Summer reading- theirs

          In the summer we visit the library every couple of days. I love looking up lists of children's books organized by subject and then requesting a bunch of them and then staggering my requests so that we almost always have an interesting pile of various topics waiting for us. Yes, I'm a total library nerd. You knew that already. And yes I do this for my own reading too.

Some of the topics I've been focusing on for the kids are- money, math, art, cultures of the world, and the Middle Ages. Here are some of our favorite reads from this week.

If You Lived Here: Houses of the World- by Giles Laroche. This book contains pictures and descriptions of many different kinds of house all over the world such as log cabins in Colonial U.S., cave houses in the mountains of Spain, yurts of Mongolia and tree houses. My kids loved imagining what it would be like to live in such different places and Unity's been telling me she wished we lived in a log cabin with animals.

The Dragon's Tale and other animal fables of the Chinese Zodiac- by Demi. I'm not sure where Brixton's interest in China started, but he is really fascinated with it. He wants me to find all the books about China from the library, so I'm working on it. This one is a collection of fairy tales that correspond to the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. The kids enjoyed figuring out which animal goes with which person in our family.

Pretty Penny Makes Ends Meet- by Devon Kinch. Unity found this one on her own but I was really glad she did. It's the story of a girl who is trying to raise money to help her grandmother with home repairs. She decides to make and sell jewelry and the book goes into details of her budget and how to figure out the cost of supplies and calculate your profit. The pictures are a little more "glam girl" than I prefer, but of course that's why Unity likes it so much.

Wangari's Trees of Peace- by Jeanette Winter.  You've probably heard about Wangarai Maathai, the Kenyan woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work planting trees. This book tells the story in a realistic but gentle way. (It shows Wangari being hurt by the police and put in jail.) We had a lot of good discussions with this one.

Pete the Cat and his four groovy Buttons- by James Dean and Eric Litwin. This is very early basic subtraction, mostly appropriate for preschools. The pictures are zany and fun and the story involves lots of repetition and goofy singing.

Georgia's Bones by Jen Bryant and Bethanne Anderson. This is a beautiful and poetic story of the early life of Georgia O'Keeffee, from her childhood of noticing the beauty and shapes around her to her visit to New Mexico and the inspiration of the desert and animal bones around her. One to savor.