Read-at-Home Kids Report: Candlewick Picture Books (November 2020)

I fell behind on reviewing picture books at the end of 2020, but even though these have been out for a few months now, I think it's still worth sharing my three oldest girls' thoughts (and mine) about these titles.

Ellie's Dragon by Bob Graham

When she is very small, Ellie, the daughter of a single mom, finds a newly hatched dragon whom she names Scratch. Though none of the adults in her life can see him, Scratch goes everywhere with Ellie - even to preschool. As Ellie approaches the teen years, however, her need for Scratch diminishes until one day he leaves Ellie to find a new friend.

All three girls liked this one. Little Bo Peep (5 years, 3 months), said her favorite parts were when Ellie named the dragon and when the dragon found a new friend. For Little Jumping Joan (3 years, 2 months) ., the best part of the book was the illustration where Scratch first flew. Little Miss Muffet (7 years, 1 month) said her favorite part was when Ellie found Scratch. I thought the story was really similar to "Puff the Magic Dragon" and I went back and forth between thinking the song and story would make a good pairing and feeling like the book was unnecessary since we already have the song.

Mr. Brown's Bad Day by Lou Peacock, illustrated by Alison Friend

Mr. Brown, a tiger who is a very important businessman, has a bad day when a baby elephant snatches his briefcase, sending it on a path that leads Mr. Brown all over town. The briefcase has very important items inside, and Mr. Brown just can't rest until he has them back.

Little Bo Peep enjoyed the fact that different animals kept ending up in the briefcase. She especially liked the baby elephant. Little Jumping Joan liked that the baby elephant hung the briefcase from the ice cream vendor's cart. Miss Muffet said her favorite part was the ending, which got a big "Awww" from all three girls. The ending didn't work as well for me, but I think it got the intended reaction out of the girls.

Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus, illustrated by Polly Dunbar

Little Bear doesn't know whether bears can ski, and he is tired of being asked, until he and his dad visit an audiologist who helps him realize people are asking, "Can you hear me?" After he is fitted for hearing aides, the answer to that question becomes a resounding yes.

The girls did not get this one. They could not understand that, to someone reading lips "Can bears ski?" and "Can you hear me?" might look alike. The ending was also too subtle for them to grasp and trying to make sense of the last page distracted them from talking about anything else in the book. I tried multiple ways of explaining it, but while they could appreciate that Little Bear could not hear, the story focused their questions on the meaning of the text rather than the implications of Little Bear's discovery.

Read-at-Home Kids Report: Christmas Book Haul Edition

In 2020, I didn't do a great job of keeping up with reviewing the picture books I received from publishers. I think there were a few reasons for that, one of which was that I stopped posting regularly about my kids' reading outside of books the older two read for school. So this year I'm bringing back this feature. It won't cover every single title we read, but it will hit the highlights of the new and classic titles everyone is enjoying.

Jack and Jill (9 months)

We have never had a baby this old at Christmastime, since the three older girls are all fall babies, so it was really fun watching the twins enjoy the excitement of Christmas morning. They received mostly books as gifts, since they are likely our last babies and we didn't want to buy a lot of baby toys that would end up being donated within a year. 

In their stockings were Indestructible books (Busy City, My Neighborhood, and All Year Round) and Melissa and Doug Fun Faces Mask books (Goodnight Faces, Farm Faces, and Zoo Faces.) They love the Indestructible books, but so far they have mostly just stared at me when I put the mask books up to my face.

Under the tree from me were You're My Little Baby by Eric Carle, Up Cat Down Cat by Steve Light, the Johnny Appleseed Babylit book, and Freight Train by Donald Crews. They happily listened to me read each of these. Jill seemed most fascinated by the mirror at the end of the Carle book, while Jack loves the colors of Freight Train.

From my sister they received a set of cloth books with animal tails on the sides of the pages and crinkly pages, and one board book with ocean animal tails. They probably play with these the most of any toys they have. They both love the crinkling sound.   

From my mom they received three board books of rhymes illustrated by Clare Beaton and Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown, with illustrations by the Dillons.  

Little Jumping Joan (3 years, 2 months)

From me, Jumping Joan received Some Dinosaurs Are Small and Curious About Mammals. The dinosaur book was not a hit and may end up leaving our home library for the donation box, but she seemed to like Curious About Mammals as much as she liked the book that preceded it, Curious About Birds. 

From my mom, she received This Old Man by Carol Jones, which I first saw in an Instagram post and which reminded me of Peek-a-Boo by the Ahlbergs because it has cut-out holes to peek through. She loves that song and has been singing the book to the babies. My mom also sent We All Go Traveling By, which Jumping Joan knows from watching the video adaptation on YouTube. It was one of her favorite gifts of the year. 

Little Bo Peep (5 years, 3 months)

Bo Peep received books 3 and 4 in the Tales from Deckawoo Drive series from my mom, and the 5th one from me. She has already read the third book and has moved on to the fourth. Her other books were all from my mom: You Can Do It, Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells, Caroline at the King's Ball and Caroline and the King's Hunt by Jean Le Paillot, and Penny and her Sled by Kevin Henkes. She read Penny and her Sled and has been reading the others aloud to family members on Skype calls.

Little Miss Muffet (7 years, 1 month)

Miss Muffet received the first three books in the Poppy series by Avi from my mom and a couple of Alain Gree activity books from me. She was much more interested in other things she got for Christmas, but she did start one of them and said she "kind of" liked it. 

For the Family

I wrapped up my review copies of The Language of the Universe by Colin Stuart and One of a Kind by Neil Packer to add to our nonfiction shelves. These have been a hard sell so far, but I'm sure their time will come. 

Read-at-Home Kids Report: Summer 2020

I typically think of summer as a very reading-heavy season, but since every day since March has felt more or less the same, this year's summer reading didn't feel that different either. I also stopped keeping track of the huge piles of picture books the two olders girls read because there were just so many, and they read a lot of the same books over and over again, so the numbers on their reading logs were way down this year compared to last summer.  Still, all the kids certainly read or heard a respectable number of books between June 3 and September 2. 

Read-Alouds

My husband read aloud a number of classic children's books after dinner during these months: Matilda by Roald Dahl, The Willow Whistle by Cornelia Meigs, Treasure Island, The Men Who Found America by Frederick Winthrop Hutchinson, and The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss. Treasure Island probably made the biggest impact, as now all three older girls frequently break out into spontaneous recitations of "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum." Little Bo Peep (4 years, 11 months) kept falling asleep during The Swiss Family Robinson, claiming she was bored. 

I read aloud almost daily after lunch. I read Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld as we were finishing up with our homeschool studies of Ancient Rome, and everyone enjoyed the suspense of the mystery in that book. Next, I read two in a row by Elizabeth Enright: Thimble Summer and The Saturdays. We followed that up with Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat. Then Jumping Joan (2 years, 10 months) brought me The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell, and asked me to read it. None of us knew anything about it, but we gave it a try, and it was fantastic! Odd (it's about a hunter and a mermaid and their family of adopted animals), but really very good. We ended the summer with one of my childhood favorites, Ten Kids, No Pets by Ann M. Martin. 

Little Miss Muffet (6 years, 9 months)

Miss Muffet hasn't been plowing through the novels as much lately as she did earlier in the year,  but she has a read a few: Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum, The Tree House Mystery by Carol Beach York, The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit, Our Little Celtic Cousin of Long Ago by Evaleen Stein and The Legend of Pocahontas by Virginia Watson. She also revisited Stella Batts Needs a New Name by Courtney Sheinmel and The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes as audiobooks. Her favorite thing, though, has been reading through the Favorite Fairy Tales books by Virginia Haviland. She has read the tales from Germany, Russia, Sweden, France, England, Spain, and Denmark. As the summer ended, she was just getting into Redwall by Brian Jacques, which has inspired lots of drawing and pretend play surrounding Cluny the Scourge. 

Little Bo Peep (4 years, 11 months)

Bo Peep is still reading tons of easy readers and chapter books. This summer, among other titles, she read three of the Penny books by Kevin Henkes (Penny and her Song, Penny and her Doll, and Penny and her Marble), both Sam the Minuteman and George the Drummer Boy by Nathaniel Benchley, Tom and the Two Handles by Russell Hoban, and The Spice of America by June Swanson as well as Betsy and Mr. Kilpatrick, Annie Pat and Eddie, Away Went the Balloons, Eddie the Dog Holder, Betsy's Busy Summer, and Eddie and Louella, all by Carolyn Haywood. She also revisited Little House in the Big Woods and Rufus M. on audio. 

Little Jumping Joan (2 years, 10 months)

It's been  a summer of big-name toddler favorites for Jumping Joan, who has discovered Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, A House for Hermit Crab, and Mister Seahorse), Beatrix Potter (The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tale of Two Bad Mice), and Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny).  She also fell in love with a few different story collections: Sheep in a Jeep: 5-Minute Stories, Sweet Dreams 5-Minute Bedtime Stories, and my childhood copy of 366 Two Minute Bedtime Stories and Rhymes. I also took out all of the old copies of Babybug magazine I saved from when Miss Muffet was little, and my mom sent us a few more she picked up at the Salvation Army, and Jumping Joan has me read two or three aloud every day before her nap.  

Jack and Jill

The twins are starting to love books. Jack especially loves Dig Dig Digging by Margaret Mayo, Things That Are Big by Natalie Marshall, and Summer Babies by Kathryn O. Galbraith. He will happily sit and listen to any book and he tries to turn the pages and stares happily at the illustrations. 

Jill is a bit more focused on physical milestones at the moment, but in addition to the books Jack likes, she has also heard Ten Little Babies and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox.  

Read-at-Home Kids Report: Spring 2020

For the purposes of tracking our reading, Spring ran from March 3 to June 2, which mostly corresponds to the time period during which we were ordered to stay home in the state of Maryland, and also to the first 11 weeks home with the twins. Lots of reading took place, but I can't promise that our record keeping was as impeccable as it had been during the fall and winter. For one thing, Miss Muffet took over writing down the titles for herself and Bo Peep for a good portion of the season, and I know she was not that meticulous about counting every book. For another, because we were home all the time, the girls were going through huge towering stacks of books every day and leaving them in piles around the house for me to write down, and on a few occasions I got fed up and shelved the books without recording them first. But I still have plenty of highlights to share. 

Family Read-Alouds

In the beginning of March just before the twins came, I read aloud All-of-a-Kind Family. I strongly suspected one of the twins was a boy (which ended up beng true) and I thought it would be fun to quickly read about an all-girl family while we still were one. Miss Muffet and Bo Peep both took to the characters immediately and months later, they still talk about the scene where Sarah refuses her soup at the dinner table and isn't allowed to partake of the other courses until she eats it. 

After we settled in a bit with the twins, I read aloud The Doll People Set Sail to finally finish out the Doll People series. Then my husband read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I followed that up with Half Magic, and then he started June with Matilda by Roald Dahl.  The girls loved all of these - even two-year-old Jumping Joan! 

My husband also read quite a bit from his collection of old Cricket magazines. 

Little Miss Muffet (6 years, 6 months)

In addition to our reading for school, which I'll talk about more when I do my May/June progress report, Miss Muffet read a ton of books independently during these months of quarantine. Some of these books were intended to complement schoolwork, such as Tales of a Chinese Grandmother and You Can Write Chinese, Our Little Macedonian Cousin of Long Ago and Our Little Spartan Cousin of Long Ago. Others were just for fun: Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, the Dani series by Rose Lagercrantz, The Pope's Cat series by Jon M. Sweeney, Ralph S. Mouse by Beverly Cleary, Meg of Heron's Neck by Elizabeth Ladd, the Pippi Longstocking books, and Dr. Dolittle in the Moon by Hugh Lofting. She also revisited a lot of favorite picture books and ended up with over 280 titles on her reading log!

Little Bo Peep (4 years, 8 months)

Bo Peep recorded 363 books on her reading log during the spring, which, even if a lot of them wound up being duplicates, is still a really impressive number for a child who just learned to read. Looking at the titles on her list, it seems like she just read entire shelves and sets of books as she came upon them: the Poppleton series, all of my Children's Choice Book Club books from when I was a kid, Mr. Putter and Tabby books, a bunch of books illustrated by Maurice Sendak, others written by Charlotte Zolotow, and a few fairy tales. We also kept handing her more easy readers from our shelves and on Open Library: Amanda Pig books, Arnold Lobel (including Frog and Toad), the Dan Frontier series, Crosby Bonsall's mysteries, the Billy and Blaze series, and some I Can Read science titles. She also read a few titles in Carolyn Haywood's Betsy series. 

Little Jumping Joan (2 years, 7 months)

Jumping Joan still tends to cling really intensely to a small set of favorite books, so her reading log is always very short compared to her sisters'. This spring, she fell in love with We Help Mommy, Baby Dear, and The Poky Little Puppy. She loves to quote the parts of We Help Mommy about Martha seeing her face in the shiny glass of the washing machine and how Daddy is "very pleased" when Martha makes him a treat. In Baby Dear, she's fascinated by the new baby, and surely sees some of her own experiences with the twins reflected back to her. The Poky Little Puppy is just all about the desserts, especially rice pudding. Jumping Joan also started to enjoy the Gossie books, our collection of poetry by Mr. Rogers, a few stories from A Very Little Child's Book of Stories, Over and Over by Charlotte Zolotow, and Sarah's Room by Doris Orgel. 

Jack and Jill (2 months)

Books are still new to these little ones, but we're slowly introducing some good ones. Though they don't necessarily hear books together all the time, both have been exposed so far to Big Fat Hen by Keith Baker, Hat Socks Shoes published by Busy & Bright Baby, Hello Lamb and Goodnight Bear both by Jane Cabrera, and Black and White by Tana Hoban. They are also often the audience for read-alouds by their two oldest sisters, which most of the time everyone seems to enjoy. 

Poetry Picnics

I revived a tradition we started when Miss Muffet was a toddler and took the girls out on the deck for a few poetry picnics on nice days. The books we've read have included Gregory Griggs and Other Nursery Rhyme People by Arnold Lobel, Poems to Read Aloud to the Very Young by Josette Frank, and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog by Paul B. Janeczko and Richard Jones. 

Reading with Grandma and Gran

One nice thing to come out of the changes brought about by the pandemic has been that the girls spend much more time with their grandmothers via Skype. One of the things we've been doing during these Skype dates is having the girls read to Gran and Grandma, and also having Grandma (my mom, who happens to have a lot of children's books on hand because she works with kids) read to them. My mom has read a variety of titles including Click Clack Surprise by Doreen Cronin, Bridget's Beret by Tom Lichtenheld, The Teddy Bears' Picnic by Michael Hague, The Horse with the Easter Bonnet by Jane Thayer, Miss Flora McFlimsey's May Day by Mariana, and some selections from The Poppy Seed Cakes by Margery Clark. Some of the books the girls have read aloud have included the You Read To Me, I'll Read to You series by Mary Ann Hoberman, I Really Want to See You Grandma by Taro Gomi, When Grandma Came by Jill Paton Walsh, Louie by Ezra Jack Keats, The Glass Mountain by Diane Wolkstein, and Something is Going to Happen by Charlotte Zolotow.

Read-at-Home Kids Report: Winter 2020

Third trimester sleep deprivation, giving birth to twins, and adjusting to life with two newborns during a pandemic has delayed my Read-at-Home Kids reports for several months. Instead of trying to look back and post a round-up for each month that I missed, I've decided that, at least for this year, I will post one report here on the blog each season, which will correspond to the seasonal reading logs I've been keeping for my three older girls. Today's post will focus on books we enjoyed from January 1 to March 2, 2020.

Welcome, Jack and Jill! 

It has been my tradition to give my children nursery rhyme inspired nicknames here on the blog. My six-year-old is known as Little Miss Muffet, my four-year-old as Little Bo Peep, and my two-year-old as Little Jumping Joan. Our boy/girl twins were born in the middle of March, and I've decided they will be known as Jack and Jill. They weren't born during the time period we're covering in this reading report, and they haven't heard any books yet, so I won't be mentioning them much in this post, but watch for them in the spring and summer RAHK Reports.

Family Read-Alouds

Our first read-aloud of the new year was The Happy Hollisters at Snowflake Camp. Though the story wound up being set during Thanksgiving, the weather was more suited to what I thought we might have sometime this winter. As it turned out, we didn't have any snow at all, but the story involved twins, which was a fun discovery for three little girls anxiously awaiting their twin siblings' arrival. The story also involved dog sled racing, which became the focus of Miss Muffet's and Bo Peep's pretend play for weeks after we finished the book.

In February, we dove into Far Out the Long Canal by Meindert de Jong, which was a huge hit with everyone, even Jumping Joan who doesn't always even listen to our chapter books. Miss Muffet and Bo Peep really empathized with the main character, Moonta, and they still make references to things that happened in the story. Again, it didn't end up feeling that wintry here, but they got a taste of fictional winter through this book all about ice skating.

Little Miss Muffet (6 years, 3 months)

Miss Muffet read or listened to 400 books between the beginning of December and the beginning of March. She devoured my review copies of the first two books in the new Jasmine Green Rescues series: A Piglet Called Truffle and A Duckling Called Button. These are really well-written stories of a girl who loves animals; they remind me a lot of James Herriot's books. She also zipped through the Magical Animal Adoption Agency series by Kallie George and the Orphelines series by Natalie Savage Carlson, and got off to a running start with the Freddie books by Walter R. Brooks and the Oz series, of which she read the first six books in just about as many weeks. She also made a point of reading dozens and dozens of picture books from our shelves that she had never read before. It's becoming clear that we're going to have a hard time keeping up with her appetite for books!

Little Bo Peep (4 years, 5 months)

Winter was the season in which Little Bo Peep became a full-fledged independent reader. By the beginning of March, she was nearly finished with the lessons in The Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading. During the winter months, she read shelves full of I Can Read books, including titles by Crosby Bonsall, Dr. Seuss, P.D. Eastman, Else Holmelund Minarik, Arnold Lobel, and many more. At the start of the winter, I was having to read the Mercy Watson series aloud to her; by March, she was reading them on her own. Being a reader is such a great point of pride with her right now. It makes her feel like a big kid, and she has been able to have "reading club" with her big sister, in which they take turns reading aloud from our collection of easy readers. She is also a huge fan of the Oliver and Amanda pig books by Jean van Leeuwen, which makes me so happy as they were my favorites as a kid too!

Little Jumping Joan (2 years, 4 months)

Unlike her older sisters, Jumping Joan prefers to read not a wide variety of books, but a small select stack of books on repeat for weeks at a time. During the winter months, these included Stanley's Colors and Stanley's Shapes by William Bee, Sleepy Little Alphabet by Judy Sierra, Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, If You See a Kitten by John Butler, Fabulous Fishes by Susan Stockdale, and What Shall We Do With the Boo Hoo Baby? by Cressida Cowell. Of all of these, the Stanley books have definitely been the biggest favorites. Jumping Joan is also a good audience for older sisters who wish to read aloud to someone.

The Read-at-Home Kids Report: December 2019

In December, we started our third set of seasonal reading logs. I've been enjoying writing down all the books the girls read themselves or have read aloud to them, and the older two enjoy giving me star ratings for each of the titles. Since we started our summer reading logs on June 3 last year, I've just been changing the season every three months on the third, and so far that has worked great. It's also going to make it really easy to show our homeschool reviewer that our six-year-old has been reading.

Here are some of our reading highlights from December.

Family Read-Alouds

I selected four Christmas chapter books to read aloud to Miss Muffet (6) and Bo Peep (4) at lunch each day of December. (Jumping Joan, 2, was also present, but generally did not listen.) We started with The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson, which Miss Muffet liked more than her sister at first , but by the end, they were both invested in the fate of the old man and the children. (I do wish I had looked up the pronunciation for all the French words ahead of time, however. I had to ask my husband how to say the names of many people and places.)

Next, we read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson, which I had read before, but not since having kids. I have never seen these two girls laugh so hard.  They absolutely loved the Herdmans, and memorized entire passages of their dialogue, which they recited at random throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons. I strongly suspect this will become a yearly read-aloud for us.

We followed that up with Starlight in Tourrone by Suzanne Butler, the writing in which I did find not especially conducive to reading aloud. The girls didn't like it much either, and often didn't understand what was happening. It was new to our collection this year, and may be one to revisit when they're a bit older, as I think the content is good, but I think it will make a better independent read the next time it comes out.

In the final days leading up to Christmas, we read The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden, with illustrations by Adrienne Adams. Both girls love The Doll People series, so I knew this would be a hit, and I was right. Bo Peep might be a little young to grasp exactly what was going on, but she loved the story anyway.

During Advent, my husband also read aloud The Good Shepherd by Gunnar Gunnarsson at the dinner table. This wasn't explicitly a children's novel, but the two older girls seemed to enjoy it.

We also read some picture books as a family over the month. We read Tomie dePaola's The Lady of Guadalupe on Open Library on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and then read Hanna's Christmas by Melissa Peterson (Wiley) for St Lucy's Day.  We also read The Year Without a Santa Claus by Phyllis McGinley for the first time, and revisited old favorites: The Huron Carol, Christmas in Noisy Village, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree.

We finished the month by starting Amahl and the Night Visitors by Frances Frost and Roger Duvoisin, which is another traditional yearly read-aloud, always in anticipation of Epiphany. This was Bo Peep's first year really being old enough to understand the story, and she really enjoyed it.

Little Miss Muffet (6 years, 1 month)

At the start of December, Miss Muffet was finishing up Gilgamesh the Hero by Geraldine McCaughrean. (She first got interested in Gilgamesh during our study of Ancient Mesopotamia, and stuck with him even as our history lessons moved on.) Her other assigned reading during the month included The Dutch Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins, The Cave Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins, When Molly Was Six by Eliza Orne White (all from Open Library), and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne. She also read through a bunch of Christmas books, most notably Santa Claus Forever by Carolyn Haywood, A Certain Small Shepherd by Rebecca Caudill, and Little Robin's Christmas by Jan Fearnley, which she read aloud repeatedly to her youngest sister.

On Christmas Day, there were two books under the tree sent to us by a fellow children's books enthusiast my husband met on Goodreads: Dorrie and the Play and Dorrie and the Dream Monster, both by Patricia Coombs. Miss Muffet read through those eagerly, enjoying the adventures of the young witch who is the star of the series.

Little Bo Peep (4 years, 3 months)

Bo Peep's audiobook obsession continues, and she spent most of December listening and re-listening to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, read by C.J. Critt. She calls the book simply "The Herdmans" and she truly could not enough of their outrageously naughty behavior or of the way they make the pageant come alive in the end. On days that she didn't listen to "The Herdmans," Bo Peep opted for Rufus M., read by Christina Moore.

Her independent reading also took off in a big way during December. She nearly finished her entire stack of Hooked on Phonics readers and progressed through her lessons in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by leaps and bounds. She keeps telling us, "I'm a reader" and using that as an argument for how much older she is now than she was when she was three.

Other books Bo Peep loved during this month were Alfie's Christmas by Shirley Hughes, which she received for Christmas from my mom, and the Golden books collection called Sleepytime Tales, which I bought at a book sale months ago and wrapped up for her for Christmas as well.

Little Jumping Joan (2 years, 2 months)

For Jumping Joan, December was all about Santa Claus and Baby Jesus. She pored over Who is Coming to Our House? by Joseph Slate, enjoying the page depicting her favorite animal, the peacock, and the one showing the newborn baby Jesus. She also loved all of our Santa board books, and took to carrying around Christmas, the cloth book she received on St. Nicholas Day last year when she was one. She refers to it as "Baby Boo," as that is the character's name, and kept reminding me all month that she wants to share the book with the twins on their first Christmas next year.

Jumping Joan's non-holiday favorites were Stanley's Train, which she received from me for Christmas, and which we have read countless times already since Christmas Day and Snuggle the Baby by Sara Gillingham, a second copy of which my mom gave her for Christmas because our original copy had been through a bit too much "big sister practice."

The Read-at-Home Kids Report: November 2019

It took me a while to get it typed up, but here finally is the girls' reading report for November!

Family Read-Alouds

Our lunchtime read-alouds in November were No Flying in the House by Betty Brock, which was a perfect book for the two big girls, with just the right blend of magic and talking animals and mystery, and The Runaway Dolls, which left both big girls begging each afternoon for just one more chapter. At dinner, my husband read aloud Hob and the Goblins by William Mayne. In preparation for Thanksgiving, we also read Over the River and Through the Wood illustrated by Christopher Manson, Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin,  and, from Open Library, Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation by Diane Stanley. After Thanksgiving dinner, I also read aloud The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh.

Little Miss Muffet, Age 6

Independently, Miss Muffet, newly 6 read five chapter books in November:  The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting, The Missing Tooth Fairy (The Adventures of Sophie Mouse #15) by Poppy Green, Here Comes the Bus by Carolyn Haywood, Our Strange New Land: Elizabeth's Diary, Jamestown, Virginia 1609 by Patricia Hermes, and Freddy and the Ignormus by Walter R. Brooks. Dr. Dolittle and Freddy were the favorites of the list, most likely because both involve talking animals.

We also had some picture books out of the library, and Miss Muffet gravitated especially toward these three: Just Like Beverly: A Biography of Beverly Cleary by Vicki Conrad, illustrated by David Hohn,  Home in the Woods by Eliza Wheeler, and The Darkest Dark by Chris Hadfield, illustrated by the Fan brothers. All of these had a basis in history, and that really seemed to appeal to her. She also really related to astronaut Chris Hadfield's boyhood fear of the dark.

Miss Muffet also celebrated her birthday in November and received a nice stack of books: 

• Something Queer at the Birthday Party by Elizabeth Levy and Mordecai Gerstein
• Something Queer in Outer Space by Elizabeth Levy and Mordecai Gerstein
• Katie and the Dinosaurs by James Mayhew 
• Clover's Luck by Kallie George
• The Enchanted Egg by Kallie George
• Walk This Underground World by Kate Baker

Little Bo Peep, Age 4 years, 2 months  

Learning to read and listening to audiobooks continue to be Bo Peep's biggest literary pursuits. In November, she listened to repeatedly to titles from the Mr. Putter and Tabby, Mercy Watson, and Doll People series (all of which she also previously heard as read-alouds). We also borrowed a set of Rime to Read books for her from the public library and she read those to herself repeatedly as well, along with Ann's Hat from our Hooked on Phonics set and The Tin Man, another reader we found at a book sale.

Bo Peep also got an early start on her holiday reading, insisting that I read the entire book adaptation of George Balanchine's Nutcracker in one sitting. Her picks from the library stack were I Need All Of It by Petra Postert (which I did not enjoy at all, personally) and Nine Months Before a Baby is Born by Miranda Paul and Jason Chin (which I loved.)

Little Jumping Joan, Age 2 years, 1 month

Jumping Joan is starting to get really into the Stanley series, and she asked for them at nap time on many days during November.  She doesn't know the titles, but identifies them either by color, or by something significant that occurs in the story ("Danley drive bus," "Danley have party," etc.) The other book from our shelves that she got attached to was The Three Bears by Byron Barton, only she kept referring to the bears as "naked monkeys."

From the library stack, her favorites were Nine Months Before a Baby is Born and The Moon is Going to Addy's House by Ida Pearle.

The Read-at-Home Kids Report: October 2019

There was so much reading going on here in October that it's taken me a couple of weeks to organize it into a coherent post! Last month, the girls heard a number of read-alouds at home and at their Grandma's house and they each read and looked at a variety of books on their own as well. Here are the highlights.

Family Read-Alouds

We kicked off our lunchtime reads for the month by finishing the Cobble Street Cousins series. The final book, Wedding Flowers, surprised me by including what appeared to be a Catholic priest, and Miss Muffet and Bo Peep loved all the wedding details, especially clothes and food.

As we looked ahead to Halloween, we then read King Oberon's Forest by Hilda van Stockum, which I and they both loved (review here) and What the Witch Left by Ruth Chew, which I've been describing in my mind as "Carolyn Haywood-esque" fantasy. Though I'm not a big fantasy reader myself, it's a favorite genre for both of the big girls right now, and this was the perfect gentle story for their ages and comfort levels.

As the month ended, we had just begun No Flying in the House by Betty Brock, which is another sweet and gentle fantasy story.

I've also been trying to read poetry after breakfast on occasion, and in the days before Halloween, we read Monster Soup by Dilys Evans and Ghosts and Goosebumps by Bobbi Katz on Open Library. The poems in these collections were just the right level of spooky for us, and they set the mood for the holiday very nicely.

After dinner, my husband read aloud Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt by Elizabeth Payne, Arabian Nights: Three Tales by Deborah Nourse Lattimore, and The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (which we finished on audio).

On our road trip to my mom's house, we listened to On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake. Cherry Jones does such a spot-on perfect job with the narration of these books. They really are pretty much perfect.

Reading with Grandma

My mom collects children's books just like we do, so when we spent five days with her in mid-October, she was eager to share some of her books with the girls. During our visit, the girls and Grandma read:

• Angelina and the Princess by Katharine Holabird 
• Angelina's Halloween by Katharine Holabird 
• The Apple Pie That Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson and Jonathan Bean
• Click, Clack Surprise! by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin
• Click, Clack Boo by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin 
• Red Knit Cap Girl by Naoko Stoop 
• Red Knit Cap Girl to the Rescue by Naoko Stoop 
• Kiss Baby's Boo-Boo by Karen Katz
• Mommy Hugs by Karen Katz
• A Little Book About ABCs by Leo Lionni 
• Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler 
• Bridget's Beret by Tom Lichtenheld 
• Pantaloon by Kathryn Jackson and Steven Salerno
• Owl Babies by Martin Waddell (pop-up book)
• Chirri & Chirra by Kaya Doi 
• Sleepytime for Baby Mouse by Margaret Hopkins
• Alphabears by Michael Hague
• Autumn Harvest by Alvin Tresselt and Roger Duvoisin

Room on the Broom was the big favorite from this list, partly because Grandma gave us a copy to take home and we were able to read it over and over. The big girls also love the Click Clack series.

Little Miss Muffet (5 years, 11 months)

As I mentioned in my recent post about October in our homeschool, Miss Muffet read six books on her own in October:  Uncle Wiggily and his Friends by Howard R. Garis, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Daughter of America by Jeanne Marie Grunwell, Stella Batts: Superstar and Stella Batts: Scaredy Cat by Courtney Sheinmel, Something Queer at the Haunted School by Elizabeth Levy and Mordecai Gersten, and a good portion of The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting, which she was still working on as the month ended. She also read a short story in My Bookhouse, "The Secret Door" by Susan Coolidge.

Dr. Dolittle has been a really good challenge for her. Because she loves talking animal stories, she is motivated to stick with it even when the vocabulary is a bit difficult, and the plot is exciting enough that she is always dying to know what happens next. I think we'll have her read some easier books in between before taking on another hard one, but I do think she'll read more from this series and maybe some other titles at that level.

Little Bo Peep (4 years, 1 month)

Bo Peep was the most interested in Halloween of any of the girls, and we read a few picture books on the subject, including my childhood copy of The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll, Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell, The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches by Alice Low (this one she requested repeatedly), and The Witch Next Door by Norman Bridwell. We also went back to having her listen to audiobooks during naptime (which has transitioned to more of a quiet time for her), and those have included the Mercy Watson series (she likes to follow along in the books) and The Moffats by Eleanor Estes. She also loved our review copy of Roly Poly by Mem Fox and Jane Dyer. As she has been somewhat uncertain about our new twins arriving in March, I think she found Roly Poly's adamant stance against having a baby brother somewhat validating. She took the book to bed with her during nap time many times after we first read it.

Little Jumping Joan (2 years)

As Bo Peep did before her, Jumping Joan has fallen in love with We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. She loves to flip through the pages, pointing out all the obstacles the kids encounter on their adventure, and looking for the baby on every page. She also likes doing the motions suggested by Michael Rosen in this video, which her sisters have happily been teaching her. Jumping Joan also enjoyed reading Now It's Fall by Lois Lenski and The Teddy Bears Picnic by Michael Hague at Grandma's house, and at home, Where is the Witch? (a review copy from Candlewick that I wrapped as a gift for her birthday), and It's Pumpkin Day, Mouse! which we read at story time, and which caused her to become fascinated by feelings and facial expressions.

Read-at-Home Kids Report: September 2019

September was out first month of the school year, and looking back over the weeks, we got a good amount of reading done despite morning sickness and our school workload.

Family Read-Alouds

The most timely read-aloud we shared this month was Max and Ruby and Twin Trouble by Rosemary Wells,  a review copy of which arrived just days after we learned we were expecting twins. (My review of the book is here.) Though it doesn't have everything I'd want in a book about anticipating newborn twins, it's one of the only books out there, and it helped us get the conversational ball rolling.

That same week, we also read The Ballad of the Pirate Queens by Jane Yolen and went to the adventure playground to act out some pirate scenes on the pirate ship play equipment.

Our first lunchtime read-aloud in September was the second book of the Doll People series, The Meanest Doll in the World. The girls loved it and wanted to continue with the series, but we had library books that had to be read that I said we needed to finish first. We read Gooseberry Park by Cynthia Rylant, followed by the last four books in her Cobble Street Cousins series. We easily read a single volume in one sitting, and the girls loved the sweet coziness of the stories.

At dinner, my husband read aloud King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Emma Gelders Sterne and Barbara Lindsay, and illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren, Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry and The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt by Elizabeth Payne (which went along with our history unit on Ancient Egypt.)

Little Miss Muffet (Age 5 years, 10 months)

In addition to her assigned reading for school (The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dalgliesh,  Emily's Runaway Imagination by Beverly Cleary, The Story of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting, The Key to the Treasure by Peggy Parish, and Sokar and the Crocodile by Alice Woodbury Howard), Miss Muffet spent her free time in September reading several volumes from Courtney Sheinmel's Stella Batts series and a bunch of books in the Little Miss series by Roger Hargreaves (including Little Miss Twins).

Little Bo Peep (Age 4)

Little Bo Peep enjoyed read-alouds about animals during school time this month. We read The Mother Whale by Edith Thacher Hurd and Clement Hurd, followed by Here Come the Bears by Alice Goudey. She also continued listening to the audio recordings of favorite picture books and "reading" wordless books from the Carl series by Alexandra Day. She also practiced all month to learn to read Rag by Barney Saltzburg, which she mastered just in time for her fourth birthday at the end of the month. She was also enamored of The Frog Princess retold by J. Patrick Lewis and illustrated by Gennady Spirin. (The main draw was the character of Baba Yaga.)

Little Jumping Joan (Age 23 months)

As Little Jumping Joan starts to talk more and more, she has become more vocal about the books she wants to hear. This month, her favorites were Eloise Wilkin Stories, Little Excavator by Anna Dewdney, Lullaby and Good Night: Songs for Sweet Dreams by Julie Downing, and No, David! by David Shannon. She has learned to recite almost every page in No, David and she happily reminds us of various scenes that have made a particular impression on her, such as the page where David picks his nose, and the one where he runs away naked.

The Read-at-Home Kids Report: August 2019

The End of Summer Reading 

We finished tracking our summer reading on September 2nd, meaning that our summer reading logs (which I printed out from RealLifeAtHome.com) covered a full three months. We didn't have a specific goal other than keeping track of the books the girls read (or heard read aloud by a parent and/or in audiobook format), and I was amazed at how many books we went through. Miss Muffet reached 260 books, a good number of which she read independently. Little Bo Peep hit 201, with her last book being a phonics reader she read aloud using her newly acquired knowledge of letter sounds. And Jumping Joan heard 108 books. We didn't count repeat reads of any books, so each number represents a unique title. We've decided to track again this fall and see how our numbers compare!

Family Read-Alouds

We started out the month of August reading Ben and Me by Robert Lawson, which I chose because Miss Muffet was really interested in Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately, both Miss Muffet and Bo Peep found the book boring and getting to the end was a struggle. (I have to admit to not liking it that much myself.)

After that, we borrowed the first two books in the Cobble Street Cousins series from the library and read them back to back. Both Miss Muffet and Bo Peep loved the characters and the essentially conflict-free plot of each book, and we definitely plan to get the rest of them from the library in the near future.

We finished out the month with The Doll People by Ann M. Martin and Laura Godwin. The nice thing is that both Miss Muffet and Bo Peep loved the story and begged for just one more chapter each day. We've already started book two.

Little Miss Muffet (5 years, 9 months)

My mom rescued a discarded library copy of a book called Getting to Know the Hudson River, which I read aloud to Miss Muffet largely against her will. I was excited to show her all the landmarks near where I grew up, but she didn't really have the context to appreciate it. She did enjoy the sections about the Erie canal, though, mostly because we sang canal boat songs after we finished reading.

Independently, she read a whole bunch of different things, including The Best Loved Doll by Rebecca Caudill, Did You Carry the Flag Today, Charley? by Rebecca Caudill (on OpenLibrary), Stella Batts Needs a New Name (on Hoopla), The Lost Umbrella of Kim Chu by Eleanor Estes, and By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Little Bo Peep (3 years, 11 months)

Bo Peep has been listening to a lot of picture books on audio, including some Amelia Bedelia books, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, A Bad Case of Stripes, and Corduroy. In response to her recent request for funny books, I went on Open Library and found The Watermelon Seed by Greg Pizzoli (which she loved) and A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker (which I love, and of which she was skeptical, until the end when she asked to read it again.) She has also become quite fond of wordless books, including the Carl books by Alexandra Day and the Flora books by Molly Idle.

In terms of reading independently, she read her first phonics reader, Rag, just as the summer ended, and she is working on sounding out more consonant-vowel-consonant words so she can work up to reading more!

Jumping Joan (22 months)

One of Jumping Joan's favorite books lately has been her biggest sister's book about the U.S. presidents. She especially loves the page about Ronald Reagan because it has a picture of jelly beans on it. She was calling him "jelly bean" but now she knows his name is Reagan.  She's also been listening to audiobooks with Bo Peep in the mornings, and she frequently asks for me to read What a Wonderful World illustrated by Tim Hopgood and Gossie (and sequels) by Olivier Dunrea aloud to her. She's also enjoyed acting out From Head to Toe by Eric Carle and flipping through B is for Baby by Atinuke. 

Read-at-Home Kids Report: July 2019

The Read-at-Home Kids have been reading up a storm this summer far beyond what I expected. As I sit down to write this, Miss Muffet (age 5 years, 8 months) has read or listened to more than 150 books since the beginning of June, and her sisters, Bo Peep (3 years, 10 months) and Jumping Joan (21 months), have listened to more than 100 and nearly 70, respectively. And this doesn't include any re-reads.

Family Read-Alouds

During July, we finished reading The Happy Hollisters and the Sea Turtle Mystery, after taking a short break to read The Spice of America by June Swanson around the fourth of July. The Happy Hollisters book inspired lots of research into the Everglades, air boats, snoring frogs, Seminole Indian culture, the construction of chickees and much more. After we had exhausted all those rabbit trails, then we picked up The Rescuers, the New York Review of Books edition of which Bo Peep selected at the used bookstore based on its resemblance to our copy of Jenny and the Cat Club. It was much, much different than the Disney version I knew as a kid, but very good, and both Miss Muffet and Bo Peep gave it a five-star rating.

Miss Muffet (5 years, 8 months)

School continues year-round here, and Miss Muffet has been totally obsessed with learning about Benjamin Franklin. I read What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin by Jean Fritz aloud to her, and that wasn't enough, so then my husband started reading her Poor Richard by James Daugherty in the evenings, along with A Bird in the Hand by Maud and Miska Petersham. I am now reading Electric Ben by Robert Byrd aloud during school time, and our lunch-time read-aloud is Ben and Me by Robert Lawson. When we're not reading about Benjamin Franklin, we're studying paintings in The Story of Paintings by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom and we're reading Planet Earth by Gerald Ames for science.

For fun, Miss Muffet has been reading the Wayside school series by Louis Sachar, the Lulu series by Hilary McKay (which we borrowed from the library) and Henry and Ribsy. I introduced her to the First Grade Friends series by Miriam Cohen as well. She also recently finished another of the Little House on the Prairie spin-off books, Beyond the Heather Hills by Melissa Wiley, and she's been revisiting lots of favorite picture books and Boxcar Children audiobooks.

Little Bo Peep (3 years, 10 months)

Little Bo Peep and I have started having some school time together in the mornings which typically consists of read-alouds. We've read some library books: a couple of Alfie books by Shirley Hughes , two nonfiction titles she selected about bones and the sun, and one book each from the Annie and Snowball and Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa series. She also loves to read nonfiction books about community helpers, of which there are many on Open Library, and we've also been borrowing other miscellaneous picture books from there based on whatever topics she gives me. As she's starting to give up her nap, Bo Peep has also felt the need to take many books to bed with her after lunch, and often she gets through the whole stack.

Little Jumping Joan (21 months)

Finally, this little one's love of books has taken off. We have read Summer Babies by Kathryn Galbraith dozens of times, and typically, when we get to the end, she hands it to me and says, "Read. Again!" She's also starting to get interested in actual picture books, including the Stanley series by William Bee and pretty much any book that one of her sisters has in her hand and would prefer that she not touch. She's still destroying our board books because she just loves them so much she can't be gentle, but she also spends a fair amount of time pointing to objects in them and calling them by name. Other new favorites for Jumping Joan are Hello Lamb and Goodnight Bear, both by Jane Cabrera.

Read-at-Home Kids Report, June 2019

Summer Reading So Far 

Though we no longer participate in the public library's summer reading program, I still wanted to keep track of what the girls are reading this summer. So I printed out a bunch of copies of this reading log from Real Life at Home, and I've been keeping a list for each of them since June 3rd. As June winds down, Little Miss Muffet (age 5 years, 7 months) has read or listened to about 80 different books (including audiobooks and books we're using for homeschool), Little Bo Peep (3 years, 9 months) has heard around 50, and Little Jumping Joan (20 months) is approaching 40. Considering the public library's "bonus level" asks for kids to read 12 books for the entire summer,  it's clear that doing our own thing is definitely the right choice. Miss Muffet and Bo Peep are also rating their books with stars on a scale from 1 to 5, which has been really fun. It's especially interesting to see which books they give one or two stars. 

The other thing we're doing this summer is hosting some friends for a story time in our living room on Friday mornings. The girls are enjoying have friends around to listen to books with them, and it's been fun for me to get back into performing story time after a 2-year hiatus.

Family Read-Alouds

Our first lunchtime read-aloud this month was Babe The Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith. This was an excellent choice for both of the older two girls, and it was a pleasure to read aloud. I even got a little choked up at the end! I'm planning to find some more Dick King-Smith books at the library for Miss Muffet to read on her own, since she is a big fan of talking animal stories. My husband also finished reading aloud The Little Circus by Jeanette C. Shirk, and then proposed that we get rid of the book, as it was not that impressive. He also selected the audiobooks for our road trip to North Carolina: Heidi (which I did not enjoy, but which the girls seemed to like) and Mary Poppins (which I enjoyed, but most of which the girls slept through.) At lunch, we are now reading The Happy Hollisters and the Sea Turtle Mystery, and my husband just started reading Wolf Story by William McCleery at dinner.

Little Miss Muffet (5 years, 7 months)

This month, Miss Muffet has gotten really into the Something Queer series by Elizabeth Levy and Mordecai Gerstein. These are mysteries in picture book format for early elementary readers that I loved when I was just a little bit older than she is now, and I'm thrilled to see her enjoying them. She also liked reading Two Times the Fun by Beverly Cleary on Open Library, 

During school time, we've been reading ebooks about materials and their properties as well as How to Build a House and How to Build a Car by Martin Sodomka and Saskia Lacey. We also finally finished reading about all the paintings in Famous Paintings: An Introduction to Art by Alice Elizabeth Chase and now we're working on finishing up The Caves of the Great Hunters and Grammarland. Her assigned independent read at the moment is The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit, and on deck is Schoolhouse in the Woods by Rebecca Caudill. She also read a biography of Nathan Hale, and, of her own volition, researched cannibalism (of all things) in the Golden Encyclopedia. 

Little Bo Peep (3 years, 9 months)

Bo Peep continues to make progress on her letter sounds, and she even read a couple of words ("bad" and "mad") the other day!  She's enjoying her first foray into The Happy Hollisters series, and she's also enjoyed listening to the entire Beatrix Potter collection on audio (though she did make me skip any stories that mentioned Peter Rabbit for some unknown reason). I also introduced her to a few of the Mr. Putter and Tabby books (also on audio) and I'm hoping to get a few of those from the library for her. There were also a couple of Alfie books by Shirley Hughes on Open Library that she hadn't heard, so we read through those, and she loves our unbound review copy of One Fox: A Counting Book Thriller by Kate Read, which comes out in October. 

Little Jumping Joan (20 months)

The closer she gets to her second birthday, the more Jumping Joan loves books. Now that she's really starting to talk, she frequently says, "Books. Read." and then plops down and waits for a story. I've started introducing her to the Gossie series, and she's also been interested in B is for Baby by Atinuke and in our collection of Babylit books. Other favorites this month were the Hairy Maclary books by Lynley Dodd and the Big Box of Books by Natalie Marshall. 

The Read-at-Home Kids Report: May 2019

Family Read-Alouds

This month's lunchtime read-aloud (read by me) has been Inside the Ark by Caryll Houselander. This is a collection of short stories aimed at Catholic children, and it has been a lovely way to make Easter last all through the season. Though Little Miss Muffet (age 5 years, 6 months) liked the stories, they seemed to make a surprisingly even bigger impression on Little Bo Peep (3 years, 8 months). She told me her favorites were "The Dancing Bear," "The White Mouse's Story," and "Petook," but insisted all of them were great.

Bo Peep was less enthusiastic about Joan of Arc by Josephine Poole and Angela Barrett, which we read aloud at breakfast yesterday morning, on her feast day. Bo Peep said she hated the book and rated it one star because it had too many battles. Miss Muffet was a big fan, though, partly because she knows one of the voices Joan heard was her patroness, St. Margaret of Antioch. 

At dinner, my husband is reading aloud The Little Circus, which everyone likes except Little Jumping Joan (19 months) who is frequently too disruptive to stay at the table to even pretend to listen.

Little Miss Muffet (5 years, 6 months)

Though we're pretty much schooling year-round, we have started to wind down some of the things we have been working on in our homeschool during kindergarten. This month, we finally made it to the end of The World We Live In, which we have been reading on and off since January. I know she didn't understand every single concept presented, but the book gave her an excellent overview of natural history and the natural world, and it has great illustrations. We also finished the second Life of Fred book, Butterflies, and we're very close to the end of Famous Paintings: An Introduction to Art by Alice Elizabeth Chase. She also really loved Filippo's Dome by Anne Rockwell, about the building of Brunelleschi's Duomo in Florence, and now she's enjoying The Caves of the Great Hunters by Hans Baumann, which we take turns reading aloud to each other.

This month, we also started a new chapter in Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding focused on materials, which led us to borrow a few ebooks from Hoopla: Wood by Andrea Rivera, Wood by Harriet Brundle, Rock by Harriet Brundle, Materials by Steffi Cavell-Clarke, and Let's Investigate Everyday Materials by Ruth Owen. (We have finished all but that last one.)

On her own, Miss Muffet has also been reading a ton of great books. She finished our omnibus edition containing three Wishing Chair books by E. Nesbit, and has since zipped through five picture books in the Something Queer series by Elizabeth Levy, as well as Three Boys and a Lighthouse by Nan Hayden Agle and Ellen Wilson, On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder,  Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary, Sarah, Plain and Tall, Skylark, and Caleb's Story by Patricia Maclachlan, and Beyond the Pawpaw Trees by Palmer Brown. She is now reading The Silver Nutmeg by Palmer Brown.

Miss Muffet also learned "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth as her memorization work for the month.

Little Bo Peep (3 years, 8 months)

Bo Peep's latest book obsession is Christina Katerina and the Box by Patricia Lee Gauch. She talks about it a lot, and if anyone offers to read a story to her, this is the one she will almost always choose. I enjoyed Christina Katerina as a kid, too, so I'm always happy to oblige. When we're not reading about Christina Katerina, her other book of choice is  Janet's Thingamajigs by Beverly Cleary, another of my childhood favorites.

She's also been enjoying reading a new wordless book, Sign Off by Stephen Savage, listening to the Little Miss and Mr. Men audiobooks read by Jim Dale, and carrying around a poetry book illustrated with paintings of babies. (The best books, she says, always have babies in them!)

Little Bo Peep's memory work for this month was "Away We Go" by Eleanor Dennis.

Little Jumping Joan

Finally, our baby has really started to become interested in having books read aloud to her. The other day, she stood in the playpen and listened to Animal Sounds by Aurelius Battaglia, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr. and Eric Carle, Mama, Look! by Patricia Murphy and David Diaz and If All the Seas Were One Sea by Janina Domanska. She also loves to point out when anyone else is holding a book, and she frequently listens along when Bo Peep has audiobooks playing. She also loves to look at our Catholic Baptism Bible, even though we're constantly taking it away from her for fear she will rip it!

The Read-at-Home Kids Report: April 2019

This past weekend, I got the two older girls to help me, and we re-shelved all the books that had been left hanging around after my mom brought us a bunch of new ones right before Easter. We also emptied the bookshelf in the girls' room and refreshed its contents so that the books in it are ones they actually want to read and which actually fit in the shelf when standing up. It was a job well done, and it has caused a lot of old books to feel new again.

Family Read-Alouds

Most of our family read-alouds this month have been read by my husband after dinner. He finished Rufus M. by Eleanor Estes and has now moved on to The Moffatt Museum. The older girls love this series, but the baby can get kind of fussy waiting for the end of a chapter, so I often spend time with her and miss out on the story. I will probably need to read the entire series on my own at some point.

For a while in March and early April, I was doing separate read-alouds for the older two girls, but whenever one girl was hearing her book, the other was left unsupervised and got into trouble, so now we're back to reading all together. For a couple of weeks, we did some short books here and there: a couple of Beatrix Potter titles (The Tale of Two Bad Mice and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies), The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight: More Poems to Trouble Your Sleep by Jack Prelutsky and Arnold Lobel, and Nobody Hugs a Cactus by Carter Goodrich, which is a review copy.

Now I'm back to reading aloud a longer book at the lunch table. We just started is Inside the Ark and Other Stories by Caryll Houselander, which is a collection of children's stories with Catholic themes from the 1950s.   

We also had our first poetry picnic of the season this month, during which I read Please Bury Me in the Library by J. Patrick Lewis, The Little Bitty Man by Halfdan Rasmussen, and Handsprings by Douglas Florian. The older two girls ran away from me during the picnic, so we may not be doing anymore for a while, but they did enjoy the books before their bad behavior overtook them.

Little Miss Muffet, Age 5 

Our main read-aloud book for school this month was Follow My Leader by James B. Garfield. Miss Muffet has become interested in Braille, and this book follows a young boy from the time he is blinded in an accident until he brings home his guide dog. I found the text really dry, so it took us a while to get through it, but she really loved the story and especially enjoyed acquiring new facts about blindness and blind people.

Now that we have abandoned dinosaurs for the time being, we have returned to reading from The World We Live In. We have covered the desert and the arctic tundra, and now we're focusing on the rainforest. It seemed like it was too much to read both this and The Fantastic Flying Journey at the same time, so that one is on the book burner until we finish this one.

For history, we've started reading The Caves of the Great Hunters, about the young French boys who discovered the cave paintings at Lascaux. She's fascinated by it already, so her interest in cavemen is still going strong.

Miss Muffet has also been busy reading independently. She's revisited some old favorites (Back to School with Betsy and Betsy and Mr. Kilpatrick by Carolyn Haywood, and Surprises by Lee Bennett Hopkins, which is an I Can Read book of poetry) and discovered some new favorites (Attaboy Sam by Lois Lowry, The Treasure Hunt by Meriol Trevor, and How Many Teeth?, which is a vintage  Let's Read and Find Out About Science book by Paul Showers.) Additionally, she is reading an omnibus edition of The Wishing Chair series by Enid Blyton, the latest Sophie Mouse book (#14, The Great Bake-off)  and she has become interested in wordless picture books, especially Journey by Aaron Becker.

Little Bo Peep, Age 3.5

This child is much more likely to find a set of books she loves and stick with it, so she is still enjoying "Ell-oh-nee" (Eloise) Wilkin and the Alfie books by Shirley Hughes, and I don't see her ever moving on from those. She has varied her repertoire a little bit this month, however, throwing in Christina Katerina and the Box by Patricia Lee Gauch as well as a few of the new picture books we received for review: A Piglet Named Mercy by Kate DiCamillo, Rosie & Rasmus by Serena Geddes, and A New Home by Tania de Regkl.  She's also enjoying a new-to-us used copy of A Child's Garden of Verses illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa.  

For Easter, Bo Peep's godparents also gave her a picture book about St. Jerome, whose feast day falls on her birthday.  St. Jerome and the Lion has lovely illustrations, and our copy is even signed by the author! Bo Peep was thrilled to receive a book of her very own and she enjoyed the story even though it was a bit on the longer side. 

Little Jumping Joan, Age 18 months

This little girl is in full-blown toddler mode, walking around the house and exploring everything, including books - both those she should handle and those she should not. She has learned to say "book," too, so she can both label them as she walks by and request one by saying "booook" (pronounced to rhyme with Luke) repeatedly until someone finds a board book and hands it over.

Like Bo Peep, she is fascinated by babies and has been drawn to the same collection of Eloise Wilkin stories. (Thankfully, Grandma replaced it for us again, because the cover of the second copy has now been stripped of its cover.) She also loves Spring Babies and Summer Babies, both of which I received for review from Peachtree Publishing, and The Baby's Catalogue, which was originally a birthday gift from Miss Muffet to Bo Peep. 

Bo Peep also loves the new Wheels on the Bus board book published by Nosy Crow which Grandma brought when she visited. It has moving parts, and only three verses of the song so it actually holds her interest and I'm able to get through an entire book with her before she takes it away from me and wanders off. At nap time, she likes to take either Goodnight, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann or Babies on the Farm (a lift-the-flap book published by Cottage Door Press), to bed with her.

The Read-at-Home Kids Report: March 2019

I had so many book reviews to squeeze in at the end of March that this post got pushed back a few days, but I still want to share all the books the girls enjoyed in March.

Family Read-Alouds

We finished Miss Hickory  (which was peculiar, yet charming) and then I decided to start reading to the two older girls separately so each could listen to a book tailored to her own interests. Little Miss Muffet just finished listening to Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field, which is the story of a doll's adventures with a series of owners. It's written at a much higher level than she could read on her own, but she has comprehended it well and learned a lot of history in the process. With Little Bo Peep, I'm switching back and forth between The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook and Old Mother West Wind. She has not been especially attentive, but she is enjoying them from what I can tell. In the evening, my husband is reading them the Moffats series. He finished The Moffats and The Middle Moffat, and now they're hearing Rufus M..

We also undertook a couple of reading challenges on Instagram leading up to St. Patrick's Day for which we read five picture books of a different color every day for six days. The big girls each chose two books, and I chose the fifth, and we read them aloud after breakfast. This was a great way to revisit some old favorites and to discover some books on our shelves that we hadn't read yet. Little Bo Peep was especially into this idea, and she is still looking at some of the books we read even two weeks later.

Little Miss Muffet, Age 5 

For school this month, we've been exploring many different topics. We started (but decided not to finish) a disappointing nonfiction title about fish (Classifying Fish by Louise Spilsbury). Then we reviewed some of our natural history lessons by comparing the timeline in A Brief History of Life on Earth by Clemence Dupont to the illustrations in Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton.  We're also still occasionally dipping into Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages, though her interest in dinosaurs is starting to fade a little bit. My plan is to read aloud The Fantastic Flying Journey by Gerald Durrell next.

Independently, she is also reading a variety of titles, including books of Norse myths (Adventures with the Giants and Thunder of the Gods), collections of Irish fairy tales (Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Ireland by Virginia Haviland and Tales from Old Ireland by Malachy Doyle), series books (the latest Sophie Mouse and book 3 of the Heartwood Hotel series), and audiobooks (the usual favorites - Muggie Maggie, Mitch and Amy, and The Year of Billy Miller.) During school time, she is also reading a biography of Louis Braille on Open Library.

Little Bo Peep, Age 3 

Little Bo Peep has been enjoying peeking into her sister's Sophie Mouse collection and she likes to look at the omnibus edition of the first four books in the series. She also likes to have her sister read aloud to her, and I've caught them together on the couch sharing such books as Fin M'Coul by Tomie dePaola and Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury.

Bo Peep has become more interested in playing with toys than looking at books during naptime, but she does like the occasional audiobook. Just the other day, she listened to Tops and Bottoms while acting the story out on the flannel board at the same time. Her Eloise Wilkin book was confiscated because she wasn't treating it nicely, and that seems to have diminished her interest in her for the moment, though I'm sure the loss of interest isn't permanent. The other books she has been carrying around the house with her are our two Catholic children's Bibles: The Catholic Children's Bible by Sister Mary Theola and The New Catholic Picture Bible by Lawrence G. Lovasik.

I'm also teaching Bo Peep the consonants and their sounds using The Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading. We have done B, C, D, F, and G so far.

Little Jumping Joan, Age 17 months

Little Jumping Joan has fallen in love with word books: Happy Baby Colors by Roger Priddy, Richard Scarry's Just Right Word Book, DK's My First Words, and DK's My First Word Board Book. She is especially intrigued by animals, and likes to growl at bears and anything she perceives to be similar to a bear.

She is also completely obsessed with both The Babies on the Bus by Karen Katz and Ten Little Babies by Gyo Fujikawa (both of which she has basically destroyed), as well as Atinuke's new picture book, B is For Baby. She refers to each of these books as "babies" and mostly just walks around the house with them. I keep trying to read them to her, but mostly she howls at me until I agree to just let her hold them. She also likes to point to babies' toes in the illustrations and say "feet."

Jumping Joan is also beginning to notice that we have a lot of bookshelves in our house and she walks around the living room, visiting each one and asking "whassat?" I have no doubt she will be a book lover like her sisters.

Read-at-Home Kids Report: February 2019

Family Read-Alouds

This month, we have gone back to primarily reading chapter books aloud at mealtimes. I did kick off the month with a couple of picture books at lunch time: Rosa-Too-Little by Sue Felt Kerr, Do You Have the Time, Lydia? by Evaline Ness, and Septimus Bean and His Amazing Machine by Janet Quin-Harkin,  during which time my husband was reading America Travels by Alice Dalgliesh, and then The Four Dolls by Rumer Godden at dinner time. Next, we took turns reading Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink at lunch and dinner for about a week. Now I'm reading Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey at lunch, and he's reading The Moffats by Eleanor Estes at dinnertime. We also took a two-hour drive to a booksale and listened to the entirety of The Borrowers audiobook together on the ride there and back. The girls especially loved Baby Island, and they are really into The Moffats.

Little Miss Muffet, Age 5 

During school time, Miss Muffet and I are reading some longer books for science, art, and history. I took out Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages expecting to read just a few pages, but she has fallen in love with the topic, so now we're reading a section of a chapter each day. We have learned about preparators and paleoartists, taxonomy and preservation, and now we're moving into evolution and the origin of dinosaurs. I like this book a lot because it teaches not just about dinosaurs, but about science in general, and all in terms a child with minimal knowledge can understand.

We're also studying the Stone Age, and the books we've been using are Picturesque Tale of Progress: Beginnings I, They Lived Like This in The Old Stone Age by Marie Neurath, and The Golden Book of Cavemen and Prehistoric People, the last of which she selected for herself at the aforementioned book sale. She especially loved learning about cave painting, and the illustrations in these books inspired her to make her own cave art using oil pastels on a brown paper bag. For art appreciation, we're using Famous Paintings: An Introduction to Art by Alice Elizabeth Chase. We read about one painting each weekday, and we'll keep going until we finish the book.

In terms of independent reading, Miss Muffet continues to be obsessed with the Adventures of Sophie Mouse series, and she has also read Whisper in the Ruins from the Chime Travelers series, as well as The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth, which tied in perfectly to her budding interest in paleontology. She's also read Twig by Elizabeth Orton Jones, Beezus and Ramona, Eddie's Green Thumb by Carolyn Haywood, and My Visit to the Dinosaurs by Aliki. Her current read is Boxcar Children #10, The Schoolhouse Mystery. She is also still requesting to hear the same audiobooks again and again: Muggie Maggie, Mitch & Amy, and The Year of Billy Miller.

Little Bo Peep, Age 3 

This child continues to go through piles of books at a time. She still loves anything illustrated by "Ellowee Wilkin," and she chose a prayer book by her to bring home from a recent book sale. She has also been attached to The Three Bears by Byron Barton, The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, Mockingbird by Janet and Allen Ahlberg, and the newly published The Whole Wide World and Me by Toni Yuly. She also really loved both Rosa-Too-Little and Baby Island when we read them aloud.

Bo Peep does tend to be very particular about her books, and she spends a lot of time flipping through books only to say she's not interested in them because they lack something she feels is important, such as illustrations of babies. She sometimes listens in when we read about dinosaurs and cavemen, but typically she prefers to spend school time looking at books on her own.

Little Jumping Joan, 16 months

This little girl is finally walking, so now she can often be found lugging around a huge picture book as she tries to keep her balance. She is also really into word books, which prompted my mom to send us a few board books of that type published by DK that she had hanging around her house from when the older two girls were this age. Jumping Joan is fascinated by the photographs, especially of animals, and she spends a lot of time pointing at different items and saying, "Whaddat?" She really likes bears, too, and became instantly attached to another of our book sale finds, Love Songs of the Little Bear by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Susan Jeffers.  She's really rough on books if she is left to her own devices, so we have to be kind of protective of our picture books, but it was so sweet to see her kissing the bear and pointing at his face on every page. She still won't sit for a read-aloud of any of these books, but I try to jump in and comment on what she's interested in whenever she has a book in hand.

Read-at-Home Kids Report: January 2019

Family Read-Alouds

Our lunchtime read-alouds were all Christmas-themed in December and early January: The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L'Engle, A Certain Small Shepherd by Rebecca Caudill, The Best Christmas by Lee Kingman, and Amahl and the Night Visitors by Frances Frost and Roger Duvoisin. Then we read A Day on Skates by Hilda van Stockum, followed by "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," "Rapunzel," and "Sleeping Beauty" from The Golden Treasury of Children's Literature. In the evening, my husband has been reading them The Book of Cowboys by Holling C. Holling.

Little Miss Muffet, Age 5

Between her birthday in November and Christmas, Miss Muffet amassed many new books to enjoy in the new year. These included titles in the Sophie Mouse, Chime Travelers, and Heartwood Hotel series, as well as a copy of The Sign on Rosie's Door by Maurice Sendak, Wee Hee Hee: A Collection of Pretty Funny Jokes and Pictures, and her very own paperback copy of her beloved favorite book, Mitch & Amy by Beverly Cleary.

For school the past few weeks, she and I have been reading through the young reader's edition of The World We Live In, which is a vintage Life book about the formation of planet Earth. (We are also supplementing with other up-to-date texts when we run into outdated information.) As a result, she has become interested in volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, waterfalls, and tsunamis. Much of the text goes right over her head, but she loves to listen to the big words anyway, and the book has wonderful illustrations. The other thing we've started incorporating into school is the Life of Fred math program, which uses a story to teach mathematical concepts. We've been reading a couple of chapters each Friday, and right now we're a few chapters in to the first book, Apples. She absolutely loves it so far.

At a recent book sale, we also acquired a set of Golden Encyclopedias, which have become a new source of fascination for Miss Muffet. She has learned to look up topics of interest in the index, and she will also spend time just browsing each volume for something interesting to study. So far, she has learned about dinosaurs, Sir Francis Drake, stars, Teddy Roosevelt, and trilobites.

On her own, Miss Muffet just finished reading Down to the Bonny Glen by Melissa Wiley and Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Spain by Virginia Haviland, and she also recently fell in love with my signed childhood copy of Sarah's Unicorn by Bruce Coville, which has infiltrated much of her imaginative play with her three-year-old sister. She is also listening to the audiobook of The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes on repeat.

Little Bo Peep, Age 3

Bo Peep is on a quest to learn all the letters and their sounds so she can learn to read like her big sister. She is coming along quite well with this task, and seems to enjoy showing off her newfound knowledge. For Christmas, she received Rhymes for Annie Rose by Shirley Hughes, which is a new favorite, and Cook in a Book: Cookies, which has renewed her interest in the other Cook in a Book titles we have: Pizza and Pancakes. She also really likes The Girl With the Watering Can by Ewa Zadrzynska, especially after we went to see the painting in person the day after Christmas, and she is currently obsessed with Eloise Wilkin's illustrations.

Bo Peep also takes a huge stack of books with her to bed at naptime each day and looks at every single one in depth. She is beginning to get into audiobooks, too, and some days, I set her up with my laptop playing Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, which is her current favorite. I am going to try to introduce some audiobooks with page-turn signals and see if she can follow along in the books.

Little Jumping Joan, Age 15 months

Jumping Joan has learned to say "no," so any attempt to read to her is usually met with a chorus of "no no no no no." But she loves handling books. Her current favorite is Winter Babies, which my sister sent to her for Christmas, along with Autumn Babies. She likes both, but given a choice of just one, Winter Babies wins every time. She has also become interested in Babies on the Bus by Karen Katz, Once I Was a Polliwog by Douglas Florian, and a few of our Babylit books. She is also typically present for all of our family read-alouds so she hears those books even when she won't allow us to read to her otherwise.

The RAHK Report: Fall Favorites 2018

The children in this house have read so many books this Fall it would take a month of posts to discuss them all! So instead of trying to mention every book, I've made a list of the books I have perceived to be the girls' favorites over the past couple of months.

• All Alone by Clare Huchet Bishop, illustrated by Feodor Rojankovsky
  This short Newbery honor story about two boys caring for their cattle in the French Alps was suggested as a lunch time read-aloud by my husband. I knew Little Miss Muffet (age 5) would love it, but I was not expecting Little Bo Peep (age 3) to also find it so engaging. It was Bo Peep who would remind me to get the book, listen with rapt attention, and beg for just one more chapter. Typically, she is not that interested in adventure stories, but this one, which has a fair amount of danger and suspense, held her attention from beginning to end.
• The Enchanted Wood and The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
  Miss Muffet laughed her way through both of these titles, which she read independently, and during the time she was reading them, spoke incessantly of rhe Saucepan Man and other new "friends" she made in the books.  I'm glad to see her responding to fantasy stories, something I still struggle to do as an adult! I haven't read either of these books, but I'd feel confident in recommending them after seeing her reaction.
• Sophie Mouse series by Poppy Green
  Miss Muffet received books 1-4 of this series earlier this year, and then book 5 at the start of the school year. After she'd read book 5 at least 5 times, my mom sent her some more for her birthday. Of the four titles she received for her birthday (two weeks ago) she has already read three. They are a bit easy for her at this point, but they are great for her to read when she wants to relax. She's always excited to tell me about a new character who comes into the story, and she likes that Sophie is "a girl just like me, but she's  a mouse." She also received the first two books in the Heartwood Hotel series for her birthday (also from my mom) and those are a bit more challenging, but she's excited about them because they remind her of Sophie.
• All About Sam by Lois Lowry
  I read all of the Anastasia books and all of the Sam books back when I was still working in the library, and I remember thinking how great the Sam books would be for a precocious preschooler to hear read aloud. When we found a paperback copy of All About Sam among a bunch of stuff at my childhood home this summer, I brought it home and it was one of our November lunch time read-alouds. Both Little Miss Muffet and Little Bo Peep instantly loved Sam, and they really related to the daily dramas of his young life. It was one of our best read-alouds of the year.

• Who Lives in this House? by Glenn Blough, illustrated by Jeanne Bendick
  I used this book to help teach Miss Muffet about how animals build their homes, and I enjoyed it just as much as she did. Though this is a picture book, it manages to pack in a lot of scientific information, and the illustrations really help illuminate the actions described by the text. On the heels of this book, we also read this author's Who Lives at the Seashore? on Open Library, a book we will likely revisit before we go to the aquarium in February.
• Castle: Medieval Days and Knights by Kyle Olmon and Tracy Sabin
  I have had this pop-up book since Little Miss Muffet was a baby, and finally brought it out to read a week or so ago. Both Little Miss Muffet and Little Bo Peep were in awe of all the little details in the pop-up illustrations and they both cited the chapel and the dungeon as their favorite parts of the castle. I have to keep the book hidden because I know it will get destroyed if it's out where they can handle it any time, but I expect to be asked for it a lot!
• Where's Santa Claus? by Ingela P. Arrhenius
  This book came to Little Jumping Joan (age 13 months) from St. Nicholas, and he (I) received it as a review copy from Nosy Crow. It's a lift-the-flap book, but instead of flimsy paper flaps, the ones in this book are made of felt. This is a stroke of genius in my opinion because not only can a baby not rip a piece of felt in half, she also can't get a paper cut from a felt flap. The last page of the book is a mirror, which has also been a lot of fun for her to explore. This book has gone all around the house with her during the past week, and will probably be by her side until Epiphany when the Christmas books go away.
• Singing in the Rain illustrated by Tim Hopgood
  My sister sent this picture book for Little Jumping Joan's birthday, and we all loved it right away, just as we did What a Wonderful World, also illustrated by Tim Hopgood. Jumping Joan loves anything that involves singing, so this was a natural fit for her, and her sisters also like to take it out and attempt to sing the tune. (We're still working on learning how it actually goes.)

The RAHK Report: New Books Edition, Fall 2018

My older two girls and I have been really enjoying the review copies we've received from publishers these past couple of months. Today, I finally want to share our thoughts on 10 of the books we were fortunate enough to find in our mailbox. (The 11th book, Sing a Song of Seasons is a lengthy poetry collection, so that one will get its own separate post.)

When I was getting ready to write this up, I corralled Little Miss Muffet (who will turn 5 this month) and Little Bo Peep (who just turned 3) into our home office and asked them to read the books with me and give them a rating of either one star (defined in simple preschool terms as "bad"), two stars ("just okay"), or three stars ("great," a pronouncement to which the girls just naturally added a thumbs up.) It was interesting to see where their ratings matched or differed from each other, and also how they corresponded with my Goodreads ratings.

There were five books to which both girls gave perfect marks of 3 out of 3 stars, so I'll start with those.

Heads and Tails by John Canty (10/23/18, Candlewick Press)
A series of illustrations and textual clues invites preschoolers to guess the names of animals based on their tails. This book is very straightforward and Little Miss Muffet guessed all the animals correctly on her first reading. Little Bo Peep had a bit of a harder time, which leads me to think that her age group is probably the best audience for the book. There are a couple of strange instances where the illustrator throws in a red herring tail and requires the reader to turn the page twice to find out which animal he really intends. Even on a third reading, these moments still felt awkward, so although I really loved the artwork, I gave the book 3 out 5 stars.

Interrupting Chicken and the Elephant of Surprise by David Ezra Stein (9/11/18, Candlewick Press)
My husband has instilled in my children a deep love for elephants, and I think this must be what drives them to ask for this book again and again. They don't know the fairy tales referenced in the book yet, and they have never had homework so the surprise humor of elephants must be the main draw. In any case, for me, this book fell really flat. (I gave it 2 stars out of 5.)  In a previous post, I mentioned that the story felt like it only had one joke, and it beat that joke to death. But I don't mind keeping it around for now, since the girls have latched onto it so heavily. I would like them to read the first book, though, because I do think it's the better of the two.

Ten Horse Farm by Robert Sabuda (4/10/18, Candlewick Press)
My kids are not especially big horse lovers, but they loved this book, and I did too. It is amazing the images that can be created simply using paper cut-outs, and we enjoyed every page, and especially the final spread where the reader needs to find all ten horses hidden around the pop-up barn. (For a sneak peek at the illustrations, check out the book trailer!) I'm also happy to say this book has held up really well to repeated handling. I don't let the baby around it because I know no pop-up book is durable enough to withstand a one-year-old, but allowing my older two to touch the book has not resulted in disaster so far! (My rating: 5 out of 5.)

Sleep, My Bunny by Rosemary Wells (11/13/18, Candlewick Press)
I have read this gentle rhyming bedtime story to all three girls, and while I think it is probably most appealing to the one-year-old, it has definitely made an impression on Miss Muffet and Bo Peep as well. They both love the endpapers, and Bo Peep mentioned that she likes how it shows the bunny doing all the same things in his daily routine that she does in hers. I was a little surprised to see them both give this book the highest rating, but they have been reading it together a lot so I guess I should have guessed. My rating for this book is 4 out of 5 stars.

There's A Dinosaur on the 13th Floor by Wade Bradford, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes (10/2/18, Candlewick Press)
This silly story is about a musician who just wants to go sleep, but can't find a room at the Sharemore Hotel that isn't already occupied by an animal. As he and the  bellhop climb higher and higher in the building searching for a suitable bed, the animal residents get more and more ridiculous until finally he meets the occupant of the 13th floor, a dinosaur. This book has held up surprisingly well to multiple re-readings. Both girls have run hot and cold about it for a few weeks, but we are currently in a high-demand phase where there is a lot fighting for a turn with this book.

On the other five books, the girls disagreed, and occasionally so did I.

Oskar Can... by Britta Teckentrup (10/23/18, Prestel Junior)
Little Bo Peep, who was my intended audience when I requested this book, ended up disliking it immensely (1 star!). She did not seem to connect with Oskar at all, and when I said we were going to read this one, she actually wanted to leave the room! Her sisters, on the other hand, have both really taken to the book. Little Jumping Joan, the one-year-old, read it with me a couple of times and she was thrilled by the pictures, pointing at everything in sight. Little Miss Muffet also loved it (3 stars!) and she has read it to her baby doll several times. She tells me that her baby doll, Robin, loves the cover, while Miss Muffet herself loves the pictures and all the things Oskar is able to do. I gave it two stars because I was expecting more of a story, but I could see pairing it with something like Titch for a story time.

Builders and Breakers by Steve Light (10/9/18, Candlewick Press)
This book has a simple text about construction and demolition and how builders and breakers work together to bring a set of blueprints to life. I really liked the artwork, and gave the book 4 out of 5 stars for its strong appeal to kids who love construction, all the details in the illustrations that are not mentioned in the text, and the interesting spin on a popular topic. Miss Muffet is a bit old at this stage for picture books with such minimal words, so she just gave it 2 stars, but Bo Peep found it completely engaging and gave it a big thumbs up (an enthusiastic 3 stars). I posted a review on Instagram as well, and was thrilled that Steve Light shared it!

The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Ekua Holmes (9/4/18, Candlewick Press)
I had reviewed this previously but I wanted to see what the girls had to say about it. I was expecting Miss Muffet to be the one who connected most with this one since the artwork and subject matter are both pretty abstract. But she only gave it 2 stars while Bo Peep, enamored of the colors in the illustrations, gave it 3. I think this is a book they will only appreciate more as they get older, so it will be staying on our shelves for years to come.

Night Job by Karen Hesse, illustrated by G. Brian Karas (9/11/18, Candlewick Press)
I also reviewed Night Job previously, but again wanted to see what the girls thought. Bo Peep has been really interested in this one from the start (and she gave it 3 stars), but Miss Muffet went from refusing to hear it at all to an "okay" 2-star rating. Miss Muffet did react strongly to the ending, which is a lovely dream sequence, but I think Bo Peep liked it for the same reason I would have as a kid: it shows the inner workings of an everyday place during its off hours.

City by Ingela P. Arrhenius (9/18/18, Candlewick Studio)
This is my favorite book in this post. It's enormous, filled with beautifully colorful illustrations of all aspects of a city. It reminds me of all the Richard Scarry word books, but with huge pictures instead of little ones. Even the endpapers are reminiscent of that format, as they identify each object and person who appears in the text with the correct label. Miss Muffet was just not that interested in this book, and she started out with a 1-star rating, then later asked me to increase it to 2. She said her baby doll didn't like the "unsafe things like the subway" but only because "she will never get to go there." Bo Peep didn't have much to say about why she did like it, but I think part of the reason for her 3-star rating is that there are so few words, she can enjoy the book independently without any interference from her parents or sister.

Finally, I just have to mention one more book that Little Miss Muffet has absolutely adored: My First Wild Activity Book, published by Silver Dolphin Press. It came out in the spring, but she didn't really look at it much until the week of our move in August when she needed to be kept busy for long stretches of time while we dealt with logistics. The book is organized really well, with sections for each of seven different habitats, and there are a variety of activities for exploring the animals that live in each one. I finally found where she has been keeping the book the other day, and I was so pleased to see it was almost complete and that she had done such a thorough job. There are still some activities left to do that require grown-up help, so it seems like we'll even get a bit more out of it yet. Miss Muffet is really big on activity books, and this one has been a favorite.