What I’ve Been Reading

This is a bloglift, an idea that I have to completely credit to my friend Carmen, a teaching peer when I lived in North Dakota. She always comes up with the best books to read. In fact, she used to have her apartment decorated with books: bookshelves, books on the wall, books displayed on plate racks . . . it was awesome.

Anyway, over the past month, in addition to colossal amounts of children’s picture books, I managed to read:

The Sand Dollar Summer by Kimberly K. Jones. This was a Young Adult Novel, actually best suited to early middle school probably. I loved it! It was one of the better YA novels I’d read for some time and completely enraptured me. It was a quick, fantastic read.

Jumping the Scratch by Sarah Weeks. I found this to be so/so. Written in free verse, which I like, it just seem to lack sparkle of somesort. The language could have been richer. The characters could have been more developed. It was OK.

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. I was inspired to read this to Ms. Crazy Preschooler after I read a post on Carmen’s blog. I had completely forgotten about Pippi Longstocking. In fact, I don’t think as a child I ever actually read one of the books entirely through. There were always chapters appearing in our reading textbooks at school, but I don’t think I ever actually picked up one of the chapter books. Ms. Crazy Preschooler LOVED this book. She was practically rolling on the floor with laughter. It was so fun! Her favorite part was when Pippi cooked pancakes.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Ms. Crazy Preschooler and I have enjoyed reading several of Dahl’s books out loud, but this one was particularly fun. We checked out the 40th anniversery edition from our library, which had colored illustrations. Actually the pages were color-coded by chapter, too, which Ms. CP thought was pretty neat. She was so caught up in this book that she just begged and begged and begged for more. I’m such a softie when it comes to kids begging to be read to more that I gave in every time she asked for just one more chapter, and we ended up reading for three hours straight and finishing the book long past her bedtime.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards. This was my big adult novel read for the month. Actually I read it yesterday in about five hours while my children were terrorizing the house. I had been wanting to read it for quite some time, and someone from my book club picked it for this month, so I splurged and bought the thing at Target. And I liked it. There were things I was a bit critical of, but it was a good story.

The Divine Intruder by James Edwards. My husband found this book actually, written by one of my favorite college professors at Jamestown College. It was superbly written and I drank up the words.