This has been, for personal reasons, the summer of homeschool books. Those personal reasons include me starting to homeschool my fourth-grade son. This is not the first or last book that I will review for that reason, and in fact, I forsee many homeschool-related reviews in our future here at The Starving Artist. Many of…
If I said it once… okay, so I said it once. But here it is again: I am going to be spending the majority of my summer building a curriculum for my new homeschooler and reading about homeschooling. (Who am I kidding? I’m also still reading novels and even some short stories.) The first book…
The last four years have seen a lot of change in my life. Four years ago, my husband graduated from school and changed careers, and my last child at home went off to kindergarten. I started writing full-time and published a novel within nine months. Two years ago, we made the decision to take said-son…
I can hardly remember how this book got added to my TBR (it had something to do with Cold Comfort Farm), but I don’t think it would make most “best” lists out there. On the other hand, it is pretty solid for a—what?—YA romance? Classic YA? YA before YA existed? It transcends some of the…
In my daughter’s sixth grade class for the recent semester, the kids had to read one of four selections that their teacher presented. My daughter did the first read and turned in the assignment, then decided to read the other three before the semester was through. She has always said this teacher had a great…
There won’t be a lot to say here, as most of this has been said elsewhere. Plus, it’s pretty straight-forward. Eric Carle is a writer and illustrator of children’s books, made famous by his simple, repetitive words and his pioneering work in collage illustration. He takes all his books from concept to final form, himself.…
Whew! Do I have a lot to say about this Netflix original series. (Just ask my husband, who really couldn’t care less, bless his heart.) A lot of people have a lot to say about this series. Because, let’s face it, Anne of Green Gables has been a VERY popular book(s) for something like a…
I have been trying to review some picture books before my kids (and nephews and niece) get past the age of reading them. So here we are at my son’s favorite (not counting the Peek-a-Who board book when he was a baby). This series remains among his favorite picture books to read, and I will…
I bumped the Miss Peregrine series up on my TBR for two very good reasons. First, Tim Burton was working on the movie. I lurve Tim Burton and I see all the movies he makes. Second, I have a friend who was high school buddies with Ransom Riggs and who recommended that I read the…
I’ve been pulling the sleek, simple, and colorful copies of the Hoot series by Carl Hiaasen off the shelves in the youth section of bookstores, for a long while. Something about them—including their presence everywhere–said “good book” to me. Perhaps it was the simple titles: Hoot, Chomp, Flush, Scat, and Skink. Perhaps it was those…
The reviews for Jacqueline Davies’ The Lemonade War are mostly good, but after being critical of Island of the Blue Dolphins, I find myself reluctant to call this one how I read it: I liked it. I didn’t know what to expect, really. My daughter had pulled it from the shelf in her classroom, telling…
When my daughter was assigned this book for fifth grade reading, I was happy to read it. I enjoy history and have a special interest in Native American history. I thought this would be an interesting story, even though it is a fictionalized account. Not so much. Besides the real story, itself, I found this…
Jane Goodall, at least when I was growing up, was a household name. Because I am not what I term a “creature person” (although I married one and beget one), I didn’t have any special interest in Goodall’s story. My daughter read My Life with the Chimpazees for fifth grade, and so I—as always—followed suit.…
Frindle, by Andrea Clements, was another one of those third grade reading lists books that I bought for the new school year. In the fall, we were attempting to read the books back and forth, one paragraph at a time, but we have since stopped that. Understandably, partnering with my “low-reading” son, we read through…
So, turns out lists of literary fiction are not that easy to find, unless you are looking for results from a particular year. That, however, is a list that I am not yet making. So I did my best. (Honestly, it’s not the easy to categorize literary fiction, anyhow. I’m pretty sure some of these…
When I saw the charming movie preview for the newest The Little Prince adaptation, I knew it was time to add it to the summer reading list. I like to read a book, timing it with an exciting movie release. Plus, I had been meaning to read The Little Prince for years and years. It’s…
You are about to be introduced to my favorite cookbook author. It is not Bobby Flay. It is not Nigella Lawson, or Julia Child, or Deborah Madison, though I love them all. It is none other than the lately underappreciated Bert Greene. He, my friend, was a real cookbook author. He was born into creativity…
This is a classic. I chose it from a third grade reading list, to read out to my son at bedtime. I had read it—finally, as an adult—maybe fifteen years prior, but had basically forgotten the entire thing. When I started reading, though, the basic feeling came back to me, and I was in the…
I read Walk Two Moons probably fifteen years ago, and I liked it enough that I considered myself a Sharon Creech fan. But despite my intentions to read more of her work, here I am fifteen years later reading my second book out loud to my nine-year-old son. Castle Corona was a title I found…
Let’s first be clear on what this is. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay, by J.K. Rowling is not a novel. It’s not even a play, in the tradition of so many great writers before her. It is, in fact, a screenplay. (There is also a book by almost the exact…
the starving artist 