More on Reading

Two years ago I delved into a bit of nostalgia, remembering with fondness the books I enjoyed as a child: http://heckledtrio.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-memories.html

Many of those books I've come to share with Todd, finding them in the library and bringing them home for him to read. He has enjoyed the Little House series immensely, and even did his first school book report on one of them. The Ramona series also became a favorite of his, in addition to Beverly Cleary's other much-loved series, such as Henry Huggins, Ralph S. Mouse and others.

Yesterday Tabitha posted about what she's currently reading, and that spawned some commentary about what I was currently reading, myself.

Now that Todd is a little older, his grade-appropriate reading is a little more involved. There is more classroom reading, and every month there is a book project to do (not a full-blown book report, thankfully). So I've had to keep up with his reading a lot more than I used to. And in the process, I've discovered some other favorites!

I love anything by Dick King-Smith, author of Babe. He writes a lot of animal stories, and I find that nothing is more entertaining than anthropomorphized animals! In my post 2 years ago, I mentioned The Incredible Journey as a favorite, for much the same reason-- animals!

Todd is currently in the middle of Judy Blume's Fudge series, which I actually read last year, and which I found a good form of "birth control". Just reading about little brother Fudge's crazy antics makes me wonder how his parents (and older brother, whose point of view the story is told from) keep their sanity, and glad that I only have ONE such kid to deal with!

In class, he's reading My Side of the Mountain, which I also decided to pick up and read. And I love it! Why? Because it so perfectly fits the type of story I've always been enchanted by as a kid: the kind where you read minute details about people being resourceful and surviving. It's the main reason I enjoyed The Boxcar Children (which I mentioned in the previous post, as well) when I was little, and why the winter scenes from Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter are among my favorites: lots of details about what they ate, how they scrounged up their food, how they obtained shelter, etc.

I've enjoyed stories meant for older kids, as well, such as John Grisham's Theodore Boone, his attempt to transport his usual courtroom drama into a youth novel. Still a little adult-flavored, in my opinion, but a fascinating read nevertheless. I spied Little Blog on the Prairie in the teen corner of our library, and couldn't resist the wacky-sounding title-- it turned out to be a pretty cute story about a modern-day girl transported back to 1890 as her family attends "Frontier Camp"! And finally, I've started to get into books by Alex Sanchez, his The God Box, the first one I read, being especially good. I hope to expand on his work in a later post.

And finally, I've been able to get some books for free through a website called BookSneeze. The basic premise of this program is that they'll send you a book for free in exchange for your writing an honest review about it-- both on your blog and on a big retailer site, like Amazon. So far I've read and reviewed one book (which I wasn't terribly impressed with), and am in the middle of reading a biography of George Washington Carver. No pressure to write a positive review-- just an honest one. This program is an offshoot of Thomas Nelson Publishers, so the majority of the selection is Christian-themed. And a lot of the books are available only as e-books, so that makes reading a bit cumbersome for me. Still, it's a neat program, and so far I'm enjoying participating in it. Highly recommended if you like reading, and don't mind having to finish a book and write a review about it before you can get your next one :-)

What's on your bookshelf these days?