The Youngest and Me - Our First Book Review Together

I've been a reader all my life.

Really.

I grew up with books and magazines all around me all the time.  

My parents encouraged me to read and never censored what I read.

Seriously.

Obviously, I've followed this same pattern with my 3 daughters. 

My oldest is an avid reader, my middle daughter abhors reading, and my youngest enjoys reading narrative, but has a particular fondness for non-fiction.

Interesting huh?

I've always loved children's lit and have spent countless hours reading aloud both to students and my own daughters books I think are the best of the best.  I tend to enjoy the experience as much as they do :) I love doing the voices and the sound effects as much as they love listening to my silliness :p 

I am also "that aunt" who sends all my nieces and nephews books for birthdays and Christmas.  If you're related to me, your gonna get a book.

I love, love, love spending time looking through new releases and picking out the books I think fit each personality the best :) 

Yes, I am teased for this practice...how did you know?

But, I don't even care.

While my blog is not an academic blog and I don't wish to turn it into one, I've been doing some professional work related to the new Common Core Standards coming out for K-12 and have begun to delve back into what makes quality authentic children's literature, both fiction and non-fiction.  

The youngest is the last one at home, and she noticed that I had downloaded a few of the newer children's books onto my Nook and Kindle (mostly titles I'd gotten for free or on sale), and she asked if she could read them.

**Mommy smacks herself in the head right about here*

Um, yes. :)  

After she read the first few books, we had some short but interesting conversations about them.  I had simply been looking for possible future gifts when I realized I might have a blogging partner on my hands.  (Both my older daughters know I have a blog, but they only read when and if I send them a particular post...or at least I think they read then :P 

So, I asked the youngest how she felt about helping me review some children's lit every once in a while...

She was all about it...and very serious as you can see in the picture above that I sneakily took while she was reading.

I'm not going to try and schedule our reviews together because the last thing I want is for this time to become a job, but we'll post as often as we find books that are worthy of sharing :)

We're still working on our format, but here goes our first mother-daughter endeavor:

Worry Wart by Lisa Kildahl

Parables & Books LLC, 2012

Source? the publisher via NetGalley
Format? Ebook

Why?  If there's one thing we do well in our family, it's worry...we're professional worriers, sometimes to the detriment of our health.  I try to use any possible opportunity to talk about life and anxiety in a very realistic way.   What better method to open discussion?  A book.  What a novel idea :) (and yes, pun intended).

Golden Lines

The Youngest:  Most every day without a reason or a rhyme, Chloe would worry at the drop of a dime.

Peppermint:  Why do we worry thinking up thoughts that jumble and tangle us up into knots?

Summary
The Youngest: "It's about this girl named Chloe that worried about everything that she got a wart on her nose.  She worried about everything."  

Peppermint: What the youngest said pretty much covers it.

What We Liked

The Youngest: "I liked that it was rhyming"

Peppermint: The illustrations reminded me of claymation figures in the old Christmas specials, the colors are vivid, and I liked the rhyming as well.

What We Didn't Like

The Youngest: "Nothing"

Peppermint: I didn't like the ending...I wish there had been a few more pages of how Chloe overcomes her worry rather than just miraculously realizing that worrying wasn't worth it.

Overall Recommendation:
Check it out from the library :)