Joy Ellis: Hunted on the Fens (Nikki Galena, Book 3). Joffe Books. Adult Mystery. Completed July 19, 2017, on MP3. I'm not generally a fan of stories in which some hidden enemy is sneaking around wreaking vengeance for unknown crimes. But I like the characters in this series so much that I was consumed by this story (if worried for the characters). 
• Brett Battles: The Silenced (Jonathan Quinn #4). CreateSpace. Adult Thriller. Completed July 10, 2017, on Kindle. 

I'm currently reading Ararat by Christopher Golden and listening to Crime on the Fens by Joy Ellis. My daughter and I are still nominally reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire together, but our breakfast reading has been cut short by the need to get to summer day camp by a certain time, so that's going rather slowly. You can find my daughter's 2017 reading list here. For her own reading, she's currently quite into the Hilo books, graphic novels by Judd Winick. She's also been reading and re-reading El Deafo by Cece Bell, I suspect she's working to really understand a story that's thematically a bit above her age level. She incidentally refers to the book as "Cece". As in "Where's Cece? I need to bring it in the car."

Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms. Here's to more time for summer reading!

© 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.