Growing Bookworms Newsletter: June 27: #Babymouse, #SummerReading, and Waiting for New Series Installments

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 a post about how I'm limiting my daughter's screen time this summer (in favor of books), and another that is an update on that and my general push to give her opportunities to read over the summer. I also have two posts with links that I shared recently on Twitter, and a quick post with a link to an interview that I did at Dani Duck's website. 

Reading Update:  In the last three weeks I finished two middle grade, one young adult, and four adult titles. I read/listened to: 

• Stuart Gibbs: Spy School. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Middle Grade Fiction. Completed June 17, 2018. This book, about a boy who is whisked off to a DC-area school for training young spies, is quite kid-friendly, and I will certainly give it to my daughter when she's a little bit older. As an adult reader, however, it didn't quite hold my attention. 
• Laurel Snyder: Orphan Island. Walden Pond Press. Middle Grade Fiction. Completed June 21, 2018, on Kindle. This is an unusual and lyrical book about a mysterious island inhabited by nine orphans. A new young one replaces the oldest each year, when a small boat arrives. This one did hold my attention, read pool-side in Hawaii. In the end, though, I felt like I didn't quite understand it - like I was missing some profound conclusion. 
• April Henry: The Girl I Used To Be. Henry Holt and Co. Young Adult Mystery. Completed June 22, 2018, on Kindle. This is a suspenseful YA novel about a girl who is investigating her mother's long-ago murder. There were some themes common to other books I've read recently, which gave me a bit of deja vu, but I still enjoyed the book and the characters. 
• S. J. Scott, Barrie Davenport: 10-Minute Mindfulness: 71 Habits for Living in the Present Moment. CreateSpace. Adult Nonfiction. Completed June 2, 2018, on Kindle. This was a free selection that I got from Amazon, in the interest of learning more about mindfulness. There are lots of ideas for simple ways to add mindful moments to your day. 
• Stuart Brown: Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. Avery. Adult Nonfiction. Completed June 10, 2018, on Kindle. This is a nonfiction title that is more about re-discovering play as an adult than about the benefits for children, but it's definitely interesting. 
• Kelly McGonigal: The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Avery. Adult Nonfiction. Completed June 14, 2018, on MP3. This book I liked a lot. I listened to a chapter every few days, to give myself time to digest the different recommendations. It's based on a course that the author teaches with research-based, practical techniques for increasing willpower. And who couldn't use a bit of improvement there?
• Jeff Goins: The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do. Thomas Nelson. Adult Nonfiction. Completed June 20, 2018, on Kindle. This is about reinvention and creating a work life (or retirement life) with more meaning and satisfaction. I would like to have a bit of time to digest this one, but I haven't been able to make that happen so far. 

I'm still listening to 11/22/63 by Stephen King. It's good, but very long. I'm reading To Right the Wrongs (Erin Blake #2) by Sheryl Scarborough, a sequel to a YA thriller that I read last month. In truth, I'm in a little bit of a reading slump - I have a ton of things on my nightstand and my Kindle, but I want more books that are so exciting that I can't put them down. I have a bunch of new arrivals that I haven't tried yet and new samples downloaded, so we'll see...

I'm still reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with my daughter. We are just through O.W.Ls with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and have met Grawp. I need to find us more reading time, so that we can get through the exciting ending quickly. I was rather annoyed yesterday to learn that a friend told my daughter who the characters each end up married to. Sigh. I've been so careful not to spoil things for her. But that's the downside of reading such a well-known series. 

I have been doing better lately at keeping up my daughter's list of books read. Her current obsession is the Babymouse books. She collected a huge stack of them last time we were at the library, and has been whipping through them. She also quite liked The Cardboard Kingdom, a new graphic novel by Chad Sell.  She continues to re-read from her favorite authors (Raina Telgemeier) and series (Jedi Academy, Dork Diaries, Babysitters Club).  She's dying for new releases in all three of these series, but these aren't coming until later in the summer.

Come to think of it, I'm ready for new installments in a couple of my own favorite series (notably Louise Penny and Tana French). It would be hypocrisy on my part to be waiting for release of those books while pushing my daughter to read books that she's not interested in / obsessed with. Fortunately for both of us, I am not doing that. It's summer, and we both read what we choose. Off to the library tomorrow. My guess is that we'll be checking out more Babymouse books. 

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.