The RAHM Report for 1/15/18

What My Kids Are Reading

See yesterday's Read-at-Home Kids Report for our current lunchtime read-aloud and my two-year-old's favorite concept books.

What I Finished Reading

Last week was Bout of Books week, so I did a decent amount of reading. This is probably the fewest number of books I have ever finished for a single Bout of Books, but I still feel good about it.

• The 18th Emergency by Betsy Byars
  I think this is my least favorite Betsy Byars book so far. There just wasn't enough meat to it. Review forthcoming here on the blog.
• The Cartoonist by Betsy Byars
  This was not as good as Byars's best books but it was definitely more in line with my expectations than The 18th Emergency. Review also coming soon to the blog.  
• Clementine by Betsy Byars
  This is Betsy Byars's first book, and I had never heard of it until I decided to read all of her books this year. It's about a boy and his toy dragon, and their conversations and adventures. I'll be reviewing it soon and probably reading it to my four-year-old and two-year-old as well.
• Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
  This was a bit tedious, but I ended up giving it 3 stars. Review coming soon on the blog.
• By Your Side by Kasie West
  This looked like it was going to be a wacky little romance novel about two teens with opposite personalities having to tough it out together when they are locked in the library for a weekend. But that was only the first half of the story, and the shift toward something deeper was very rewarding. And thankfully, there was no teen sex in this book! I'll be looking for more by this author. My review is on Goodreads.
• My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick
  This was really well-written and had surprising depth for appearing on the surface to be just a light romance. The sexual content makes me uncomfortable with the idea of actual teens reading the book, but are teens even the real audience for YA anymore? Either way, I skimmed the sexual parts and really enjoyed the character development otherwise. My review is on Goodreads.
• Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs
  This book has very mixed reviews on Goodreads, but I really liked it. The insights into Tempe's past and the turmoil in her relationship with Ryan provided very good subplots that almost kept me more interested than the mystery itself. I reviewed this book on Goodreads.

What I'm Currently Reading

• The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
  I have fewer than 50 pages left in this. I've taken quite a few notes, and I'm looking forward to book club on Thursday.
• The Boy Most Likely To by Huntley Fitzpatrick
  This is a companion novel to My Life Next Door, starring some of the minor characters from that book. I'm barely into it yet, but the voices are really strong and I'm glad to be able to spend more time in this universe. 
• To All The Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han
  I've never read anything by Jenny Han so I decided to give her a shot while I'm apparently on a YA kick.
• Bookman Dead Style by Paige Shelton
  I keep meaning to read a chapter of this before bed, and then it doesn't happen. I'm hoping to fix that this week and finish the book.  
• Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs
  I have this checked out from Open Library and I'm planning to zip right through it. I'm just in the mood for Reichs's writing style right now. 

Challenge Progress

 

I feel like people are going to think I'm cheating or something because I'm making such good progress on these challenges. But it's really only because of Bout of Books that I am so on top of things right out of the gate. I expect my progress to slow down, especially as I start reading books whose titles begin with the same letter.

• For the A to Z Challenge, I have crossed off letter C for The Cartoonist and Letter P  for Password to Larkspur Lane. 
• Password to Larkspur Lane is also my 1933 read for the Family Tree Challenge, and it counts also for Craving for Cozies and Old School Kidlit. 
• The 18th Emergency, The Cartoonist, and Clementine also count for Old School Kidlit, as well as for the Author Love challenge.. 
• Bones to Ashes fulfilled letter B for the Alphabet Soup challenge, and it also counts toward Cloak and Dagger. 
• By Your Side and My Life Next Door were both ebooks borrowed from the library, so they count toward the Library Love Challenge.
• Finally, for the Writing Reviews challenge I posted four reviews this week: Amahl and the Night Visitors, My Life Next Door, Bones to Ashes, and By Your Side.

I'll be linking up today with Unleashing Readers/Teach Mentor Texts and Book Date for It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

The RAHK Report for 1/14/18

Here are the highlights of what the girls have been enjoying this week: 

• The Wonderful Farm by Marcel Aymé, illustrated by Maurice Sendak
  We have started reading this, the first children's book Maurice Sendak ever illustrated, at lunch, now that we have finished The Racketty-Packetty House. It's a bit wordy for Bo Peep (2 years, 3 months), and the chapters are a bit long even for Miss Muffet (4 years, 1 month), but I'm dividing each chapter into three or four smaller sections and that's working fine so far. I'm not crazy about talking animal stories, but the introduction to the book explains how that works in the universe of this story and that makes it more palatable. The girls, of course, have no problem with talking animals and are enjoying meeting the different animals as their stories unfold.
• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  Having finished Betsy's Little Star, Miss Muffet has moved on to her second chapter book, Little House on the Prairie. (She heard Little House in the Big Woods  as a read-aloud.) She reads a chapter aloud to my husband in the evenings using the read-aloud edition of the book, and he follows along in The Little House Treasury to make sure she's not skipping words and that she understand what she reads. This book is probably a little bit above her current level, so it's giving her a bit of a challenge while also increasing her stamina for reading longer passages and introducing new vocabulary.
• Hill of Fire by Thomas P. Lewis, illustrated by Joan Sandin
  Miss Muffet has developed an interest in volcanoes, so she read this easy reader (which is probably right on her reading level) about a volcano eruption in Mexico, and then she followed it up with some YouTube videos. She was happy to have the reassurance that there are no volcanoes in Maryland, but other than that, she did not seem especially upset about volcanoes. I think her interest is primarily scientific. 
• "Some One" by Walter de la Mare, from Listen Children Listen by Myra Cohn Livingston
  Miss Muffet successfully memorized "Holding Hands" by Lenore M. Link and has been assigned a new one: Some One by Walter de la Mare. She's already memorized a few lines so I don't think it will be long before it's mastered. 

• A Winter Day by Douglas Florian
  Bo Peep has been requesting this book over and over again. Though she likes the story itself, she is more enamored of the author's self-portrait that accompanies his biography on the jacket flap. Besides the jacket flap, her favorite page is the one where the family eats pancakes. "I eat pancakes also!" she says. 
• Discovering Trees by Douglas Florian
  Both Miss Muffet and Bo Peep have been looking at this book a lot, but I think they are mainly looking at the pictures. Miss Muffet has loved reading the book with me in the past, but Bo Peep would rather "read" it to Jumping Joan (2.5 months) than have me read the text. Attempting to read this with her did remind me, though, that I want to make more of an effort to introduce nonfiction to her. Jim Arnosky will probably be the author with whom I start.
• Alphaprints: Colors by Roger Priddy
• Alphaprints: 123 by Roger Priddy
• Jane Foster's ABC
  Bo Peep has started showing more of an interest in concept books, so we have been looking at these old favorites, often while she sits on the potty (another skill we'll be working on mastering soon!) She has pretty much mastered her colors, and she is enjoying counting up to 10 and slowly learning how to count items using one-to-one correspondence. Miss Muffet is also more than happy to review any of these concepts with Bo Peep, whether she wants help or not.

Book Review: Amahl and the Night Visitors adapted by Frances Frost, illustrated by Roger Duvoisin (1952)

Amahl, a poor shepherd boy who uses a crutch to walk, has an active imagination, and he has often told fibs to his mother, telling her of fanciful things he claims to have seen or heard. One night, though, when he sees a huge bright star in the sky, followed by three kings knocking at his own front door, his mother has no choice but to believe him. As the kings speak of the Child to whom they wish to bring beautiful gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Amahl's mother laments the fact that no one brings such precious items to her own child. Meanwhile, Amahl asks nosy questions and wonders whether such powerful kings might have a cure for the condition which cripples him and keeps the family poor.

This book is a narrative adaptation of Gian Carlo Menotti's 1951 opera, which I first learned about by watching the 1978 film in music class when I was in elementary school. Using all the original dialogue from the opera and her own beautifully written descriptions of the characters' actions, Frances Frost retells the story of Amahl and the three kings who visit his home, giving young readers a chance to experience the story either instead of or in preparation for seeing the opera. Illustrations by two-time Caldecott Medalist Roger Duvoisin supplement the text with full-color spreads and black-and-white line drawings depicting key scenes.

Leading up to this past Sunday's Feast of the Epiphany, my four-year-old daughter and I  read the book and watched the 1978 film together. I found the film on YouTube divided into 5 parts, so I also divided the book accordingly, and we read and watched a small section each day of the week. Because the show is only an hour, and it's in English, it's really a perfect first opera for a preschooler, and this book made it even more accessible. Reading each scene ahead of watching it helped my daughter understand what was happening and what to anticipate,  and if she had a question after the fact, it was easy to find that spot in the dialogue without having to watch and re-watch the YouTube videos.

Though the music is an integral part of appreciating this story, the lyrics and plot are almost as important, and this book is about as a perfect a non-musical adaptation of the opera as one could hope to find. I plan to make reading and watching Amahl and The Night Visitors a yearly Epiphany tradition in my family, and I would encourage other Christian moms to do the same!

The RAHM Report for 1/8/18

What My Kids Are Reading

Friday's RAHK Report covers my four-year-old's recent enjoyment of Amahl and the Night Visitors and Carolyn Haywood, my two-year-old's love for Richard Scarry, and the baby's new indestructible book.

What I Finished Reading

• The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
  I started this when I learned about #TheDarkisReading on Twitter, and I really loved it. My review, which focuses a lot on the Christian themes I see in the book, and on the character of Hawkin in particular will publish to the blog tomorrow (Tuesday).
• The Box of Delights by John Masefield
  My husband recommended this book to me, and though it had a lot in common with The Dark is Rising, I found it more difficult to follow. My review is not yet scheduled, but I expect it to be in a week or two. 
• Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky
  I had mixed feelings about my first adult book of the year. My review is on Goodreads. 

What I'm Currently Reading 

• The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
  I had this book out of the library for six weeks total, and never made it past the Introduction. Now it's gone back to the library and I'm about a third of the way through the first edition of the book, which I found on Open Library. It's really good, and I'm looking forward to my book club's discussion coming up in mid-January. 
• By Your Side by Kasie West
  I was in the mood for something light and quick to balance out the longer and more demanding books I've been reading to start the year. I've been meaning to try Kasie West, and when I saw that this book was about two teens being stuck in a library together, I was sold. I'm approaching the halfway point, and so far I'm a fan. There has already been an unexpected turn of events that took me totally by surprise and I'm eager to see how all the threads of the story are resolved. 
• Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs
  I have been carrying this around all week, but have only read a few chapters. So far I am excited to learn more about Tempe's childhood and I'm so curious as to how her lost childhood friend will figure into the plot. 
• Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
  I'm reading this for the Family Tree Challenge, where the goal is to read books published in the year of family members' births. There wasn't much published in 1933 (when my grandma was born) that interested me, but then I found this on OpenLibrary and decided it was perfect. I've only just started it, but I'm pretty sure I will like it more than the original Hardy Boys book I read this fall. 

Challenge Progress

I haven't made an official post about all the challenges I'm doing yet (it's coming next week), but I have individual posts for each one linked in the sidebar. This week, I have already made some progress on a few of them:

• For the A to Z Reading Challenge, I've covered A (Amahl and the Night Visitors), B (The Box of Delights), and D (The Dark is Rising). These same three books are my first three reads for Old School Kidlit 2018. 
• For the Alphabet Soup Challenge, I completed I (Indemnity Only). Indemnity Only is also my first book for the Cloak and Dagger Challenge, the Library Love Challenge, the Family Tree Challenge (1982, the year of my own birth!), and the Writing Reviews challenge 
• I've also crossed three items off the checklist for the Linz the Bookworm Challenge: a book under 300 pages (The Box of Delights), a book that takes place around a holiday (The Dark is Rising), and A children's book  (Amahl and the Night Visitors). 

Readathons

Finally, I'm participating in two read-a-thons this month. Winter's Respite is new to me, and it runs for the entire month. Bout of Books, which I participate in every time it is offered, starts tomorrow and runs all week. For the first time, I've decided to post my Bout of Books progress to Twitter instead of making a daily blog post. I'll summarize what I read for the readathon in next Monday's post!

I'll be linking up today with Unleashing Readers/Teach Mentor Texts and Book Date for It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

The RAHK Report for 1/5/18

For the past several weeks, with our Christmas tree taking up most of the living room, the girls have not had access to the usual baskets of books that are typically available when that space is free. They have had access to one basket, which was filled with Christmas books and has now been filled with our books about the Epiphany and our winter books. So the reading lists for all three are a bit shorter than usual. But here is what everybody is currently enjoying.

Family Read-Alouds

• New Year's Day by Aliki
  We read this just ahead of the new year. It's a good overview of how (and when) different cultures celebrate the new year and a nice introduction to the concept of a new year in general. I also love the illustrations. 
• The Racketty-Packetty House by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  I read and reviewed this book last year, and kept it in mind when I was compiling my mental list of short chapter book read-alouds of interest to preschoolers. This isn't divided into chapters, but the way it is formatted and illustrated lends itself to good natural stopping points, so we've been doing one little section each day. So far, the book has prompted Miss Muffet to ask, "Does Baby Robin come alive when I'm not looking?" and "If I hide, could I see the dolls moving?" I figure we'll read it again in a few years so she can appreciate the message more deeply. 

Little Miss Muffet (4 years, 1 month)

• Amahl and the Night Visitors, adapted by Frances Frost, illustrated by Roger Duvoisin
  Miss Muffet is listening to me read this book, and also watching the 1978 film production of the opera on YouTube. We read a little and then watch a little. If our day goes according to plan, we'll be finishing today. I don't think she understands every single thing that happens, but since I want to make this a bit of an Epiphany tradition, I think this was a good year to start it. 
• Betsy's Little Star by Carolyn Haywood
  This was one of my favorite books as a kid, and my husband recently found a hardcover at a used booksale. At first, Miss Muffet didn't want to read it because it "looks like a grown-up book" but then she found out that Star, the main character, is four, and suddenly she was hooked. She's more than halfway through the book now, and she can retell every moment of the story down to the tiniest detail. I'm thrilled that she likes Haywood, because we have bought quite a few of her books.

Miss Muffet has also been working on memorizing and reciting poems. Her current poem is Holding Hands by Lenore M. Link, which we found in both Favorite Poems Old and New by Helen Ferris and The Random House Book of Poetry.

Little Bo Peep (2 years, 3 months)

Bo Peep occasionally has the attention span to sit for a whole stack of stories, but not lately. Lots of books she abandons at the halfway point, either to "read" on her own or to go and terrorize one of her sisters. I have been able to get her to listen to Prayer for a Child by Rachel Field a handful of times at bedtime, and she also happily flips through certain titles on her own, including Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever (she loves to hold all the pages in her hand and then flip until her hand is empty), Secrets of Winter: A Shine-a-Light Book (any excuse to hold a flashlight!), and The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (which is wordless, so she looks at the picture while singing, for some reason, The Huron Carol.)

Little Jumping Joan (2.5 months)

Finally, my littlest reader received the Indestructible book version of Hey Diddle Diddle for Christmas, which she seems to like. I'm still not doing a whole lot of reading with her because she's not ready to look at pictures for too long, but we have been reciting a ton of nursery rhymes and she is really attentive to me when she suddenly hears me speaking in rhythm and rhyme.

The 10 Best Adult Authors I Discovered in 2017

This past year, 2017, was the first year since I started blogging that I relaxed my reading schedule a little bit to scale back the number of new kids' books I was reading and to make room for more adult books. I expected to read just a handful, so I'm really surprised that the final total was nearly 70! Of those books, titles by the following new-to-me authors proved to be my favorites. (I will be linking up this post for today's Top Ten Tuesday topic, Top Ten New-To-Me Authors I Read In 2017.)

James Herriot

I read and re-read The Christmas Day Kitten as a kid, so I did know a little bit about James Herriot prior to this year, but it wasn't until I read All Creatures Great and Small that I realized how funny he is, and that his anecdotes about his life as a young veterinarian are more than a series of dead dog stories.

Shirley Jackson

I read "The Lottery" when I was in high school and have always associated Jackson with creepy short stories and nothing else. This past year, though, I read her parenting memoirs and discovered her deadpan, self-deprecating sense of humor. I wish she lived next door to me so we could be mom friends.

Louise Penny

I have seen Penny's books in bookstores and libraries and on Goodreads but didn't realize she wrote mysteries until I happened to see some reviews of her newest book on some blogs and social media pages that I frequent. Once I knew she was a mystery writer, I had to give her a try, and it turns out that her books are deeply descriptive and beautifully written in addition to having compelling plots and characters.

Julie Mulhern

I kept seeing posts about this author's Country Club Mystery series in the Save Our Cozies Facebook group. At first I was worried the books would not be as well-put-together as the covers, which I love, but I took a chance and was not disappointed. The books look good and are well-written too! I also love that they are set in the '70s and reference a lot of pop culture from the time period.

Charlaine Harris

I didn't know that Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse series that inspired True Blood)  had written any non-supernatural mysteries until I kept seeing Candace Cameron Bure's Instagram posts about the Aurora Teagarden mystery movies. Once I realized these films were based on a series of reality-based mysteries I was hooked. The titles in this series are a little uneven in terms of quality, but my love for Roe as a character keeps me reading even the less-good books.

Karen MacInerney

Karen MacInerney is another author whose books I kept seeing mentioned in cozy mystery groups, but her books weren't available in my local libraries, and they're published by an imprint of Amazon, so I worried that maybe they just weren't that good. In the end, though, I borrowed her first Dewberry Farm mystery through inter-library loan, and it wound up being a great, well-plotted murder mystery.

Ann Kidd Taylor

I took a chance on Ann Kidd Taylor's first novel, Shark Club, because it sounded like a different kind of story for me - not quite a mystery, not quite a romance, but a more mainstream novel with hints of both of those genres, along with an interesting look at marine biology. Its family connections and believable friendship between the protagonist and her ex-boyfriend's little girl really hit a sweet spot for me, and I'm hoping to read more from this author in the future.

Mary Higgins Clark

I'm not sure how I made it to age 35 without reading anything at all by Mary Higgins Clark, but I finally got around to it this Fall and read her first book, Where Are the Children? This was a little bit more of a thriller than the other mysteries I've been reading but it was one of only a few adult books that I gave a five-star rating this year.

Julie Hyzy

I spent the year collecting Hyzy's White House Chef mysteries at used book sales. Each book is centered on the unlikely crime-solving adventures of  the White House's chief chef, whose boyfriend is in the secret service. I don't have all the books yet, but I really love the author's writing style and all the references to places I have been in DC.

Paige Shelton

The first time I heard them, I loved the titles for this author's Dangerous Type mysteries (To Helvetica and Back, Bookman Dead Style, and Comic Sans Murder.) I was a little skeptical of how well-written they would be, since some of these niche-centered cozy mysteries tend to be tedious, but I was pleasantly surprised by the appealing characters and not-too-easy-to-solve mysteries. I haven't tried her other series (yet), but this one is a keeper.

The RAHM Report for 1/1/18

After adding in all the new books my kids got for Christmas that I have read with them this week, the final count of books I read in 2017 is 824. Here are the books I read during these last two weeks of the year.

Finished Reading

• Waylon! Even More Awesome by Sara Pennypacker
  I liked this about as well as the first Waylon book, but I was puzzled as to why the dog described as ugly in the text looks so generically cute in the illustrations. I enjoyed the cameo appearances by Clementine, even though they were not all necessary to the plot.  
• Far Out the Long Canal by Meindert DeJong
  This was lovely. I posted my review on Thursday.
• Absolutely Alfie and the Furry, Purry Secret by Sally Warner
• Absolutely Alfie and the First Week Friends by Sally Warner
  These two books are well-written, just like the Ellray Jakes series, but I did not care for the artwork. I'm also kind of sick of the "kid wants pet, parent says no, kid secretly houses pet" storyline even if the story surrounding it was written in an engaging way.
• Catwings by Ursula K. LeGuin
  I zipped through this one pretty quickly and have decided to put it on my read-aloud list for the girls this winter. The language is lovely and will be a pleasure to read aloud.
• The Greatest Gift by Kallie George
  This second book of the Heartwood Hotel series is every bit as sweet and gentle as the first. I especially love the way the hotel handles hibernation. I'm reminded a lot of Rabbit Hill when I read these books, except that there are no humans in George's books. 

• Winter Stroll by Elin Hilderbrand
• Winter Storms by Elin Hilderbrand
  This series is not even that good, but I can't seem to quit the Quinn family. The second book (Stroll) was a lot better than the third (Storms), but both had a lot of melodrama in them, and both have some inaccuracies about Catholicism that irritated me. There is a fourth book, but I'm not sure yet whether I will jump right into it. I reviewed Winter Stroll on Goodreads.
• Killer Jam by Karen MacInerney
  It took me forever to actually find a copy of this book, and I was worried it wouldn't be worth the wait, but it really was! Great characters, interesting setting, complex mystery. I'll be reading the rest of the Dewberry Farm series for sure.
• Three Bedrooms, One Corpse by Charlaine Harris
  I am not crazy about Roe's new love interest in this book (I was all about the crime writer, Robin Crusoe), but the mystery was decent. I look forward to the next one, about the old house Roe is interested in buying.
• A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
  I feel like this series really hit its stride in this fourth book, set away from Three Pines, but involving certain favorite residents. This was my last 2017 read and I went out on a high note.

Currently Reading 

• The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
  My book club is discussing this in mid-January, but my copy is due at the library at the end of this week, so I'm going to have to finish it. I have only read the Introduction, and I already want to highlight every other line!
• The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
  I decided spur-of-the-moment to start reading this for #TheDarkisReading on Twitter. I'm a bit behind where the group is right now, but will catch up by Wednesday when they reconvene.  

I'll be linking up today with Unleashing Readers/Teach Mentor Texts and Book Date for It's Monday! What Are You Reading?