reading to your children

Little Miss and I have been reading a variety of books lately. Most of them are chapter books that I read to her but recently she’s started reading chapter books to me, which has been fun. I love how she’s starting to put inflection in her voice for the dialogue and I also love how she starts to fall asleep while she’s reading so she’s doing my work for me.

I don’t know if I’ve ever explained that the Paddington books that Little Miss and I read at night are chapter books, not picture books. I didn’t even realize there were picture books of Paddington until I found one at the library last week and realized that what we have is actually a collection of all the picture books of Paddington’s story that are out there.

The Paddington Treasury is one of the books we read earlier in the month and enjoyed, incidentally. I bought it a few years ago and we finally cracked it open. Little Miss read part of it to me.

Other books Little Miss and I read over the last few months and enjoyed included The Imagination Station books, which are produced by Focus on the Family.

So far we’ve read The Imagination Station: Secrets of the Princes’ Tomb and are in the middle of The Imagination Station: Problems in Plymouth and The Imagination Station: Voyage with the Vikings.

I am reading Problems in Plymouth to Little Miss and she is reading Voyage with the Vikings to me.

Last month we read Sarah, Plain and Tall and Skylark by Patricia MacLachlan.

We enjoyed these sweet stories about a woman who answers a mail-order bride ad and goes to live with a family in the Midwest and falls in love with the children but also their father.

We hope to read the remaining three soon.

We also enjoyed Blizzard by John Rocco, which I think Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, mentioned on her blog.

This book was so cute, and the photographs were so creative, especially the middle pages which are two pullout pages that showcase the main character’s journey through the blizzard to get food for his family. The book is based on a true story about the author and a blizzard he experienced as a child in 1978.

Books we picked up at the library or the library book sale to read and will update you on later include:

Boundless Grace by Mary Hoffman and Caroline Binch

Sachiko Means Happiness by Kimiko Sakai

Match Wits with Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of Black Peter and The Gloria Scott by Murray Shaw

Spirit of the West by Jahnna N. Malcom

Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See by Eric Carle

Eat Like A Bear by April Pulley Sayre

Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson

Little Town in the Ozarks by Roger Lea MacBride

Little Miss and I took a trip to the library a couple of weeks ago and she picked out some books for us to read together. I thought I’d share a few from our stack today for her Reading Corner. I took photos of the fronts of the books, but our library puts the barcode right over the titles, which I find terribly annoying as someone who likes to photograph what I’m reading. Silly, I know. I suppose I’ll get over it. Sigh.

Little Miss wanted something “spooky” even though she doesn’t usually like spooky stuff. She said she would read it during the day. So we grabbed a book called simply The Spooky Book by Steve Patschke and illustrated by Matthew McElligott.

It was a very cute book about a boy reading a spooky book that is about a girl reading a spooky book at the same time. When something happens in the book, it happens to the boy too.

It’s a fun book that insists a book can’t scare you while it scares the people reading it. We thought it was very cute.

Next Little Miss picked a book about dragons because she loves dragon stories.

Dragons Are Real by Holly Hatam is a board book probably meant for younger readers and those less discerning about dragons because Little Miss kept correcting the lore within its pages saying “that’s not true,” or “dragons don’t do that” when she disagreed with the declarations made inside it.

Overall we enjoyed the book, however, because the illustrations were very colorful.

I picked out Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang and illustrated by Max Long (brother and sister) and we both ended up really liking it, partly because the illustrations featured extra creatures in the images, hanging out on trees and in leaves, etc.

The story is about a monkey who is grumpy but doesn’t know why and tries his best to be happy for everyone who keeps telling him he needs to be happy.

The message is that sometimes we are grumpy and it’s okay and we don’t have to figure out why we are grumpy. As long as we aren’t mean to others while we are grumpy. That’s not okay.

I placed The Ant and The Grasshopper by Luli Gray and illustrated by Giuliano Ferri on hold as part of our grasshopper unit.

This was a very cute book about an ant who prepared for the winter and a grasshopper who didn’t and how the ant helped the grasshopper and they became friends.

Little Miss has been fascinated with grasshoppers lately, including catching them in the backyard and running to me to show me what she’s caught.