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Hey friend!
You haven’t heard from me in a while.
Summer was BUSY and now it’s school and school will be BUSY
and the past format of my newsletter wasn’t going to work during any busy times.
(Why did I think it would? Who knows!)
And I still want to share books with you,
because I’ve been reading a lot of them,
as have my kids.
On one of the many drives to visit our family in Northern NY,
I thought about how I love having a format,
and I needed an easier one that I could keep up with.
And I came up with this 3, 2, 1 GO! model.
Here’s how it will work:
I’ll share:
3 kids books
these will be ones the kids love!
2 books I’ve readcould be kids books or adult books, you know me!
1 more thing: this could be a quote from a book I’m reading,
a little story about my life, a meme I love,
a reminder, anything. It’s sort of a wild card!
and then the GO will be a prompt for you to GO to the comments
and share something (and I’ll always share first!)
So, here we go!
3 kids books
Mermaid Day by Diana Murray and Luke Flowers
Celebrates a mermaid party with rhyming text and bright, fun illustrations
We are all mermaids all the time over here.
As R, who recently turned 7 said, “I’m a fan of Ariel.”
We just went to see the live action movie again, this time in a sing a long version at the theater. My kid was singing the loudest for sure.
Sourcebooks sent this one to us and R loves it.
I love the bright illustrations, the rhyming text, the diversity of the mermaids,
and all the details in the illustrations.
If you know a mermaid lover, this would be a great gift!
It’s You I Like by Fred Rogers and Luke Flowers
Super sweet story you can sing with amazing illustrations!
Yes, same illustrator! I didn’t even realize that until now!
This is J’s favorite…she’s nearly two and requests it by name.
Do you know the song? It’s really sweet to sing and I love singing it to her.
The illustrations are amazing as well; tons of different families and activities packed in one book. J is going to school for the first time (two days a week) and I’m the class parent for her class. I suggested we get every kid’s favorite book for the school library so they could be greeted by a familiar story on the first day of school. This will be J’s book.
It would be an awesome read aloud for school or for every day with kids you know.
We’re Better Together: A Book About Community
by Eileen Spinelli and Ekaterina Trukhan
Whimsical illustrations and examples of helping other people and the community
This one is a favorite in our house, and not only because it features one of my favorite illustrators (I love how her books look like collage and the people have no necks!)
It’s sort of a cross between a board book and a picture book. It has a nice hard cover and the inside pages are sort of plastic coated, making them more durable than a typical picture book.
The text states ways that we are better together and how we can help other people,
the earth, and more. I love that these are actionable things that little kids can do.
This is a great book for getting kids to think about helping others, and would be great for back to school or the start of any group for establishing community.
2 books I’ve read:
Impossible by Nancy Werlin
Break the curse or go mad when you give birth. What will happen?
Content warning: rape, mental illness, curses, teen pregnancy
I picked this one up used when I was back home (shoutout to The Cornerstone Bookstore in Plattsburgh, NY) and I read through it so fast! This YA book stars Lucy, who is living with foster parents and occasionally sees her mother, who is mentally ill, come by her school or home to watch her. Lucy gets assaulted at prom and as a result gets pregnant…then discovers that her mother went mad due to a curse put on her family years ago, and she too will go mad when her daughter is born if she doesn’t break the curse, based around the Scarborough Fair song with a few minor tweaks.
I loved the riddles of the curse, the family, the friendships, and the gentle love story in the book. Definitely for an older YA reader though. Love it when I find backlist titles that are awesome (this one came out in 2009) and then I found out there are two more in the series. Off to the library to see if they have them!
Algorithmic Reality, by Damian Bradfield and David Sánchez
Short story comics that blur the digital and physical world and explore our loss of privacy and how we’re being mined for data.
I picked this one up at a bookseller conference I went to; it’s published by an indie publisher and looked like something I’d like. Some of the comics are really creepy and made me think about data and how much privacy we’re losing because of that.
The very first one features a shopper in a store looking at shoes, but then leaving. You know how when you do this, you keep seeing ads for the thing on your phone or on YouTube for days after? Well what if that sales clerk showed up reminding you about them instead?
This would be a great book club book to lead a discussion on how technology is changing us and society. And it’s a quick read!
1 more thing:
“False stories soar because good people relate to something in them that’s true: a fear or value or concern that’s going unheard, unexplored, or unacknowledged.”
This is from Mónica Guzmán’s book, I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot, especially after having a conversation last week with someone about books in schools. I live in Virginia, we have elections every year, and this year the entire school board is up for election. The GOP in our county has come out with a list of books they don’t like being in schools, including many that simply have gay or trans characters.
The person I talked to was sure that there were sexually explicit books in K-5; there are not. This quote got me thinking about it. What is going unheard? I think people are plenty loud about not wanting sexual content in schools. But why are some claiming there’s sexual content when there isn’t?
Because it’s easy to look like the good guy when you’re fighting to get sexual content out of schools. It’s much harder to look like the good guy when you simply want to ban a book because it has a gay character.
I think it’s the fear that if their kid reads a book with a gay character, they may have to have a conversation about it. They may have to acknowledge that gay people exist. They may have to convince their kid, who saw a gay character in a book, to see that character as evil because they think being gay is wrong, and they may be worried they can’t convince their kid of that. Those are all valid things to worry about. I don’t agree with handling it this way, and I know that for some people this is something they really and truly fear. So how do we combat it?
By talking about it more, and honestly by sharing about and reading the books that they want to ban in the first place.
I’m excited to read more of this book, and I’m hopeful that someday we can have more conversations, more truth in our world, and more people who are willing to get down to what they are truly uncomfortable about and work on it.
and…GO!
Go to the comments and tell me about something that amazed you lately!
See you there
and happy reading until next week,
Kathy Ellen
Something that amazed me lately was that I brought 113 books to the used bookstore! I went through my books (chapter books, middle grade, YA, and adult) and was RUTHLESS. We live in a townhouse and there's not a ton of room; we are not getting more shelves anytime soon. I got rid of books that were signed to me, special editions, and more. Basically if I didn't think I was going to re-read it, I got rid of it! Usually I am not in a mood like this, so I took advantage. And then, even more amazing? I didn't buy a single book for me when we traded the books in! I bought some picture books for our collection, and some books to giveaway, but no books for me. Don't call me a minimalist just yet, or maybe do! We'll see how things go.