Family Reads

Happy Thanksgiving!

We wish all of you a lovely Thanksgiving! Like most of you, we have had a wonderfully busy fall, filled with homework, orchestra performances, family visits, new work adventures and, of course, books!

Tonight, the three of us will gather on the couch for one of our favorite holiday traditions. Each year, we read a book as a family beginning on Thanksgiving night and finishing on Christmas Eve. What a delightful way to make sure we spend time together in the quiet of each night. The holidays can be so filled with hustle and bustle, we forget to take a deep breath every once in awhile and just be with one another.

For the last four years, we've read one of our absolute favorite books, Rascal by Sterling North. If you haven't read it, please seek it out. It's a sweet story about a boy and his raccoon, largely biographical, that beautifully captures small town, Midwestern life as World War I is winding down. It's also a wonderful book to read aloud.

This year, we've decided to read two Christmas classics: A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Though the tales are familiar, we've never read the original versions together and can't wait to experience the rich language and masterful storytelling.

Consider choosing a family favorite or two to share together each night this season. It's a great way to end the day.

We haven't had as much time to devote to Family Reads recently as we'd like and it will likely remain a bit quiet over the next few months, but we hope you're still able to find many new books to explore in the nearly 150 reviews we've published. Just browse our categories and levels to find what you're looking for. Keep reading and stay in touch!

Quick Pick: Maniac Magee

Maniac Magee

by Jerry Spinelli
© 1990, 184 pages Level 4 (all about levels)Amazon Reviews

Maniac Magee is called a folktale, which is the perfect description for this story about a boy who sleeps with deer and buffalo, unties impossible knots, and runs like nobody else. I listened to this Newbery-Award winner as an audiobook, which I'd highly recommend as a great way to enjoy it with your kids. There are some interesting ideas about home (and homelessness), race, and the truth that anybody, no matter how limited your resources, can make a difference. Maniac Magee could spark some wonderful family discussion!          

Quick Pick: Ben and Me

Ben and Me

by Robert Lawson
© 1939, 114 pages Level 3 (all about levels)Amazon Reviews

With a title like Ben and Me, how could we resist picking this book up from the library shelves (since, after all, our one and only shares his first name)? Little did we know what a historical gem we had found. Subtitled, An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos, this tale was "discovered, edited and illustrated by Robert Lawson" in 1939. Amos reveals himself as the small, furry assistant who was the real genius behind much of Franklin's work. From bi-focals and the Franklin stove to the discovery of electricity and the Declaration of Independence, readers will enjoy laughing at the witty narrative while learning about some of Franklin's famous moments.      

Quick Pick: Tunnels

Tunnels

by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams
© 2007, 480 pages Level 5 (all about levels)Amazon Reviews

Initially, I checked this book out for Ben, but I couldn't resist picking it up and reading a bit. When I did, I was intrigued—I couldn't imagine where in the world this book was going. As I found out, it was going into the world...deep into the earth. You see, the main character, Will Burrows, and his father share a passion for digging tunnels. For Will, it's an adventure. For his academic father, it's an archaeological pursuit. But when Will's father decides to go it alone on a particular dig, he disappears without a trace. Will eventually uncovers his father's journal, and recruits a friend to go searching for him in a tunnel connected to their basement. They stumble upon a hidden world underground—a massive city complete with houses, streets, a church, and even a police force. They soon realize that this civilization is disturbingly different, only after it's too late to leave. Will they manage to escape? Will they ever find Will's father? These questions, and many more that follow, are what drove me to stay up way too late several nights in a row. There are a few brief periods (particularly the beginning) that are slower-paced, but readers will be rewarded well for sticking with this mysterious underground adventure.

Your Preschoolers Deserve Quality

If there's a driving philosophy behind Family Reads, it's that our kids deserve quality reading material and the time from us to make great books available to them. Not caring, or not paying attention to, what your children read is the educational equivalent of feeding them fast food for every meal. They won't be well-nourished, but they won't be hungry either. I love it when we use the web to encourage better reading choices for our kids, and a post I just read at Simple Mom made my heart smile: Twaddle-Free Books for Preschoolers: My Top 10 Favorites. There's great material there for our Level 2 and 3 readers, and don't miss the comments for lots more quality suggestions.

Not a Stick

Not a Stick

by Antoinette Portis
© 2008, 32 pages Level 1 (all about levels)Learn More on Amazon

 

When a child finds a good stick, there's plenty of entertainment ahead. Not a Stick shows us the magic that happens when such a simple object finds itself in the hands of someone filled with imagination.

In this case, a little pig wields the stick on each page, as an unseen grownup tosses out warnings to "be careful with that stick," and "watch where you point that stick." The pig corrects the speaker with each admonishment, countering, "This is not a stick." And we see exactly what he's talking about, as the same line drawing from the previous page is incorporated into a fantasy scene like leading a parade, riding a horse, and slaying a dragon.

Not a Stick is the followup to Antoinette Portis' award-winning book, Not a Box. Bet you can guess what that one's about ;) Her simple drawings and subtle usage of color capture the essence of these objects, as well as the imaginary adventures. This book reminds me of Harold and the Purple Crayon, in every good way. Highly recommended!

Quick Pick: The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, Book 6)

The Time Paradox (Artemis Fowl, Book 6)

by Eoin Colfer
© 2008, 432 pages Level 5 (all about levels)Amazon Reviews

Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox is about a teenage, male, cunning genius named Artemis Fowl, an elf who is a LEPrecon officer, and a dirt-loving dwarf. Artemis' mother has contracted a deadly disease, and the only cure is found in the brain fluid of the Silky Sifaka Lemur. It would be easy to get the cure-if the animal still existed. Due to a heartless deal Artemis made many years ago, the lemur is extinct. Artemis, Holly Short, the elf, and Mulch Diggums, the dwarf, must go back in time and steal the lemur from the younger Artemis. This book is one of the best I've read in a while, and won't dissapoint fans of the previous Artemis Fowl books or people who enjoy science fiction or fantasy.

(P.S. In order to get the most enjoyment out of this book, I highly recommend you read the first 5 before diving into this one).

You read some, I'll read some

Wow, it's been a while since we've posted! We've had a whirlwind start to the school year and just this week Ben popped up with the chicken pox. Thankfully, it's a pretty mild case so he's mostly itchy and feeling just bad enough to watch way too much TV. (Sickness is definitely a time when he doesn't have much interest in reading.)

Anyway, before the spots started popping up, we had dinner out with some friends and wandered into a bookstore afterward. Their sweet 7-year-old girl has a thing for books featuring animals on the cover, and is just headstrong enough to not take book recommendations. When she found a novel she was just sure she would love reading (and we adults were dubious about whether she'd like or finish it), her quick-thinking dad proposed what I thought was a great solution: we'll take turns reading. You read 20 minutes on your own and then I'll read some of the book to you for 20 minutes. He already reads to her every night, but this was a way of allowing her to earn her choice while helping her get through a tricky selection.

With book fairs already hitting our schools, this tip might come in handy very soon! How about you...have you come up with your own creative solutions to this kind of dilemma with your kids?

New book series - The 39 Clues

The New York Times yesterday featured a very interesting profile of Rick Riordan, author of the popular Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. He became a writer after spending 15 years as a middle school English and History teacher. In fact, his first novels were written when he started running out of bedtime stories for his sons. His love of learning comes through in his work: "My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn’t realize they were learning."

He has just finished Maze of Bones, the first book in a new series, The 39 Clues, which debuts next Tuesday.

The 39 Clues is planned as a 10-book mystery series for 8-to-12 year olds, with a different historical figure making a central appearance in each one. Scholastic is publishing it on an aggressive timetable, with plans to release one book every two to three months. In addition to writing the first book, Mr. Riordan has outlined the next nine novels, which will be written by other authors.

There is also a website and collectable cards dedicated to the series, where kids can search for clues which are not in the books. I have a feeling we'll be checking out the first book to see if it lives up to the hype. We'll let you know if it does!

Quick Pick: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

by Brian Selznick
© 2003, 550 pages Level 5 (all about levels)Amazon Reviews

Don't let the length of this book scare you away. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a story told in words and pictures, so a large portion of the pages are illustrations that contribute to the plot. And what illustrations they are! Author/Illustrator Brian Selznick won the Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a fascinating mixture that he describes as, "not a exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things." It's really worth experiencing this book simply for the groundbreaking format, but it's also a creative novel that weaves in mystery, history, and suspense. So what's it about? It's a hard plot to summarize, but it involves an orphaned boy who lives in the unseen world behind the walls of a Paris train station. Add one clever girl, an old man, a stolen key, and a hidden message, and you've got a very interesting read!