Beehive by Jorey Hurley
At first, I did not like Beehive. It is a larger picture book with just one word (swarm; keep, etc) per page. It is not until the end and the authors note that you actually get “something” that is solid. This tells you why the words that were used are important to bees. This is a page of facts and information that finally make this book more than what should be in a board book. Jorey Hurley’s book most likely will help with sight words […]
The Music of Life by Louis Thomas
Picture books are fun. You can read a book and finish it in a few minutes. You can feel like you accomplished something. You can learn things that you would not necessarily have been exposed to, because it is a “tough subject” but when it is “summarized” to be accessible to a younger crowd you can say, “OH NOW I get it…” (I am looking at you School House Rock. Okay that is a TV show, but the same concept.) But with The Music of […]
A Black Fox Running by Brian Carter
A Black Fox Running is not the type of book I would normally pick up for myself, so I’m glad that this was bought for me as it’s a really beautiful book in so many ways. Kind of a more grown up Watership Down but for foxes, Wulfgar is the titular black wolf whose trials and tribulations we follow. Set on Dartmoor and bringing in the voices of the other animals as well as the humans who inhabit the moor, it’s a great example of […]
Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
It seems that the things I’m most fascinated by are those that also frighten me the most. Afraid of the deep sea, I’ll spend months reading about naval horrors, devour tales of explorers (whether they survived or not) while also preferring to not really leave my house, and frequently consider booking a trip through the Paris Catacombs despite being somewhat claustrophobic with a face-clawing terror of actually being underground. Perhaps that’s why I found this book so deeply interesting – an exploration of places I […]
Watership Down by Richard Adams
While my father’s bedtime stories to me were Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, my husband’s father read him Watership Down. It’s a book I’d never heard of before meeting him, and as it was a huge part of his childhood, I felt I should finally get around to it. In a word, this book is about rabbits. On a larger scale, this book is about a journey, not unlike the hobbits’ trek in Lord of the Rings. But if you’re looking at this book metaphorically […]
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
Would have been my True Story bingo square if I’d gotten my act together to write this up Thursday night while distributing candy! It’s hard to say whether Mark Sanford did a disservice to the adventurous hikers braving the 2,200-mile trail that runs from Georgia to Maine or whether, perhaps, he inspired a few people to give it a go by raising awareness. At any rate, this book has nothing to do with political scandals, extramarital affairs, or clandestine trips to Argentina, so if that’s […]
