Growing Bookworms Newsletter: December 19: The 13th Blog Anniversary Edition

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 middle grade book review and two literacy milestones (creating graphic novel versions of stories and clarifying vocabulary words). I also have a post about two side benefits for parents from raising a book-loving child. I have three posts with links that I shared recently on Twitter, full of reading- and education-related news. 

I should also mention here that Monday, December 17th, marked the 13th anniversary of my blog. I was too busy to write a separate post to mark the occasion, but I did take a moment to marvel at how thirteen years have passed since the afternoon that I sat down, laptop on lap, and started blogging. Thanks to everyone who has taken time out of their busy lives to check in occasionally and read what I have to say. Extra thanks to those who have taken time to comment!

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

• Ginger Ly (ill. Molly Park): Suee and the Shadow. Harry N. Abrams Books. Middle Grade Graphic Novel. Completed December 12, 2018, read aloud to my daughter. I'm not personally a big reader of graphic novels, but my daughter had some trouble following this one, and asked me to read it to her. It's intriguing, but ends with some details unresolved and no word that I could see on when a sequel might be forthcoming. 
• Rick Riordan: The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1). Disney Hyperion. Middle Grade Speculative Fiction. Completed December 17, 2018, on MP3. This was an audio re-read of an old favorite because my daughter is reading this in print, and had questions that were beyond my memory for detail.
• Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp: Game Changer!: Book Access for All Kids. Scholastic. Adult Nonfiction. Completed November 30, 2018, print copy. This book just came out and is fabulous. Any teacher who cares at all about encouraging kids to enjoy reading will want to get a copy. 
• Michael Connelly: Dark Sacred Night (Ballard and Bosch mystery). Little, Brown and Co. Completed December 5, 2018, on MP3. This is the first of a new series in which Connelly pairs his long-time series character, Harry Bosch with a newer young female detective, Renee Ballard (introduced in one previous title). I think the pairing is going to work, and look forward to further installments.
• Maryanne Wolf: Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. Harper. Adult Nonfiction. Completed December 7, 2018, on Kindle. I had a bit of trouble getting through this very detailed look at the impact of different types of reading on the brain. It's a topic that I'm very interested in, however, and I persisted through some dense text to extract a few interesting points. 
• Louise Penny: Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Gamache, #14). Minotaur Books. Adult Mystery. Completed December 11, 2018, on MP3. This is the newest installment in one of my favorite series, and did not disappoint. 

I'm currently reading The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (print library copy). I've been weeding my way through a host of Kindle samples and have loaded up my device with my choices in the hopes of getting some reading time in over the holidays. I haven't decided what to listen to next, but will get to that soon. After reading a graphic novel together, my daughter and I are back to reading picture books. We read a couple of versions of The Nutcracker, for example, prior to a family trip up to San Francisco to see the ballet this week. 

In terms of her own reading, my daughter is nearly halfway through The Lightning Thief (the first Percy Jackson book) by Rick Riordan. We have two copies for some reason, so she keeps one in her backpack (for spare moments) and one in my car. It's a pretty challenging book for her, however, so she takes regular breaks to read and re-read graphic novels and picture books. We visited a bookstore yesterday after seeing The Nutcracker, and she was excited to spot the second book in the Caveboy Dave series, Not So Faboo, by Aaron Reynolds and Phil McAndrew. In the interest of supporting independent bookstores, I bought her that, Monster Mayhem by Christopher Eliopoulos, and three titles from the Who Was...? series (all about women, as she requested). We did not get much conversation out of her during dinner. 

Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms! Wishing you all much joy this holiday season. 

© 2018 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage.