Nightstand, 2/24/14

They are shuffled a bit, but yes, this is the same stack as last week. Hope to finish up four of them this week. We'll see.

Books Read, Week of 2/17/14

Hooray! Finished reading #4 in the Warriors Cats series aloud to the kids! I noticed that it takes us a full month to get through one of these books together, so that means we'll be ready to read something new by May... but they are both loving them, so I will enjoy the (long!) process of doing this first set of books with them.

Felix brought Dewey: There's a Cat in the Library! home from school last week, and was very excited to read it to me after reading it on his own. He usually isn't very interested in sharing his school library books; they are generally picture books, and I think he just reads them on his own once and then is done with them. My theory is that this one included one of his current loves (cats!) and one of Mom's loves (libraries!), and so he wanted to enjoy it with me.

Birthday Books

My parents always get me books for my birthday, specifically some of the ALA award winners and honor books. The announcement for these awards comes in late January, perfect timing for my mid-February birthday. They started by getting me the Newbery and Caldecott winners each year, thinking they'd be fun for me to collect. Now they've expanded to picking out even more for me; we have a discussion about the books after the winners are announced, and they pay close attention to the ones that I sound most interested in and excited about. I never know exactly which ones they will choose, which makes it a lot of fun.

Last fall, my mom gave me this year's Newbery winner, Flora and Ulysses. I can't wait to read it with my kids (once we're done with this first Warriors cats series of six books)! Above, you can see the beautiful packages I picked up at our local bookstore; I think they look forward to the order as much as I do! Aren't they lovely? Okay, ready for the Big Reveal? And the winners are...

Knock Knock: My Dad's Dream for Me

by Daniel Beaty, illustrated by Bryan Collier

Winner of the Coretta Scott King (Illustrator) Book Award

Niño Wrestles the World

written and illustrated by Yuyi Morales

Winner of the Pura Belpré (Illustrator) Award

P.S. Be Eleven

by Rita Williams-Garcia

Winner of the Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

by Meg Medina

Winner of the Pura Belpré (Author) Award

Handbook for Dragon Slayers

by Merrie Haskell

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award

Midwinterblood

by Marcus Sedgwick

Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award

And coming soon:

Locomotive

written and illustrated by Brian Floca

Winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal

Nightstand, 2/17/14

Here it is! Very similar to last week's stack, with a few removed. Hoping there will be more movement next week, but many of these will probably remain for at least a couple more weeks.

Books Read, Week of 2/10/14

Three books completed last week:

I've been looking through Mark Bittman's Food Matters for awhile, and finally decided to compile a list of recipes I'd like to try, and then call it "read." (The first half of the book explains why and how we can and should start eating more consciously and responsibly; the second half is the practical application of the book, with lots of wonderful recipes.)

Reading more poetry is one of my goals for 2014. I started with this book of love poems in honor of February holidays: Valentine's Day, of course, and our anniversary. This book was a wedding gift.

Felix and I finished the first Humphrey book! I had a feeling he'd love these, and indeed, when we finished the last chapter, he suggested, "Let's start the next one now!"

Books on My Nightstand, 2/10/14

I'm ambitious this week. I've been looking forward to so many of these! I know I will finish at least two of them, but I'd like to get through a third, and start some of those other goodies.

I read Eleanor & Park last fall before meeting Rainbow Rowell; she's coming again later this month, so now I'm re-reading it by listening to the audiobook, which won an Odyssey Award honor this year. You can read Rowell's comments about it here.

And look at those other lovelies: Life of Pi (a re-read for me; Skye is reading it in school, and I want to discuss with her), Persuasion (this will conclude my reading of Austen's six major novels), Few Eggs and No Oranges (gorgeous Persephone edition), Daily Rituals (about artists' creative routines), and Fangirl (hopefully before Rowell's visit). Their color schemes all look beautiful together, too, don't they?

Time for some reading....

Books Read, Week of 2/3/14

I did it. I finished reading the whole Divergent series. Am I glad I did? Well, my curiosity is satisfied, and I can now discuss them with my friend who lent them to me as well as the teens I work with at the library and in our mother-daughter book club.

I finally finished The Perfect Storm, which I started last fall when Skye was reading it for school. I really liked it at first, but then got bored with the details of ships and navigation and such.

Turtle in Paradise: My favorite in this stack. Loved it. I can see why it won a Newbery Honor, and was one of this year's Maud Hart Lovelace award nominees.

Kids and I read these Valentines books in honor of the holiday coming up -- one of my favorites. We'd never read A Village Full of Valentines before, and it was pretty cute. I'm not sure how long it's been in our collection, but I'm glad we got to it. The Valentine Holiday Grab Bag book has inspired Skye to want to try making fortune cookies to give her class on Friday. We'll see how that works out!

Books on My Nightstand, 2/3/14

Lots of the same ones as last week. I expect to finish at least two of these this week, and I'm hoping to finish at least four of them.

Looking forward to our mother-daughter book club discussion about Divergent this weekend. I'd love to finish the whole trilogy by then, as I think at least a couple of the girls have read them all. Skye says she's not interested in reading the others, but will happily hear what happens next once she's done with the first.

Book Read, Week of 1/27/14

Just one this week.  Here it is!  When we got done, Felix said, "Let's choose another book now. Where's the next Littles book?" I had to break the news that I only have four of these. I'll have to search for more!