The holidays are fast approaching, and about this time every year, I love to pull our always-growing collection of winter and holiday-themed books off the shelf in my daughter’s room. For the next month or so, they will inhabit various baskets in our living room, always at the ready for a reading by the fire…
Category Archives: Children’s Books
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever
My son started asking to read the Wimpy kid books in second grade, but I had him wait until third grade for various reasons. The books are in pretty high demand at his school but he managed to read all of them in the first few months of school. Scholastic sent me a copy of…
Stand-Out Cybils Nominated Picture Books, #8
For this week’s round-up of Cybils-nominated books, I’ve chosen three titles that have interested my children and me because of their focus on nature, animals and a unique way of thinking about living versus non-living things. Like many picture books, these are suitable for a range of ages from preschool through early elementary school children….
Bloodlines: A Time for War
Seeing “blood” and “war” in the title of a book immediately makes me think that it’s not the sort of book I’d want to read. But in this case, “Bloodlines” refers to the series that look at the different military careers of one particular fictitious family. A Time for War tells the story of PFC…
Cybils Middle Grade Fiction: Family Stories
These Cybils Middle Grade Fiction nominees all deal with families. These families might look like your own, or they might be quite different, but the dynamic plays out in a critical way to the plot of these novels, which are each different in tone as well. Calli Be Gold by Michele Weber Hurwitz I have…
Middle Grade Historical Fiction that Feels Timeless
Some kids might enjoy reading about a particular time. I was — and still am — drawn to 1920′s and 30′s history and literature, and of course homesteading prairie stories are always popular (actually can someone tell me if they ARE still popular? I’m not sure they are, and that makes me sad), but I…
Three Cups
We’ve had a lot of discussions about money in our household lately. I’ve been sort of consistent about giving an allowance lately to my kids, and on top of that my 13-year-old daughter has recently started earning some of her own money babysitting and pet sitting. The way we handle and think about money is…
Stand-Out Cybils Nominated Picture Books, #7
This week, I’m sharing three titles that serve as great reminders about what often appeals to young children the most about picture books. Yup, it’s the pictures, of course! These three books have unique illustrations that are sure to attract the eye of little ones, and when the stories get shared by a loving grown-up,…
On Reading: If Life Were Like Children’s Fiction. . .
Think back to what I sort of think of as the pinnacle of middle-grade reading — 4th or 5th grade. Think about what you were like. Remember who your friends were and what their families were like. Now think about children’s novels. I love children’s fiction (and YA too). Sometimes I enjoy it simply as…
Stand-Out Cybils Nominated Picture Books, #6
I’m sometimes a bit neurotic about books and how they are placed on their shelves. In my classroom, I like to make our bookshelves neat with similarly-themed books near each other, and at home, I often go for the basket option, keeping some nonfiction titles on one topic in one, while fairy tales and nursery…
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Jennifer Donovan
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