What we're reading... (part 1)

I've often wanted to blog about our homeschool lives. It took me a while to get back into the swing of things, and it seems like we're going through another busy streak right now. We might be behind in Writing Assignments, there may be a few lessons worth of math problems that I need to check, and somewhere there's a list of history readings that keep getting pushed off to another day. Thankfully, the kids love to share our read-aloud times and enjoy reading on their own.

Lauren enjoys picking out her own books in the library. She can find the Berenstein Bears shelf and the Froggy shelf all by herself. I'm trying to broaden her interests and check-out a few of my own picture book favorites every time we go to the library. I recently remembered a listing of 100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know, collected by the New York City Public Library. At first glance, I'm familiar with at least half of them, and Lauren has heard maybe a third of them. My goal is to work our way through all of the them before Christmas.

Brennan still loves listening to audio books. I can hear a Boxcar Children mystery in the background tonight; he always has something on when he goes to bed at night. His all-time favorite author is probably Andrew Clements, author of Frindle and A Week in the Woods. He also enjoyed reading through the Jack Stalwart series of books by Elizabeth Singer Hunt. I consider it a huge accomplishment that he usually has at least one book tucked into a bag with his DS when we are out for the day. His iPod usually has several audio books on it too.

Addison reads so much that I have trouble keeping up. It's a big strange knowing that she's as avid a reader as I am, but that we have completely different styles. I like realistic fiction, and she prefers fantasy books. Her favorite series lately is Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer, and I've seen a lot of wizarding books around here too. All of our Harry Potter books are well-loved, and I think she's searching for more that are comparable.

The last really great book that I read was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It was quite an unusual concept -- an entire book composed of the letters amongst the main characters. The author pulled it off quite well, and I was engrossed in the story of a British island occupied by the Germans during World War II. I raved about it to some of my friends on Facebook, but I inadvertently forgot to put a "chick-lit" warning on my review. I still highly recommend it.