Wednesday, February 13, 2013

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 :)





14 comments:

  1. Oh I love this....I can't wait for more!
    (I'm that aunt too)

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh, PS: thank you for taking off the word verification. I don't see well and sometimes I would have to go through 5 or 6 of them to get one I could figure out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have to tell on myself here...I didn't even realize I had it on :/ I was updating my sidebar and somehow it shifted to the bottom of my screen. As I was frantically searching for how to fix it, I saw that I had word verification on in my Settings. I rolled my eyes and turned it off...bc I HATE it too! Oy.

      Delete
  3. This is a great project for the two of you. At one point, both of my kids "helped" with some of the books we read together. They didn't do it for long, but was a fun thing to do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She's excited right now, and I hope she'll stick with me. I'm going to let her see ya'lls comments so she will know somebody else sees her work :)

      Delete
  4. I love this new joint venture of yours and I think your review covered all the points. Tell the girl she did good :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Will do, Ti :) I'm going to show her ya'lls comments. She'll like that :) We've started another one called Mosey's Field and then a longer one that we found on Net Galley called The Ark, The Reed, and The Fire Cloud. She gave up on that one about 5 pgs. in :/ She thought it was about pirates bc one of the characters responded to another with "Aye"...I had to explain that he was Scottish :p She wasn't interested anymore. The girl likes pirates :):)

      Delete
  5. I love that your daughter helped you review this one, and hope that it becomes a regular feature. She sounds like she's really excited about it, and I would love it if she became the youngest voice in the chorus of book reviewers we have out there. Excellent job, little one!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She is thrilled with your responses :) I hope she'll keep it up as well...it can be something for us to do together. With 3 girls, it's hard to find something special to do with each one :)

      Delete
  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  7. How wonderful to share both reading and blogging with your youngest daughter! This book looks and sounds funny, and might help an anxious child to relax more. Very nice mother-daughter review!

    ReplyDelete