Favorite Books of the Week

Our favorite book of the week is I Can Be Anything by Jerry Spinelli.  This book is so much fun as it follows a young child's thought process about what he wants to be when he grows up.  Should he be a paper-plane folder, puppy-dog holder, mixing bowl licker, or a tin can kicker?  The different job possibilities are all so sweet and fun.  Also, the illustrations by Jimmy Liao are vibrant and the perfect accompaniment to Spinelli's rhyming text.  This is a great book for young children, and the simple text combined with the illustrations also make it a good book for an early reader.

We also read Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman this week.  I have read so much about this book.  Everyone loves it, I love it.  The language is lovely and the art is beautiful.  I thought it was so very sweet and the perfect gift for a girl graduating from high school or for a mother to be.  I read it through twice before reading it to C and R.  I had a feeling they would not care for it, and I was right.  They both expected blueberry girl to be some sort of action heroine.  They were thinking along the lines of Ladybug Girl, I guess.   I love the book.  I love that it is about a baby growing into a woman.  In my mind, the message is perfect, but my children just weren't ready for it.  That's okay; I'm still happy that I read it to them.  We will definitely revisit this book.

C and I finished two chapter books this week.  The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White is about a trumpeter swan named who is born without a voice and tries to overcome this disability by learning to read, write, and play the trumpet.

Catwings Return is the second book in the series by Ursula Leguin.  In this book, two of the winged cats decide to return to their birthplace to see their mother and find a surprise when they get there.

C and I enjoyed both books and we are currently trying to decide on our next chapter book.

At this point, we have decided that our mural of summer books is complete.  I'm not sure if you can tell from this photo (taken in our basement playroom where there is not a lot of natural light), but every petal, every leaf, every butterfly, and every ray of sun displays the title of a book we read over the summer.

We read a lot of books and really enjoyed keeping track of them this way.  I know we forgot to add some books to this mural, and we did not include all of the easy readers that C read, or the books we listened to away from home.  We are thrilled with the final result and look forward to doing this again next summer.

I am linking this to What My Child is Reading at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.