• Activities

    Creepy Crawly Bug Story Time

    We had a small but enthusiastic crowd at toddler story time this morning.  Our theme – creepy-crawly bugs!  A couple of the girls started out with an, “ewwwww…. I don’t like bugs!”  But, I think the books that I picked worked out really well and everyone had a great time! Today…

  • Activities

    Wooo-Wooo: Train Story Time

    This week was out train-themed story time.  Our story times run in six-week sessions and I try to make sure to include some sort of “boy” theme each session – whether it’s cars, trucks, construction vehicles, etc.  This session I decided on trains.  It’s not always easy to find books…

  • Reviews

    James and the Giant Peach

    I’ll be honest, in all my years I have read very few Roald Dahl books.  I had a teacher in elementary school read The BFG to me in school and I remember loving it and I may have read Matilda on my own, but I don’t think I’ve read many…

  • Reviews

    The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

    I absolutely loved this story!  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane was written by Kate DiCamillo, the same author who wrote Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Desperaux, among many others.   You take the journey of a china rabbit named Edward Tulane, from his quiet existence with his little girl Abilene,…

  • Lifestyle

    aMAZE me

    I first saw this as a Yahoo article – a labyrinth created of over 250,000 books as part of an art installation in London.  You can see it for yourself with some of the photographs taken for Yahoo. The walls are 2.5 meters high and the entire maze is 500…

  • Reviews

    Ghost Knight

    Ghost Knight written by Cornelia Funke is an entertaining read for children in grades 3 – 6.  The story is about an 11-year-old boy named Jon Whitcroft who is sent away to boarding school where he encounters a vengeful ghost wishing for his head.  A classmate by the name of…

  • Activities

    Whoooo’s at Storytime?

    This week’s toddler storytime theme was owls!  We learned the sign language word for owl (the same motion is used for binoculars as well!) and we read three owl-themed stories.  The first story was called Cock-A-Doodle-HOOOOOO! by Mick Manning about an owl who walks into a henhouse on a rainy…

  • Reviews

    Boys Without Names

    Boys Without Names written by Kashmira Sheth is a much more serious book than I have been reading of late, but it is an eye-opening fictional story about a real-life issue that still plagues the world.  The story is about an eleven-year-old boy named Gopal who moves from his rural…

  • Reviews

    Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to NOT Reading

    I must have been in a pretty specific mood late last week when I picked my books to read for the weekend.  Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to NOT Reading written by Tommy Greenwald has a similar feel to yesterday’s post about the book Middle School – The Worst Years of…