Category Archives: children

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

For almost three years an amazing thing has been happening – I’ve been blogging.

And I love my blog, I really do.

I write, you read, it’s amazing.

Amazing and but for fifty years I could have been one of the women in the book:

Struggling to find time to hand write stories to bring to their friends to read and critique while surrounded by their collective children.

Typing copies up to be mailed in to magazines and editors just to get someone other than their best friends to read what they have to say.

And here I lay in my bed, no doubt killing my neck with my horrible posture, clicking away at my keyboard and then with the push of a button and the magic of the internet – there it is for anyone to read.

Amazing.

The Wednesday Sisters

Would I recommend it? Yes. This book is, of course, about so much more than a group of writing women. And while there are many, books about a group of friends going through life together the voice of the main character really struck a cord with me this time.

I am curious to know if you’ve read it if you felt the same. Was it really a good read or did it just speak to me?

The Olivia Books by Ian Falconer

First off I’d like to clarify that I am talking the Olivia books.DSCN0482-(sm)

The books by Ian Falconer.

The books where the first of them has that nice shiny silver Caldecott medal on it.

THOSE Olivia books.

(I have no comment on all other shows videos and books of a pig with the same name.)DSCN0484-(sm)

The books where the face of the Olivia’s mother is one of the best parts.

DSCN0488-(sm)

From Olivia and The Missing Toy.

Those Olivia books are my favorite picture books, and I collected most of them after I had children.

Olivia goes to Venice came out about a year ago and I liked it but not so much that I had to have it. This year when I saw the newest title was Olivia and the Fairy Princess  I rolled my eyes, thought the author was losing it but that Ivy would love it and brought it home from the library.DSCN0485-(sm)But, then I read it and was oh so pleasantly surprised.

Olivia, she’s got a problem with all the pink princesses.DSCN0486-(sm)

Olivia, I had no idea you could get any cooler but with the line “If everyone’s a princess, then princesses aren’t special anymore!” you became my all time favorite pig.

Ivy who has joined the hordes of girls (and pigs) who love pink princesses was unimpressed but I, I have a new favorite children’s book!

I Am Too Absolutely Small For School by Lauren Child

Ivy has made a very slow transition to crying at the thought of going to school to hesitant excitement about her first day next week. I can’t give this book all the credit for the turn around but it certainly didn’t hurt.

The voice of Lola the little sister who is too small to go to school is so absolutely perfect nothing I say will do her justice. Unfortunately that means that Charlie, her older brother who is the brains of the outfit, gets second billing which is quite unfair, as he’s pretty fantastic too.

Lola has also helped start a few good conversations between Ivy and I about school. For instance tonight after we read about Lola’s invisible friend Soren Lorensen I found out that Ivy’s invisible friend Belle is also going to school next week.  Apparently Belle has been there lots before and knows lots of things already like reading and chemistry. Ivy thinks Belle will be good company on the bus on the way to school but when I asked if Belle could help her remember where her classroom was since she’s been in school before I got the look. The look that says “Uh Mom. Belle is pretend, why would I ask her things?” Which I find to be quite convenient because Belle has a tenancy to encourage Ivy to do all sorts of naughty things.  Ivy’s defense of “But Belle TOLD me to.” never crumbles to the “Uh Ivy. Belle is pretend why are you listening to her” look I give Ivy. Apparently I’ve got to work on my “looks.”

Would I recommend this? Absolutely! It makes it into the catagory of books I make my adult friends read even if there are no kids around because I think it is so great!

Diana Gabaldon

Start with Outlander and then keep going.

I’ve been re-reading them in between other books since Jane has been born and I’m on my 6th book of hers in a month.

I haven’t yet had the words “dinna fash” or “you’ll ken” come out of my mouth yet but it’s a good thing I’ve only got one book left or I’d be yelling “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ” next time I burn dinner.

Would I recommend them? Having just stared blankly at the computer screen for a many minitues I have no tidy way to sum up the books nor why exactly I’d recommend them.

I think I’m in a Jamie and Claire induced stuper… and now I have to go read what happens next – even though I’ve read this one twice before.

In The Woods: Who’s Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George

I like this book for many reasons but I’ll admit the reason it really stands out is because it dosen” shy away from the fact that goshawks eat bluejays and fox eat woodchucks.  Perhaps it makes me overly bloodthirsty and morbid but I think that’s awesome and rare find in recent children’s books.  When you read an older book, things get eaten up all the time,  Peter Rabbit’s father was made into a pie after all.  Nowadays it’d be more likely that he’d get sold to a pet shop and spend the rest of his life in as a classroom pet.

Come to think of it, Mr Rabbit may have preferred the pie.

In any case, in this book children are walking through the woods finding animal sign.

For instance they find blue feathers on the ground, and ask the question:

“Who’s been here?”

The answer is provided on the next page – a goshawk and a blue jay.

In addition to the bloodthirsty aspect and the excellent pictures I like that there is not a lot of text. Not  much text has two benefits, either we can whip through the book at mock 10 because we’ve read it six times that day already and I really need to be getting dinner ready, or we can talk about what’s happening in the pictures, what time of year it is and try for the 7,000 time to convince Clara that it is a MUD dauber not a wood dauber.

But she is two and so I’m afraid it’s going to be a wood dauber for the foreseeable future.

Would I recommend it? Yes, there happens to be a whole series of these, I think we are going to have to find more at the library but I’m glad to own at least this one!

Terrier by Tamora Pierce

I had just finished this book and was trying to explain to John a why I liked it and this is what came out:

“It’s a book that had it been a movie I would have loved it but because I liked the book I’d never see the movie, but do you know what I mean?”

Fortunately he did know what I meant.

Here is a translation for the rest of you. The book involved a lot of beating the bad guys up with big sticks, funny quippy sort of comments from the good guys, who weren’t all guys and weren’t an angelic type of good. The main character is a girl who’s quite adept at beating people up herself, and she has an interesting purple eyed cat.

As it turns out my favorite movies are the ones where good guys aren’t really that great and they make lots of quippy comments while they are running around blowing things up, which is always good because there is significantly less gore and guts.

I’m not a fan of gore and guts.

Or I like romantic comedy’s.

What I really don’t like, and have just stopped watching altogether are movies based on books that I liked. My reasons are as follows:

1)They are never as good as the books.

2)My mind is then poisoned with movie images that I can never shake which is extra lame because of the first reason.

3)I don’t actually read a ton of books where stuff gets blown up, so I don’t really have to worry about overlap there.

4)I do read books full of suspense. Suspense in books is fine, I just read faster, I like it. Suspense in movies irritates me and I ALWAYS jump. I hate jumping.

5) I also hate nightmares. It takes a bit in books to give me nightmares, Steven King gives me nightmares. When it comes to movies I could probably manage a nightmare after watching the Sandlot. Therefore half the books I read are movies I would never see for fear of nightmares.

6)If I want to have deep thoughts about something I’ll read a book. movies are in my opinion for open mouthed, drooling, mindless, entertainment. Therefore if I’ve read a book that requires any sort of brain power I’m not interested in seeing it on the screen.

When in comes to movies I didn’t love Seven Pounds (way too much thinking) I won’t be watching the Time Travelers Wife, or Inkheart (because making a movie about a book like that is just wrong) and don’t even get me started on Harry Potter…

But I did really like this book. So much so that if it becomes a movie I’ll never, ever watch it.

Would I recommend it? Yes

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

I’ve read most of Chris Bohjalian’s other books so when I saw his newest on the shelf I dove right in.

Oops.

While some of his others were nightmare inducing for other reasons they didn’t involve seeing dead people, and contemplating killing your own children, not to mention and the extra chill inducing ending.

Please read something by Bohjalian… just maybe not this one.

Would I recommend it? No, well written, but just no.

(S)mythology by Jeremy Tarr

As I’ve said before I hate reading the back of the book, it always tells too much of what happens. Instead I like to read the first page. Standing in the library the first sentence in this book caught my attention, here it is for your enjoyment:

“Because this is ultimately a fairy tale, and because it is sacrilege not to begin all fairy tales with four simple words, and because I can think of no better words than these four to start off this particular fairy tale, because of all this we begin Once Upon a Time.”

Probably Jeremy had all his papers marked with big red R.O.’s in school too.

When the book took short funny and completly random tangents to explain things that didn’t need explaing I was hooked. Unfortunatly it got a bit long, while it made me laugh out loud at times it’s not something I can broadly recommend.

Unless you think things like this are funny:

“The Cabbie went red. He looks constipated, Sophie though. She was right, the Cabbie was constipated, he hadn’t had a constitutional in just under a week and though usually a pleasant man, one could understand why any mishap could cause him great rage.”

Then maybe you should try it.

Please excuse Piper, she was cuter than the book cover.

Would I recommend it? No

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

First off I’d like to take this opportunity to mention something that has irritated me for years.

Ahhem…

Why are science fiction and fantasy always grouped together?

They are not the same.

The end.

This book is science fiction but please don’t run away yet, I have a sci fi theory. Sci fi, has it’s good, it’s bad and it’s ugly when it comes to books, just like every other genre, it’s just that people have a low tolerance for the bad and the ugly when it involves  science fiction and write the whole lot off. So here is my advice – do what I do, only read the ones people recommend. You get rid of just about all of the bad and the ugly and will hopefully end up with a book you may not otherwise have looked twice at that falls firmly into the good category.

P.S. Also never judge a science fiction book by it’s cover, I just finished this book and I’m not really sure what the deal is with the picture, please ignore it.

Would I recommend it? Yes. It was recommend to me, so following my own advice, I read it. I got sucked in, stayed up too late reading and by the end my head was reeling and I told John he needed to start it immediately.