We have fallen a bit behind in the Mr. Lemoncello series but enjoyed a little catching up by listening to Mr Lemoncello’s Great Library Race over the last couple of weeks. Non-fiction! Research! Private jets! Bookmobiles that speed you around town while you look for clues! Such a fun series.
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TW read Property of the Rebel Librarian before me and she kept ranting about the horrible things that were happening in the book and how horrible the adults were and on and on and on… she’s right. Horrible things happened and (most) of the adults were horrible.
Censorship is horrible. Banning books is horrible. It was all horrible… but I enjoyed reading it and wanted to sit down and read (or re-read) every book mentioned.
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I thought Everlasting Nora was a Cybil but it doesn’t seem to be. No idea how I stumbled across it but I’m glad I did. I enjoyed the story quite a bit and the Manila setting and Tagalog sprinkled throughout the story was fantastic. (There’s a glossary in the back but I was pleased I didn’t need it. I think there was only one word I didn’t know – a type of plant I’d never heard of.) Did you know people live (sometimes for generations) in Manila cemeteries?
When JMP came for Grandma Camp, way back in January, I checked out some audiobooks to listen to in the car… he wasn’t at all interested, to put it mildly, but TW and I enjoyed listening to Everything on a Waffle. It was a little grim but definitely fun to listen to.
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JMP came for a sleepover/Grandma Camp, so we read a bunch of children’s books:
– Pete the Cat: Three Bite Rule because JMP is a picky eater and also sometimes needs to be coaxed to try things that are new to him. This was a fun book and he was willing to try a few “new” foods when we sang, “three bite rule!”
– Because I knew TW was going to talk to him about planning/planting their garden, I grabbed The Rosy, Fat, Magenta Radish and Big Red Barn from our shelves and The Carrot Seed from the library. (TW and Pippin actually planted carrots and radishes yesterday!)
– We read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World and attempted (badly) to make some paper airplanes from The Kids’ Guide to Paper Airplanes.
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Almost halfway through the month and the first book I’ve finished is Paperback Crush? It’s going to be another one of those years, isn’t it? Whatevs.
I thoroughly enjoyed Paperback Crush (but found the ending a little abrupt. (Couldn’t we have had an epilogue or something?) It wasn’t so much about the books people my age read when we were tweens/teens, it’s closer to the age of my kids, but because I read pretty much everything my kids read and I love nothing better than a good (or trashy) middle grade or YA book, it was fun to look back. It also made me want to read books I (and my kids) never read. They were never hardcore into Sweet Valley or BSC, though they read a few. The Christopher Pike Midnight Club (I wonder if that’s still on our shelves or did it get Kondoed?)… I want to read that. I don’t want to read (or re-read) any Lulene McDaniel books ever again, though.
JMP is trying to figure out this whole reading thing. It doesn’t come naturally to him and he is easily frustrated so… The Grandmas are on a mission to make reading fun and that led to me reading three children’s books last weekend.
Hi! Fly Guy, we listened to on audio as we drove from Kingsland, GA to pick up Momal at the JAX airport. It was quick and fun. I think I’ll grab a couple of these in print – they seem to be pretty easy to read and if we can get hooked on a series, that’s half the battle.
If You Take a Mouse to the Movies – we have a free version that came from a kids meal many years ago and I thought it would be fun to read and then do some activities based on the book or that were natural extensions from the book. Natural extensions are what “if this then that” is all about right? It was fun and I spent the weekend asking Pippin what happens if you do X.
Because it’s Christmas season and we’d been involved in Christmas ornament making and Christmas decorating because that’s what happens if you take a mouse to the movies… we listened to an audio version of The Gingerbread Man, which Pippin had already listened to in school, while making some Christmas ornaments so that we could think about baking cookies. (Turns out Pippin had never had gingerbread so we changed our cookie plans to gingerbread cookie plans.) It was a fine version but I found myself wishing I’d chosen differently and read one of our many print versions to him. No big deal, maybe I’ll pull out a bunch of versions and we’ll have a Gingerbread Man/Boy/Baby marathon and compare the differences and similarities another time (maybe when we read a House is a House for Me and build gingerbread houses.)
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I ordered some Halloween books for the little boys and forgot to blog about them. So here they are:
Bonaparte Falls Apart was a big hit with Pippin.
ET: The Classic Illustrated Storybook – It’s the story of ET with great illustrations. I didn’t have time to read it to Pippin when I was babysitting.
Spooky Pookie – this one was cute. Squishy liked it but mostly just wanted to carry it around and look at it by himself rather than have me read it to him.
You’re My Little Pumpkin Pie – I didn’t like this one quite as well, (I wouldn’t), but Squishy seemed to enjoy me reading it to him. He sat all the way through and didn’t try to take the book away from me, lol.
Princess Princess Ever After is a book I saw on some list of LGBTQ books in June or maybe October? I don’t know but it was in my Evernote mixed up with other LGBTQ titles. It’s a graphic novel for young middle grade kids. It’s cute – princess rescues princess and rescues a prince and then the other princess kind of rescues everyone and becomes queen. Then some amount of time passes (a lot, I’d guess) and the princess comes back to the castle to marry the queen. I could have done without that marrying the queen bit (patriarchy, etc. etc.) and time passed without us seeing the princess or the queen at work. That kind of stinks. If you were going to do that, it should be a series where we watch the kids grow up, do their own things, and then come back together again. (I clearly have strong thoughts about this book, lol.)
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Woot. I didn’t even know about #Readathon Bingo until I woke up this morning and loaded all of the Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon links I like to keep open when I do #Readathon, so I’m pretty pleased that I was able to adjust my TBR plan (who am I kidding, I didn’t have a plan) and get a Blackout!
To get it, I had to read the short stories/essays I mentioned earlier today and track down a book with a male protagonist… TW’s Comic Con LGBTQ Mystery Box to the rescue (thanks, Momal!) In it was The World’s Greatest Love: Vol. 1. and that fit the bill nicely!
Speaking of The World’s Greatest Love… typical Manga. I kind of wish it had been written by a man, I think it might have been slightly different… the best part was the information about the world of Manga publishing. That was really interesting.
Besides that book, I also finished Dinner Illustrated and found a lot of recipes I’d try. I’m almost tempted to buy it. I wonder what TW thinks of the book.
After that, since I was waiting for the dogs to come in, I read two children’s picture books about gender/non-binary. Both were well done. I’d recommend them: I’m a Girl and Introducing Teddy.
We listened to The Girl Who Drank the Moon on audio and I thought it was going to be a walk in the park. Some cute little creation type story about witches and swamp monsters and dragons. And it was all of that. It was also a cautionary tale about adoption, among other things.
I enjoyed it and think part of that is because I listened to the audio rather than reading the print version.
(Interestingly, I thought this was a Cybil but it’s not — it’s a Newberry. I wonder why it didn’t make it the Cybils. Odd. Seems very Cybil-like.)
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