Tag: books

Books – Good and Not So Good

I got Anya a bunch of books to read during her remote learning experience. The school didn’t provide anything for the first few weeks, and I didn’t have much hope for the curriculum through the remainder of the year. While we have a number of books for younger kids, I’d been relying on library books. An approach which obviously wouldn’t work. And Anya does not seem to like eBooks — she’ll read them if she has to, but she’s not carrying her tablet for the Kindle app (my suspicion is that there are more fun options on the tablet. She’d rather watch Spirit on Netflix than read a book. But if she cannot watch more shows, reading and playing are great activities … so “read on your tablet” is a non-starter). So she’d keep reading when the library and school were no longer options, she needed her own library. Figured I’d keep track of the books Anya has been enjoying (and not enjoying). One thing I’ve noticed is that she’ll get immersed into a particular book or series for a time, then moves on to a new series. The first chapter books I read her were from the Magic Treehouse series — and she has a few of those books on her shelf. But they’re more nostalgic “ooh, I remember when you read me this” than current fav’s. I’ve color coded Anya’s Library so old favorites are grayed and current favs are purple.

She loved the Spirit series, but that was completely expected once I finally convinced her that chapter books aren’t boring. She’s loved the Ada Lace series (and is re-reading them repeatedly, plus anxiously awaiting the publication of another), the two Alien Math books,  as well as Chicken Squad (there are a bunch in the series, and I’d only purchased the one … just ordered two more for the summer). She loved the Mouse and the Motorcycle, and I didn’t even realize that was part of a series.

On the non-fiction side, she’s loved the programming books (especially the one with Python since both Scott and I program in Python) and Can You Crack The Code (she needed help to use the Arnold cipher on the last challenge, but she figured out the trick to turn the random set of words that made no sense into an actual message). And she loved the Kid’s Guide to Keeping Chickens (and has a few projects lined up for later this summer, when our chickens arrive).

She’s started the first book from the Genius Factor series, but hasn’t been sucked into it. It’s something she’ll finish reading eventually (halfway because I keep asking her how you do catch an invisible cat). Kind of surprisingly, since we do a lot of ‘homesteading stuff’, she hasn’t been into the Little House series. She hasn’t started the Time Twister series, although I think that’s one she’ll like once she picks it up. She didn’t like the Horse Diaries series, nor did she get into the history of Wild Horse Annie (she dressed up as Velma Bronn Johnston when they had a ‘dress up like a historic figure’ day at school).

Book Outlet has a referral – 10$ off your first order of 25$ or more (and I get a bonus 10$) — the books have a little black mark along one edge, but we’ve not had any damage or funky smells. And the prices are outstanding. I got another 20 books for just under 80$ so she’ll have plenty to read this summer.

School’s Out — Books

Well … it doesn’t look like school is going to resume until, possibly, August. Maybe not even then. Our district’s go at distance learning has been quite lacking — they’ve basically taken three weeks off to (hopefully) sort out some content to complete the year. I wanted to get Anya a bunch of books — she doesn’t enjoy e-books in spite of the fact we’ve got an endless supply from the local libraries. She likes physical books. I do not like blowing fifteen or twenty bucks on a book … so that’s not going to work out well 🙂

I remembered Book Outlet, where I got her Lucy and Andy books (they have a referral program – 10$ off your first order of 25$ or more and I get a bonus 10$) — I went through their entire collection of not-yet-teenager books and ordered 43 books for about 150$. That’s about 3.50$ per book, mostly hard covers. There are some reference books, drawing instruction books, science experiments, maker ideas, programming books, and a lot of fiction books to try out. I even found a book about urban animal rescue — she’s rather enticed with the idea of being a vet and rescuing wild animals. This will be a great supplement to whatever the school puts together for the remainder of the year. (I also picked up a 2nd and 3rd grade curriculum — additional work for the remainder of this year and something for the summer).

Chapter books are (not) boring

Anya wouldn’t read chapter books. Not even one about Spirit, and she’d almost eat mushrooms if they had Spirit on them. The books, she would tell me, are boring. Which is odd since (1) she’s not read it … so how would she know it is boring!?! and (2) it’s Spirit. She’ll watch the same episode of Spirit a dozen times without finding it boring, how in the world is a book based on the show prejudged as boring?

The funniest thing, though, is the ’emerging reader’ Spirit book? She tore through that. It was the longer chapter book format she objected to. Turns out the elementary school wouldn’t let K kids take out chapter books because they were too long/involved/hard, and the way they communicated this got translated to “chapter books are boring and hard” in my daughter’s head. We had a bunch of free books available from this Kellogg’s Feeding Reading promotion — had to use them by November, so I randomly picked a bunch of books from their site. One of which was this Lucy and Andy Neanderthal graphic novel. She absolutely loved the thing — read it over and over. And asked for the other two books in the series. Totally! Except I didn’t want to pay 15$ for the hard cover book 2 or 3. A quick search yielded an outlet site that had the hard cover books for 3$ each. Book Outlet has a referral – 10$ off your first order of 25$ or more (and I get a bonus 10$, which does not negate the fact they’ve got awesome prices) … I got a few books for myself to hit the ‘free shipping’ level. Anya has been reading the three Neanderthal books in cycle since they’ve arrived.

Mud Puddle

Robert Munsch’s book Mud Puddle is a really cute book, until the end. Neither Anya nor I like that she hurts the playful mud monster. So we take turns making up new endings – the mud puddle runs away, and finds an Anya. And jumps on her head. Her mom washes her off then dresses her in dingy old clothes and sends her back outside. The mud puddle jumps on her head, she jumps on the mud puddle’s head, her dog jumps on both of their heads. Then Anya picks up her dog and the mud puddle wraps himself around them both in a BIG hug.