Neglected Summer-- Reading

This was a summer of reading for me. I read more this summer than I have read (I'm guessing) for the past 10 summers combined. I guess that's what happens when your baby no longer wears diapers? I have had no time to take tons of pictures of my reading, but I do have a couple of pictures to share.

First, you should know that this was "The Summer of Jane Austen" for me. I read all the complete novels and thoroughly enjoyed each one for its own reasons. My favorite? I really don't know. I will have to read them all again, I guess.

Second, I read something completely out of my comfort zone. It was a book my husband was reading, and it was a mystery/detective novel. I also read another one by the same author. As I felt I was steeping myself in British literature this summer, this fit right in.

I think my favorite picture book of the summer involved the flower which is one of my favorites and, unarguably, my husband's very least favorite-- the dandelion. If you have a dandelion hater in your family, this is the picture book for you.

And I read other stuff (see the word "neglected" in the title of this post).

But let's get back to Jane Austen. First I gobbled up the books I had in my house. In one of them I found this delightful bookmark. 

Have you ever seen a more delightful bookmark? I thought not. By the way, if you know anything about the history of the booksellers this advertises, I'd love to know, too. When did The Book Store in Hagerstown close?

I would like to add that I actually was not the last in my family to finish the library's summer reading club program. There have been many summers which I have not even completed it. 

Thursday Things

The weather has been so warm here the last few days that the kids were outside in short-sleeves playing. Some were even begging for the air conditioner to be turned on! That didn't happen. At least it feels cooler this morning.

I've been too busy to blog much lately, so I've saved up a few random thoughts.

1.  Wonderful Wednesday. Yesterday was a lovely day. I was able to spend some time outside with the kids. Reading a good book (E. B. White's Trumpet of the Swan) aloud to your children in the woods with sunshine on your arms does wonders for a body.

I also saw pretty things outside which cheered me up. All of these added a touch of color to our brown "winter" world.

Bluebird house

Tulips popping up

My yellow crocuses! (Or is that croci?)

And if all that pretty was not enough, later in the day after a quick shower, God gifted us with this rainbow.

2.  Child Development.  The baby is at that funny/cute stage where she likes to "hide" by sitting in plain view and covering her eyes. We crack up every time it happens, and that is several times a day. If she can't see us, we can't see her! (Note: I fully recognize that my "baby" is actually a toddler, but she is still the baby.)

3.  Bookish Podcast. My high school BFF recently joined together with some of her co-workers to created a podcast about books they read. It is called Unabridged, and you can find it here. In their words:

Unabridged - Four Teachers Take on Books is a podcast that comes from the desire to share a love of reading, cultivate a reading community, and invite students to become lifelong readers. 

I have listened to a couple of the episodes, and I wish I had more time to read. I also love hearing more of Jen's voice since we don't get to talk often. I am making a prediction that she will never not love a book they review. If you listen, you will learn that she is a real book lover.


4.  Another Place to Shop.  Recently a new family has been coming from afar to our little church-- and they have children! That's always exciting for a small church, you know. Anyway, their three older girls are crafty and have started a business. It is called KovalKreations and can be found here or on Etsy.  Right now they have some beautiful girls' clothing and baskets. I am in awe of their skills.

5. Vintage. And speaking of Etsy, after a long Christmas break so we could arrange things in our updated home, we jumped right back into Sideling View Crafts. I finally sold one pattern in January! And because we have developed an auction habit, I started listing some vintage items.

I'm still listing things because I have quite an accumulation of stuff and not an accumulation of time. Below is a cute vintage children's book I listed this week.

And that's all for Thursday because my family needs to eat breakfast!

Very Hungry Birthday Party

Back before Christmas, my kindergartner had a birthday. We've been using Five in a Row for school, and I decided to "row" The Very Hungry Caterpillar (my way). She was excited to have a Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party. When I saw this idea on Pinterest, I was excited, too, because it looked so easy.

Very hungry cupcakes

Very hungry egg carton craft (from the day before)

For party food, we skipped many of the sweet things the caterpillar ate through because that would be just way too much sugar. So we didn't have pie, lollipops, or ice cream. We may have missed a few other things, too, just because I didn't have them.

We did have:

Apples, sausages, and salami

Swiss cheese plus some other cheeses

Strawberries, oranges, pickles, and butterfly crackers

I enjoyed this party because it was so easy to prepare AND it correlated to what we were studying in school. Thank you, Eric Carle!

An Addiction?

Last week we went to one of our favorite book sales at Booksavers. We bought books for 40¢ a pound.

This kind of sale is dangerous for us because it is mostly books discarded from school libraries, and we are a family of book lovers. And there are simply piles and piles and boxes full of good books!

We ended up with 129 books. We figured out that each book cost us about 54¢, and I had no buyer's remorse, not even when I realized we had a few duplicates of ones at home.

Piled up on the table to sort and count

The boys rejoiced! A new book to memorize and quote at will!

We added to the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys collection.

There were just too many good finds to highlight. We are now only one book short in a Time-Life Civil War series, but we do have several duplicates that need a new home.

Now, if we could just find a sale this good for bookshelves.

Sesame Street Book

My daughter wrote a Sesame Street book. I am proud of it, so I'm sharing it with you. All spellings and such are original.

a reding book

for little kids

a sesame street book

He is green. 

He likes mud, rocks, rotten apples, trash cans and shoes. 

Guess who he is

he is Oscar!

he is yellow.

he love bottle cap. 

he love pigeons. 

guess who he is

he is Bert.

he is orange. 

he loves rubber duckie.

Guess whe he is.

he is Ernie.

I'm blue.

I love you.

I'm cute, furry lovable Grover.

I'm blue. 

I'm furry.

I'm not cute or lovable. 

I'm just Herry.

Me is blue.

Me is furry.

Me love yummy cookies.

guess who me is.

me is Cookie.

I'm yellow.

I am tall.

I am a Bird.

I am Big Bird.

Time for Poe

Halloween isn't our thing, but Edgar Allan Poe has made his scary appearance in our house recently.

Three book about/by Poe

We recently checked out three Poe-related books from the library. On the left is a kid-friendly biography (as much as Poe's dismal life can be kid-friendly). On the far right is a collection of his tales; again, only as kid-friendly as Poe's classic tales can be. These tales aren't adapted, but the book is easy to hold and has an audio CD (which we didn't make use of).

But in the middle is an awesome introduction for the littlest ones to Poe. It's called Edgar Gets Ready for Bed, and Jennifer Adams has a new fan in me. My 3-year-old has memorized the book about Edgar, a little raven who really doesn't want to get ready for bed. Truth be told, Edgar's repetitive "Nevermore!" reminds me of my 3-year-old's "No!"

The illustrations are so cute and bring in ideas from Poe's poetry and stories without all the scary and weird. 

Above the chamber door

Okay. These might be construed as weird, but. . . cool!

I searched the author (Jennifer Adams) and found out there are more Edgar books-- plus other "classics" for wee ones. I definitely want to get my hands on these because all the kids loved that book.

Almost Heavenly Vacation-- Dolly Sods

Hiking on a short loop trail

Our visit to Dolly Sods Wilderness Area was so amazingly beautiful, I just had to open this post with a picture (or maybe I'd started this post weeks ago by adding the pictures first and can't figure out how to space down to start with words).

Dolly Sods is in the same county where my parents live. I'd never visited until the summer after I graduated high school. Or the summer before. I just can't remember! But I can remember being surprised by how absolutely gorgeous it was. I knew it had stunted trees, blown by the wind so hard that one side's limbs are significantly shorter than the other. But that was about it.

Wild blueberries flanked our path-- more than we could pick!

I didn't know about the wild blueberries available for the picking in the summer. Our children picked and picked and picked (and ate), and we ended up with 2 cups worth to make some blueberry muffins for Grammy and Poppa to enjoy.  If you've ever read Blueberries for Sal (by Robert McCloskey), I felt like I had been transported to a deleted scene from that book.

A view of a boggy area

In addition to forests and blueberry heaths, sphagnum bogs can be found at Dolly Sods.

Not that you'd want to wade through the boggy muck. . .

Dolly Sods, because of the elevation and location, has a climate more like you would find much farther north in Canada. Because of that, you find species associated with those areas. Reindeer lichen are one example.

That gray stuff is reindeer lichen (sometimes called moss).

After our short hike (which took quite a long time considering the sometimes rocky terrain and the berry-picking long pauses), we drove to the area of Dolly Sods calls Bear Rocks. Basically, the beauty there is breath-taking. And there are rocks. And more blueberry bushes (or huckleberry. . . I don't know which since these had no berries on them at the time) with many paths to navigate. Again, especially with the little one toddling about at this less wet location, there were more missing pages from Blueberries for Sal. He would fall down, and all you could see anywhere close by was the top of his little curly head peaking above the bushes. That boy did not want to be carried.

Not in the carrier this time!

Did I mention the rocks? Or the views? It was amazing, and for some, a little frightening to be too far out on the rocks.

Some rocks and a view. . . our pictures just can't capture the expanse!

See the stunted trees in the distance?

If you are ever in this area of West Virginia, you can't miss this. Unless it's winter. Then it might be tricky to get there.

Oh, and about the "bear" part of Bear Rocks? Yes, there are bears at Dolly Sods (yet another reason I kept thinking of the classic children's book), but we did not see any the day we were there. On our train ride at Cass, it was a different story. . .

Two Library Books, Recommended

Last year on one of my book blogs I post a review of The Luck Uglies by Paul Durham.  Since my son and I read it last year, we've been waiting for the follow up. Here it is:

Book, recommended.

We were not disappointed. Rye's adventures continue and kept my interest. Not only that, but I was struck by the author's portrayal of family. In many books for younger people, the adults and parents, in particular, are a bunch of dummies the smarter kids barely tolerate. Not so with this book. Mr. Durham's characters respect their elders even if they don't always obey them entirely. I appreciate the characters' family values.

While Rye (the main character) does experience some confusion over which characters are good and evil, unlike many books for kids I've read recently, there is no question that good is good and bad is bad. I've become annoyed by kids' books that blur the distinction between the two, books that leave even me wondering.

This book's ending is satisfactory even while leading up to a sequel. Mr. Durham, we're looking forward, once again, to the next installment.


Now, for my children's favorite picture book so far this summer. . . ummm... well, it appears their favorite picture book has no pictures. What do you call a book like that?

The Book with No Pictures by B. J. Novak was a favorite read over and over and over and received by many giggles. Even after we've returned it to the library, the children are reciting parts of it and laughing.* Basically, the book "forces" the grown-up reading it to say some pretty silly things that make kids laugh. Hey, it's silly, but it is cute and funny.

Definitely I recommend it. Check it out from your library.

*It reminds me of another favorite from the library because most of my kids memorized a large chunk of it-- Gruffalo Crumble.

Picture Books, Pardner?

All of my children have gone through (and continue to go through) from time to time a cowboy phase. Their interest is usually stoked after watching a John Wayne movie with Daddy. They especially enjoy a rowdy game of Cowboys 'n Germans outside (their uncle told them it wasn't politically correct to play Cowboys 'n Indians).

Three cowboy/cowgirl-themed pictures books found their ways into our library tote this winter.

My favorite was Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads by Bob Shea, illustrated by Lane Smith.  It is cute and smart. A small kid rides into an Old West town overrun by the Terrible Toad gang. He becomes Sheriff Ryan, and he uses his expansive knowledge about dinosaurs to round up the bad guys. This book is filled with fun cowboy language and great humor. The only problem I see somebody possibly having with it is that it uses the phrase, "Dang it." I'm not fond of my kids using this phrase, but it just fits this rough and tumbleweed town.

My girls picked out two books in a series: Every Cowgirl Needs a Horse and Every Cowgirl Needs Dancing Boots by Rebecca Janni with illustrations by Lynne Avril. Nellie Sue is a suburban girl who is a cowgirl at heart. Like Ladybug Girl, Nellie Sue has a little personal issue to overcome in each book, and she does so admirably. Not only that, her voice shines through in language alive with all sorts of fun cowboy metaphors and similes. The books are completely worth a read and would make great gifts for girls.

My advice is to round all of these books up at your local library for fun reading time.

(Mostly) True Animal Tales

Nonfiction seems to be a favorite of the boys in our household. Throw in a few animals, and this week's two books are bound to be favorites-- or are they?

My mother put a lot of effort into finding books for the children for Christmas this year--books that would both interest them and books that seemed age-appropriate and had good reviews.  For my 7-year-old son she picked two nonfiction picture books, one about a young Teddy Roosevelt and one about an elephant named Queenie.

As per the way things go when at Grammy's house, the children were tucked in by their loving grandmother. She even read one of the new books to each of the little ones. My 7-year-old picked Queenie: One Elephant's Story which is written by Corinne Fenton and illustrated by Peter Gouldthorpe. After reading the tale, my mother came out to the living room and apologized for reading the book to the children. She was worried that it upset them too much.

You see, this beautifully illustrated book is a true story about an Indian elephant named Queenie who was a mainstay in the Melbourne Zoo in Australia for quite a long time. She gave rides and was a huge attraction. Then one day, *SPOILER ALERT*, she crushed her caretaker. Then she was put to sleep, not only because of the accident, but also because of a food shortage during World War II. 

This book is a good book, but it joins Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People, and War* (by Yukio Tsuchiya) in the category of good picture books (about zoo elephants who get killed during World War II) that really are not meant for little kids. These books can upset an adult. They are not necessarily kid material; preview them first, especially if your children are young or sensitive.

On to the second book.

One of my main goals in blogging about kids' books is to help parents find "safe", if not great, books for their children to read that the children want to read. It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that the book in one son's hands had visited his hands more time than I could count, and my other son had also read it more than once. It is True Tales of Animal Heroes by Allan Zullo.

True Tales is a nonfiction chapter book about real animals who rescued kids and teens. The author notes in the beginning that dialogues and situations have been dramatized and names and specific incidents changed, and I definitely saw that while reading it. Overall though, this book was a fun read, and I can see why kids like it. If your child can read it, it's appropriate. My boys started reading it after the Magic Tree House stage of reading; it's fairly easy. I looked to see if it is still in print because it's a Troll book, and I figured it might not be the kind of book that has staying power; many used copies are available on Amazon for a penny each. Animal lovers will love this book.

* When looking online to find the author of Faithful Elephants, I found there are some who dispute the truth of the book and many who object to its strong anti-war propaganda-like message. I just thought I'd let you know since I hadn't really intended on reviewing that book since I hadn't read it for years--but it seemed to go hand-in-hand with Queenie.