Books: Some Memorable Recent Reads

It’s been a really long time since I’ve written about what we’ve been reading!  Fear not, lots and lots of reading happens every day here.  I can’t keep up with YaYa and Mr. SP and all the silent reading that they do.  Sometimes I recommend books to them.  Sometimes they recommend books to me.  The Banana and I spend time reading early reading books and reading aloud both chapter books and picture books.  She’s becoming a great reader herself. She works so hard!   Mr. TOF has entered that stage of life where he is no longer chewing on books or throwing them across the room.  He no longer wants to read the same board book 207 times in a row!  We have been having so much fun snuggling and reading picture books of all sorts, with shorter and medium long texts.

A month or so ago I was reading another photographer’s blog and saw a picture of a little girl on a bed with a whole collection of books by Polly Dunbar around her.  The photographer commented that these were her daughter’s favorite books, and I was instantly intrigued, because I hadn’t read any of them.  So I ordered all of them, because that’s how I roll with books.  Also, they were not available at my local library.  I’m glad I did, because the books are cute and Mr. TOF really likes them.  The Banana appreciates them too.  My very favorite is Doodle Bites, about an alligator who is addicted to biting things.  The text of these books is the perfect length for preschoolers of all ages, shapes and sizes, and the characters are delightfully developed.

 

I’ve been in love with Olivier Dunrea’s books about poultry ever since YaYa was a baby.  It started out with our first little square books about Gossie and Gertie, geese who wear boots, and over the years he’s added more feathered friends.  Mr. TOF really, really loves these books, and so after Christmas I splurged and got all of the books that we didn’t actually own (there were only 3 or 4, and most of them I could purchase used).  His favorites are the books about Gideon, but there isn’t one of these books about Gossie and Gertie and their friends that I don’t love.  I have so much fun reading them over and over again and I love the illustrations.

I happen to love punctuation, even though I don’t always punctuate things correctly, and my favorite punctuation mark is the exclamation mark!  I over use it all the time.  When I saw a children’s picture book entitled Exclamation Mark by one of my favorite clever authors, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, at the library I was instantly intrigued, and the book did not disappoint.  It’s extremely witty, and I loved it.

The Banana and I also have thoroughly enjoyed the award winning book Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett.  It’s charming.  I loved the story.  I loved the illustrations.  It’s become a favorite comfort book in our book basket.   We also appreciated This Moose Belongs to Me by the ever creative Oliver Jeffers.

 

The Banana and I have been working our way through all the books in the Stella Batts series.  Mr. SP has also joined us on occasion and couldn’t wait for me to finish reading them aloud, so he swiped them up to his room for a day or two and finished them all himself.  We all really liked these books.  They are such a nice addition to the various chapter books for early middle readers.  Stella is such a well developed character, realistic and fun to get to know.  Her adventurous are well told and so appropriate to read out loud to a family.  Stella deals with so many things that are important to an elementary school student.  I hadn’t heard of the collection until I randomly ran across it while I was doing some book shopping before Christmas, and now they have become some of my favorites.

YaYa had been telling me repeatedly to read the book Wonder for months, and I finally managed to get a copy from the library a few months ago.  It was hands down the best book I’ve read for the last year or two.  I thought it was absolutely excellent and I think everyone should read it. I could write a whole blog post about everything I loved about this book.   YaYa also loved it and we had so much fun talking about it together.  She and I both love books that open minds about people who have differences or disabilities, and I see her becoming a person who is very compassionate and gifted in relating to kids who have special needs because of books like this and Out of My Mind, by Sharon M. Draper and Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine.

I read The One and Only Ivan to myself and then out loud to the middle kidlets.  YaYa had already read it at school.  We all enjoyed it greatly.  It was well deserving of the recognition that it received.

Most of the YA books I have read recently I felt were medium books, worth maybe 3 or 4 stars, but one that has really stuck out in my mind is Code Name Verity.  Elizabeth Wein crafted an amazing plot, the kind of plot that requires strict self discipline to refrain from turning to the end of the book to make sure everything turns out OK while you are in the middle of the book.  And even then, if you succumb, like me, you can’t stop turning pages to find out how it all happens anyway.  This book had me researching things about World War II for days after I had read it, even though I’ve read a LOT of books about World War II. I wanted to find out even more about Nazi interrogation and torture for prisoners of war, and more about the RAF and it’s airplanes, more about parachute drops into occupied territory, more about the resistance.  It stuck with me for a long time.

My Life Next Door was also a fluffy, fun YA read, with really great characters.  I had a hard time chewing through the book Dodger by Terry Pratchett, and although it didn’t end up being one of my favorite books ever, I’m mentioning it here because it was very well written, and also it explored an era of history, the Victorian Era in London, and the life and times of Charles Dickens,  that I haven’t run across very much in my YA reading.