The first thing you’ll want to know about this book—for better or worse—is that it is a novella in poem form. Of course, even if you don’t know it, you’ll notice it the second you open the book. A pleasant free verse type of poetry, it is a painless way to introduce poetry into a…
I am picky about what cookbooks I buy, so my cookbook review should mostly be positive. Deep Run Roots, the much-anticipated book by Vivian Howard, is a hefty, pretty thing with an IACP Cookbook of the Year emblem on it, as well as “New York Times Bestseller” emblazoned across the top. Still in doubt? The cover…
Another month, another read-aloud middle grades novel about nature, pets, and a boy coming of age. After the last few classics with their super sad endings, my son and I were both hoping for Shiloh, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, to be more light-hearted. I wouldn’t call it light-hearted, but I would say you don’t have to…
I was reluctant to read Old Yeller by Fred Gipson to my son. I had never read it, but I knew, just from being an observant American, that it was not going to end well. My son loves books with boys in nature, especially involving animals and coming-of-age, but we had already endured Where the Red…
These two books—The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly—have been sitting on my daughter’s shelf for a while, and I think that she’s just about outgrown them before she even got to read them. Perhaps she’ll come back to them as an adult, because as a grown-up who…
My fifth-grade son has finally started reading novels on his own, and I am very happy to announce that his first, second, third, fourth, and fifth novels are by Roald Dahl. If you didn’t catch it already on the blog somewhere, I am a huge Roald Dahl fan, and so I of course would prefer…
I was looking forward to reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (for us, bound in one volume) out to my son, because I remember having enjoyed them in high school. To this day, one of my very favorite poems is “The Jabberwocky,” from Looking Glass. What I found, unsurprisingly,…
