What We've Been Reading

I know these posts are probably SUPER boring unless you're a library regular with your own children of similar age to mine... but I do them as much for my own reference (and I refer back a lot, actually!) as I do for the small chance that others may want some new childrens book ideas. I am constantly on the look out for new book recommendations or blogs that review weekly book lists.

For awhile, when I began writing these posts, I was actually giving a description of what each book we read was about. And I DO realize that that would probably be most helpful to you if you are reading for ideas. But I'm sorry to tell you, that takes far too long anymore. I don't have the time for that. I do, however, still look back at our previous lists for several reasons, the biggest being for gift ideas. Whenever a holiday or birthday is approaching, I always go back to our book lists to remember the favorites that we enjoyed and might want to add to our own personal library at home. I use the lists when buying gifts for my nieces as well!

Another reason is to help me build new book lists for our upcoming library trips. If I haven't found any real inspiration recently for new titles/authors, I'll just browse my book posts and jot down authors of books that we especially enjoyed in the past. Then I'll search that particular author on the library's online catalog for new title ideas. I've used this search method a lot lately. Right now, my biggest resources are the Scholastic order forms that come home from preschool, and the pages of childrens books available for order (to build classroom libraries) in the huge Lakeshore catalog I received a couple months ago. Otherwise, we've been focusing on a couple specific authors and reading anything they've written that sounds interesting.

So, now that you've heard the big justification for the purpose of this post...

Here's what we've been reading for the past few weeks. I'll probably just jot notes on our favorites or ones that stood out.

I adore Amy Krouse Rosenthal's books. This is a new one that came out just in time for Valentine's Day!

Here's another one of hers:

Sophie liked this one a lot. About the anxiety and intimidation of the first day of school. And shoot! I just deleted the picture of A Child's Goodnight Prayer. She loved that one too.

Lots of animal books.
Just cute.

Love Tana Hoban. Enough said.
Reading...

A HUGE favorite this week. Sophie adores this song and this book's expanded version of the song.

We love Bread and Jam for Frances, so these were an easy must.

I LOVED this book! "Baby, come away..." on adventures with the bird, the fish, the cat and the dog. And then, at the end, come back home to mama's arms. So sweet. I'd like to own this one.

Hehe. :-) Love this title. Cute, rhymey story.

This one's a little slow... but Will found it funny.

Eat Your Peas, Ivy Louise! is just fun to say! :-) Both kids loved it and giggled through the whole thing... about 80 times. It was requested daily. Sophie also liked the counting part of the Planting Seeds book.

Still love Tana Hoban. Enough said.

Whoops. Forgot we kept this book for two weeks. Anyway, Follow Me is just very dreamy and colorful with illustrations. The concept of the story is similar to Baby, Come Away but without animals.

Cute titles. Cute stories.

I'm so tired of dinorsaur books. They're usually just a bunch of facts and not easy to read like a story at bedtime. But Will ALWAYS requests them. And now that he's reading independently, I oblige him simply because I don't have to read them to him! This one, however, was pretty good and I may consider buying it as a reference for him... even though he already has a million dinosaur books. Working on shapes with Sophie. Ehhh... didn't like it as much as I thought I would.

Mo Willems books. Easily our #1 favorite author lately. Both kids ADORE his books.

More reading...

Demolition is by the author of Roadwork, which we own and love. And the Jeff Foxworthy book is a fun I Spy type book.

Silly tales.

I enjoyed these books and so did Will. I only read them to him - not Sophie - because they're a little more advanced and require a longer attention span. Very Earthy. And The Raft reminds me of Saturdays and Teacakes. It's that sort of heart-warming feeling.

Is it planting season yet? We can't wait! Sophie and I went out and just dug in the dirt of our garden with the gardening tools this week. For no reason. Oh wait... Yes, there was a reason. She wanted to see some worms. :-)

These were selected for Sophie's entertainment while I searched for books during our last visit. We ended up just bringing them home too.

Gail Gibbons is fantastic for specific topics and information books.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

The end! :)