Some Past Favorite Books

Some of these are REALLY old.  I've mostly been remembering to take pics on my iPhone lately and so I've nearly forgotten to post these.  So these were some of my/our favorites.

This was a great one about the importance of being kind to others, and especially when bullying goes on in school.

"Families" are so undefined nowadays and I think it's good for kids to see that diversity is normal.  I loved that this book made that a casual thing to understand with animal characters.  Will and Sophie loved how protective this mother cat was of her little chick.

I didn't even know there was a Gruffalo's Child until the kids mentioned that our babysitter borrowed it for them awhile back.  We LOVE (and own) The Gruffalo and this sequel to that is very cute too.  We love the books and movies alike.

These are back from winter time and some of our favorite snow/snowmen themed books.  Will also read them in school coincidentally too.

A favorite from the Valentine's season.

A favorite from Christmas time.  (Sorry for the random order.)  We also liked Diary of a Wombat.

Celebrating the 100th day of school, we read this book.  LOVE, love, love Nancy Elizabeth Wallace.  Will had a bunch of festive activities for the 100th of school too.

This was months ago too so I don't remember the specifics of this book but I know we loved it.  We'll have to re-borrow so I can refresh my memory.  ;-)

If I remember correctly, this was a favorite of Sophie's.  :)

January is the season of oranges!  I love reading to my children about the appropriate "season" of the our foods and where/how/when they're grown.

I love the Gus books for early reader practice.  Sophie doesn't have the patience for sounding words out, but I still try it with her every so often.

Sibling read-alouds.  Love. 

Please disregard Sophie's attire - that's her "dress up swimsuit".

These were recent and I've already posted them.  Sophie's going to start karate soon so we loved reading the karate girl book.  And I also love anything that casually talks about the fun and importance of an active lifestyle.

Just back from the library one day.  Reading outside while daddy works on the deck.

Adorable book that both kids loved recently.  Their favorite part was when they named the surfboard Dave and talked to it like a dog:  "Stay.  Good boy."  They laughed every time.

Ahh, Pete the Cat.  For us, these are behind only Mo Willems as a favorite series of character(s).  Both kids LOVE.  But Sophie is particularly ADORING of them.  This was her #1 favorite for many weeks.

Have you heard of this story?  If not, go to You Tube and search Christian the Lion.  There are lots of videos of varying length but it's an amazing story and I will be very surprised if you're not teary at the end of it.  So sweet and touching.  The book's good too, but the videos show the climax of the story so much better.  Very emotional.  I can't even imagine...

Again, both kids loved this but particularly Sophie.  She requested this one daily for weeks.  My kids are very curious about bullies lately. 

When Will lost his tooth, Nana sent this book home for us to read about all the traditions around the world when children lose their teeth.  It's long and hard to read as a story to kids, but interesting when you have the time.

A loaner and recommendation from my boss.  It's about a whole town who stopped reading books and started using them for functional purposes as a physical thing.  Nobody knew how to read anymore, their town had fallen to shambles and everyone was inside (completely anti-social) watching TV all day long.  It's a bit long-ish but not too bad and I love the message.  It seemed to really resonate with my "screen time" obsessed kiddos.  They're limited with screen time and that really bothers them sometimes.  Plus, I just love most of Patricia Polacco's books.  She's the author of Thunder Cake, for example.

A Few Extras

Just a few odds 'n ends that didn't/won't fit into other posts...

On Thursday, November 29th, Sophie had her 2nd special helper day at school and brought her daddy along as her guest.  They had a great day together!

A few more pictures of our babysitting night with Mya & Stella...

Munching our fruits and veggies while we wait for Uncle Craig/daddy to return with pizza.

We heart Vito's pizza.

After reading our book of the day, we went on to read several more of the previous days books.  One of them was Pete's a Pizza by William Steig - a favorite of my kids.  We added a "story stretcher" (kinda literally) as we took turns with each of the kiddies on the table while we "kneaded", "stretched", "sauced", and "added toppings" to the dough.  At the end, we "sliced" the pizza with our forearms and took a big pretend bite (really just an exaggerated chomping sound).  They laughed and laughed and each kid took about three turns before I finally said, "okay, time for bed!"

On Tuesday, December 11th, Craig went with his friend Jason to a Cavs game in Cleveland to support some local cheerleaders who were invited to perform/cheer (??) at the game.  (Jason's wife is the coach.)  Since it was a "Nana Day" anyway (where the kids are at Nana's after school until I pick them up), I just brought over our bath supplies, jammies and book of the day after work and we spent the evening their until bedtime.  Nana made us lasagna with salad and garlic bread for dinner and then read Little Farmer Joe to the kids after they hunted for it in her living room.  (This book happened to be a $2 score from Once Upon a Child, which was an awesome coincidence because it wasn't available on Amazon and I wanted it desperately.  :))

Sophie and Will got to take a bath in Nana's big tub and get into their jammies before we called it a night and went home.  It was a fun change in routine from our usual week night evening.  Thanks, Nana & Papa!

What We've Been Reading

An armful of Christmas books:

At the top of the kids' list of favorites was definitely Olive, the Other Reindeer... as well as the movie that went along with it.  About a cute little dog names Olive who thought the lyrics of the song went "Olive the other reindeer" instead of "All of the other reindeer".  Olive saves Christmas when one of Santa's reindeer isn't able to fly on Christmas Eve.  The book and movie are slightly different but both very cute.

Another book that we found a movie to go with was Jan Brett's The Wild Christmas Reindeer.  We love Jan Brett, and this was okay... but just couldn't hold a candle to Olive in the kids' eyes.

Sweet Little Mouse warmed our hearts in a couple of Diana Hendry's books.

And Max Lucado's The Crippled Lamb was my favorite and the kids' probably second favorite.  Max is brilliant.  I'm quickly discovering that.  I've recently put several of his books on my own to-read list on Goodreads.  This is an excellent story about how God has a plan for all of us, even if we can't see it.

A couple books about how animals survive the winter months and the simple joy of snow for kids.

A small stack of some mostly non-Christmas books.  LOTS of Fly Guy.  A couple new Mo Willems Elephant & Piggie books.  A couple of Mercer Mayer's Little Critter books.  In other words, an excellent stack for the week!

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

So sweet.

What We've Been Reading

A couple of non-fiction reads on some people of interest recently.

Pumpkin love!  Pumpkin Trouble was a big favorite.

Two more BIG favorites.  No Sleep for the Sheep! went immediately on our purchase list.  (It's going to be an Advent countdown book.)  Lots of repetition that the kids LOVED participating in.  They practically had the book memorized and we got very into being enthusiastic with reading the sing-songy rhymes.  Back to Front and Upside Down! was a good one about learning new skills and not being afraid to ask for help... but it wasn't my favorite. 

Loved the illustrations in this one.  A cozy book of giving thanks.

I love that Will recognized that Dog Loves Drawing is a lot like Harold and the Purple Crayon and that Sophie pointed out that Silly Doggy! is a lot like Peanut.  So exciting that they're making correlations like that.

The kindergarten book was just weird.  Specifically the mom character in the book.  But Llama Llama was reliably good.

Mo Willems is outstanding.  Always.  We love the Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs book.  And Where's My T-R-U-C-K? was cute too.

The sneeze book wasn't all that memorable, but the honesty book was a good moral-of-the-story read.

 

The kids have a new-found love for Fly Guy.  :)

I heart Cynthia Rylant. 

I'm Not Sleepy - another on the purchase list and Advent countdown.  It's silly and adorable.  We also love Little Critter books, but moreso just to borrow.

Yay, Christmas!  We're kicking off the season with the coolest cat and cutest llama around.  Love them!

A Scholastic book list find.  Very cool.  Kids loved it... aaand so we added it to the Advent list.

Here are some sample pages:

Can you see the tree frog hiding on the bark?

How about the yellow spider hiding on the flower petals?

If I could go back in time, I would definitely want to live in the Little House on the Prairie days.  These books just warm my soul.  I LOVE them.  And so, now, does Sophie.  We've borrowed many of these in the past for Will, but Sophie is new to them and she's falling in love with Laura and her family, just like Will and me.