Are You Sleeping Little One by Hans-Christian Schmidt & Cynthia Vance – An adorable bedtime board book to add to your toddler’s collection: The illustrations are cheerful, sweet & simple – even the snake is cute! The baby animals are all given appropriate names (joey, owlet), so there’s some sneaky learning involved, and (because I am the literal worst when it comes to rhyme schemes and needing the meter to be ab.so.lute.ly perfect, and “flamingo” is pushing it a bit too far syllable-wise,) 9/10 points […]
A book so sweet you’ll get cavities
This is a very sweet book about acceptance and friendship. Twig Fowler is a 12-year-old girl living in Sidwell, Massachusetts who doesn’t have any friends. That is not by choice, but her mother insists that they not visit other people, because then a reciprocal visit would be expected, and no one is to come to their house. Because they have a secret. The secret is Twig’s brother, James, who no one else knows exists. He is a secret because he has been hit with the […]
Where there is milk, there is hope
While Mum is away on business, it’s up to Dad to make sure that his son and daughter have everything they need. Like milk for their cereal. Dad goes to the shops, but is gone for really rather a long time. When he returns, he explains to his children why he was gone for so long. It’s a story of adventure, danger, space aliens, time travel, vampires, angry South American gods, pirates and the amazing Professor Steg. The entire thing is beautifully illustrated by Chris […]
This book saved my family.
This book adorably depicts how varied and different all families can be, through description and hilarious pictures of animal families. Each page is a family portrait with the caption “Some children have… siblings; two dads; one mom; pets; step parents; half-siblings, etc. ” The families are all animals. The step family is a pig dad and wolf mom! The adopted family is a sheep couple with their adopted wolf babies! Its wonderful and funny and sweet. When I fist moved back to Canada almost 4 […]
A National Book Award for such times as these.
I read this well over a month ago, but considering the present circumstances in which I am finally writing this review, I feel this third of the March trilogy has the most emotional impact. I won’t recap the first two books in the trilogy here, but you can read my other reviews of Books One and Two. You definitely want to read those volumes first. John Lewis sets a lot of context for this third and most explosive act in the saga. Full review here.
And back to Madeleine L’Engle
Aaaaand, we’re back with Madeleine L’Engle. I realize that my read-the-books-on-my-shelf project has stuttered all year long, but I’m determined to make inroads in the unread books that I have lugged around for years. Let’s jump in, shall we? Spoiler alertz: My LEAST FAVORITE CHARACTER is not in this book, so it’s about 100% less annoying! Woo!