Growing Bookworms Newsletter: April 25: Series Reading, Summer Plans, and Nonfiction Titles

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 usually sent out every three weeks.

Newsletter Update:  In this issue I have one literacy milestone post, one post about how my daughter wants to spend her summer vacation and three posts with links that I shared recently on Twitter. I also shared an off-topic post about my quest for ideological diversity, which I have not included here (of course you are welcome to click through if you are interested). I'm been in a pretty major reviewing slump and do not have any reviews to share with you at this time. Thanks for your patience!

Reading Update:  In the last few weeks I finished ten adult titles. I read/listened to: 

• Karen Cleveland: Need to Know. Ballantine Books. Adult Mystery. Completed March 30, 2018, on Kindle. This thriller held my attention, but I wasn't crazy about the ending... 
• Susan Furlong: Splintered Silence (A Bone Gap Travellers Novel). Kensington. Adult Mystery. Completed April 2, 2018, on Kindle. This is the first of a promising new series set among a population of gypsies who are sometimes discriminated against in their town. The heroine is a wounded former military officer with a three legged working dog. I look forward to the next book. 
• Charles Finch: A Beautiful Blue Death (The First Charles Lenox Mystery). Minotaur. Adult Historical Mystery. Completed April 4, 2018, on Kindle. This is another new mystery series that I started and have been enjoyed, set in the mid 1800s and featuring a bright, wealthy detective who has echoes of Sherlock Holmes. 
• Hans Rosling: Factfulness. Flatiron Books. Adult Nonfiction. Completed April 7, 2018, on Kindle. This is a fascinating nonfiction title about being better consumers of data and thinking clearly about what the world is actually like. I think everyone should read it. I learned about because Bill Gates recommended it, if you don't want to take my word for it. 
• Charles Finch: The September Society (A Charles Lenox Mystery). Minotaur. Adult Historical Mystery. Completed April 13, 2018, on Kindle.
• Jo Furniss: All the Little Children. Lake Union. Adult Thriller (Post Apocalypse). Completed April 16, 2018, on Kindle. This was another that I enjoyed but where I found the ending unsatisfying. 
• Elizabeth George: The Punishment She Deserves (Lynley + Havers). Viking. Adult Mystery. Completed April 17, 2018, on MP3. Another excellent installment to one of my favorite series. 
• Charles Todd: A Duty to the Dead (Bess Crawford, #1). William Morrow. Adult Mystery. Completed April 20, 2018, on Kindle. A friend recommended this historical mystery series to me, and I enjoyed the first book. I will check out others. 
• Gretchen Rubin: The Four Tendencies. Harmony. Adult Nonfiction. Completed April 21, 2018, on Kindle. This is another nonfiction title that I think everyone should read. Rubin, whose work I always find interesting, classifies people according to four tendencies in how they meet internal and external expectations. I already knew my own tendency, but I've been finding it illuminating to consider those of the people around me. 
• Sir Ken Robinson: You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education. Viking. Adult Nonfiction. Completed April 22, 2018, on Kindle. This book about the educational system is also one that I would recommend. I found much food for thought, and will probably be commenting further later. 
• Jessica Lahey: The Gift of Failure. Harper. Adult Nonfiction. Completed April 24, 2018. Another excellent nonfiction title, about how and why parents should not over-protect their children, but rather team them autonomy. Covers growth mindset and grit concepts, too. 

I'm currently listening to To Die but Once, the latest Maisie Dobbs book by Jacqueline Winspear. I'm learning a bit about England during the evacuation of Dunkirk in WWII, and enjoying puzzling through the current mystery. I am a bit concerned about the fate of various young loved ones of Maisie's in the war, though. I'm still reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with my daughter. We are past the halfway point but I doubt we'll finish before the summer. 

My daughter is still sending most of her library books, which reflect her reading level but not so much her interest level, back unread. She did make it through Grace Lin's The Year of the Dog, and immediately asked me to get her the next two. She claims these are not in her school library, but I think she just wants them. She's also read Cosmic Commandos by Christopher Eliopoulos, which she received for her recent 8th birthday, several times. When the ARC of a new graphic novel, Making Friends by Kristen Gudsnuk, showed up on our doorstep this week she dropped everything else to read it, even waking up early on a school day. If I could come up with an enormous pile of middle grade-appropriate, realistic graphic novels, I think she would only stop reading to sleep.  

Just now I found her in her room, half-dressed for the day and half in her pajamas, standing by her bed re-reading a Dork Diaries book for the umpteenth time, instead of finishing getting ready for school. When I try to redirect such behavior she tells me that it's my fault, because I taught her to love books. What can you do? 

Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms!

© 2018 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.