Great Books » Bookworm Broadcast

This is a really cool book about all about Christmas trees. My favorite part about the book is that the children can learn all about the different kinds of trees. That is very cool, when authors take a fun, fictional story and teach kids good stuff with it!

Now check this out – you and I can look inside the book – before we buy it! It’s a website that I just stumbled across today, called Lookybook.com. Actually, my friend, Drew, who blogs over at Read To Me, Dad, alerted me to it. I am so excited about it! Just click on the book and you can look through it, too!

Sammie has been having special Christmas reading time with her daddy every night. And they are reading a very special book. They are reading,

Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas Treasury for Kids: A Story a Day from December 1st through Christmas for Kids and Their Families
We just love this book – we got it at one of the school book fairs several years ago and I think it is so precious that Sammie is calling Mark into her room to read it with her every night. The book is made up of 25 very special Christmas stories, sent in by people just like you and me. They tell stories of children at Christmas time fully realizing the true meaning of Christmas.

So you start reading on December 1st, and you have a story to read every night. It is a lovely tradition to have with your family. And while I am a little sad that I’m not reading the book with her every night, I am thoroughly pleased that she and her father are so close and are enjoying that together.

And of course, you know I had to photograph it and blog it! Ha! Here they are, aren’t they precious?

I will give one warning, though – I can’t remember which story it is, but, one of them will give great hints to little Santa-believers. I will have to look it up and tell you what I’m talking about. I just remember the first year that we got it, as I’m reading aloud to the kids (who mostly still believed) stumbling across a line that stopped me in my tracks and left me scrambling for a way to recover! Haha! It was awful! So just be careful!

The book, The Mailbox, by Audrey Shafer, sounds so good. I think I’m going to put it on my book queue with my new book club for the kids. It is about a little boy who lives in one foster home after another and just leads a really hard life. Then, at the age of nine, he is sent off to live with his old uncle. His uncle is quite the grump, but, he has some amazing stories to tell and a heart of gold. He is a good, stable person for the boy. Sadly, the uncle dies when the boy is still quite young. The boy is terrified and so sad, and so he doesn’t tell anyone that his uncle has died. And mysteriously, the body disappears and lots of cards start to show up in the mailbox. One of the big themes of this book is interconnectedness and I think the author uses the symbol of mailboxes to represent that.

Everyone seems to have a little bit of a different take on it, as with any book, really. But with every review that I read, I just want to read the book all that more!

I meant to tell you about another book by Kathleen Krull in that last post about The Giants of Science Series. I have so much fun researching and learning about children’s book authors. I love ‘bookies’ period (writers and bookworms), but, children’s authors just get me all fired up! I have been adding them to my sidebar here, and I think I will start some Squidoo lenses on some of my favorites!

Back to the topic at hand, though – we have a book by a children’s author about a children’s author! Can you get any sweeter than that? The book is called The Boy on Fairfield Street – How Ted Geisel Grew Up to Become Dr. Seuss.

Here’s a quote from her site about the book:

Truly only about his youth, the narrative ends at age 22, when Seuss goes to New York City to launch his career. Four following pages provide a synopsis of his life and a timeline up to his death in 1991. Bordered, full-page oil-on-gessoed-paper illustrations evoke pertinent scenes, while spot art of Seuss drawings dot the opposite pages. Some of these original images are absolutely haunting; the magic of his name will make this a huge hit, but it’s the lively writing that puts the hat on the cat.

Bold is mine, because, I just love that part!

Here’s a pic of the book:
Boy on Fairfield Street.jpg
I also had meant to link to her website in that other post, and I forgot, so if you’d like to go read some more about her, click here: Kathleen Krull. When I was there reading, I discovered a cool and funny similarity between her and I. She was fired from a job at the library when she was fifteen. She was reading too much while on the job! Ha! When we lived in Texas, I would often work for the Richardson Independent School District annual book fair. It was a very big fair – people would literally come from all over the country to shop! It was a lot of work, but, so much fun! And as hard as I tried not to, I would catch myself reading instead of working! I would always joke that they could fire me, but, as it was a PTA function, that was just not gonna happen! I don’t think I could ever work in a library!

Go Read A Book!.bmp

Isaac Newton.jpg
I got another new book in the mail! Yeehaw! I love books in the mail! This one is part of the Giants of Science series by Kathleen Krull, and it’s a biography of Isaac Newton. I can’t wait to dig into it with the kids! It tells about what he was really like, not just about his contributions to the world of science.

She has written several others in this series, one of which is Leonardo da Vinci. Did you know he was a scientist? I didn’t. Ms. Krull says that while painting was his livelihood, science was his passion. I will definitely have to get that one!

Also, upon visiting her website, I notice a fabulous book that I simply must get for Sammie and I to read – it’s called Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels (and What the Neighbors Thought)! It tells about twenty of the most influential women in history, with some details you won’t find in typical history books – very cool!
Lives of Extraordinary Women.jpg
Go Read A Book!.bmp