And now, for an update on the girls’ summer reading….

M must miss school…. she picked up Paradise Lost, by John Milton. She says it’s because of (you guessed it) Supernatural, but has found that she’s really enjoying it. She’s even taking notes and doing research about it. I’ve never read it, and now I kind of want to tackle the poem as well.

C read Wintergirls, and said it was very creepy and more than slightly disturbing. Mostly because she could never understand why a person would want to be anorexic after their best friend died of the same disease. As she said,”Um, NO.”

A got “brave” and read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She was affected most by (spoilers!) Hedwig’s death, but there were a lot of feels that M had to help A process. She did finish it, devouring both movies in one afternoon. Her verdict? “It was the most horrible good book I’ve ever read.”

After finishing The Lightning Thief, K dove headlong into The Sea of Monsters (I discovered she’s having her dad read these to her, because she doesn’t want to be left out of the movie experience in August). She loved Tyson, the chariot races, and the whole ending. They’re planning on starting The Titan’s Curse tonight.

They’re also participating in the summer reading program at the library this year. K’s already read 22 books (nominally out loud to an adult), finishing her goal. A and K both had 12 chapter books as a goal, and are nearly there (though A insists that Deathly Hallows should count for two!). I’m so glad our library has a good summer reading program to help keep them reading!

And this is what my bookish girls are up to at the start of summer:

K is jumping on the Percy Jackson bandwagon and is in the middle of listening to her dad read her The Lightning Thief. She says, “It’s great!” and “I like Annabeth a LOT.”

A attempted to read The Apothecary by Maile Meloy, but bailed on it about a third of the way through. Partly because it wasn’t gelling with her — her biggest complaint: “I knew what was going to happen before it happened!” — and partly because the lure of Percy Jackson is just too strong. She’s picked up the series, and is happily ensconced in it again. For what it’s worth, I’m almost done with The Apothecary, and I quite like it.

I picked up The Bad Queen by Carolyn Meyer on a whim for C, because she’s expressed interest in Marie Antoinette before. She really liked this one, reading it twice and declaring that she MUST own this one. It’s ruined all other reading for her for a while.

And M has been spending the weeks since graduating vegging on Tumblr (yes, she is a fangirl). She has picked up The Monk and the Philosopher, by Jean Francois Revel, which she says is “really, really smart” so she just reads a little bit at a time.

Oh: and I just realized I never updated about my book group. While we got a mention on our chalkboard,

it was a dismal failure. I had one girl show up to the 3-5th grade one. And we managed to wrangle in someone else (who is going to be in Europe all summer, so it was pretty pointless). And NO ONE showed up for the 6-8th grade book group, which prompted an interesting discussion with C on the lack of readers in her age group. She contended that there are two things going on: 1) the kids she knows, at least, are pretty  determined to read only what they “like”, and they’re not very interested in branching out. Which is part of the reason series books do SO well. And why there are so many dystopian/paranormal/whatever read-alikes. And 2) the girls only read “girl” books and the boys only read “boy” books. So, even though my first book, Cold Fury, has immense crossover appeal (I mean, really: it’s about the mafia for heaven’s sake), boys won’t pick it up because there’s a girl on the cover. And my second book, Okay for Now (which is brilliant, but I can’t even get C to read it), won’t do well because it’s about a boy.

I find all of this incredibly frustrating. It’s not that I expected it all to be wildly successful the first meeting, but I  kind of hoped there’d be more. And I’m a bit wary about this second meeting on Saturday. What if no one shows up again? Do I throw in the towel? How do I market this better (it doesn’t help that our marketing person at work is more than overwhelmed!)? Is it really as hopeless as C says it is?

What do you think?

A monthly look at what my bookish daughters are reading…
 

C read one of the few Wendy Mass books she hasn’t read yet: Heaven Looks A Lot Like the Mall. She didn’t like it at first — the main character is a twit, she says, and the parents are worse — but by the end she said she saw the point of making the characters so horrible, and thought it was a good book. Not her favorite Wendy Mass by far, but not bad either.

 

A devoured the Heroes of Olympus series this month, reading all three. She loved them (not as much as the first series, though) and is eagerly awaiting (along with the rest of us) the release of House of Hades. (Which she says sounds like a video game title when you say it with a deep voice.)

K really wanted to branch out to reading books by herself, and suggested that she read The Lightning Thief. Since she’s only in 1st grade, I counter suggested that she read the Magic Tree House books instead. She wanted to start at the beginning, so we picked up Dinosaurs Before Dark, and she was off. She’s on the third book now, and is really quite liking Mary Pope Osborne and Jack and Annie.

M, on the other hand, was quite depressed when I asked her what she read this past month and she discovered that school was so stressful and busy that she didn’t have any time left for pleasure reading. There is always the summer, though!

In other news, my first book groups are on Saturday, and while I’m excited about them, I’m also a bit apprehensive: I hope people come, I hope we can have a good discussion, I hope those who do come (aside from A and C who are being gang-pressed into doing this) will want to come back. Which leads me to a question: Do you have any suggestions for running a good children’s book group??

I could use some ideas!

On this cloudy Sunday in April (may it rain!), where we’re all kind of dragging because of the WSU Shockers loss last night (I know: we’re not really basketball fans, but it was WICHITA STATE in the Final Four. That so rarely happens, that one has to watch the game. Though, truth be told: I’m glad I don’t have to choose between them and Michigan in the final), my daughters still have a few books they’ve recently read (and/or are reading) that they’d like to recommend.

K, who turned 7 this week, is reading The Secret Garden with her dad, and loving it. I have to admit that I bullied her into this one: we had just come back from vacation, and she wanted to read some Grand Fantasy, but I talked her into reading this one. She says, “It’s fun and I’m really glad that Mary Lennox became nice. I really like the robin, too.” I love it when I can share books I loved as a child with my children, who love them, too.

I also kind of bullied A into reading her book this month, The One and Only Ivan. See, I’m starting a book group for 3rd-5th graders at work, and this is the first month’s choice. And, since I’m mostly requiring my daughters (who can) to come, I suggested A read this one. She really liked it, enjoying the fact that the chapters were short (she kept commenting on that), and the humor in it. She didn’t cry at the end, but she was touched by Ivan and his story.

C was into rereading this month, and in between a couple of other books picked up an old favorite: Savvy. She did comment on finishing the book that she’d forgotten how good it was. Even though Mibs’ lack of awareness about her savvy drove C batty this time around. She kept wanting to shout at the book: “You know it already!!” But, still: she plowed through the book.

Nothing from M this month: she’s knee-deep in The Invisible Man, attempting to understand what it all means, and trying not to have an existential crisis in the process.

Both C and A have read the ARC I snagged from work of The School for Good and Evil (publish date: May 14, 2013), and both have REALLY liked it. (I’m putting this out there because, from what they’ve said, I’m not going to read it.) It’s the story of two girls — 12-year-old friends Agatha (the dark-haired, gothy girl) and Sophie (who’s life goal is to be a princess ) — getting into the School for Good and Evil (is where everyone goes before they get placed into a fairy tale). Except they defy stereotypes: Agatha gets into the School for Good; Sophie into the School for Evil. This is basically the source of conflict between the two friends: neither one wants to be where they are placed. The book follows the school year, as they have adventures and experiences. C says that she doesn’t know why this is slated to be a trilogy: the ending is a pretty solid one. At the very least, it’s a good stand alone. As I mentioned: both the girls have been really talking it up: they like the characters, there’s a slight bit of romance in it, and there’s a great twist ending. In short: it’s a lot of fun.

Now you’ll pardon me as we all get back to our books.

I had a Grand Plan to make a vlog for this, but then it SNOWED (and I should have done it then) and we got off our schedule, and yeah… it just Didn’t Happen. Here’s their thoughts on what what they’ve been reading.

K: Recently finished reading The Adventures of Nanny Piggins with her dad, and fell in love. She still can’t stop talking about it. She thought it was Hilarious, and loved Boris the ballerina bear the best. She’s become a Nanny Piggins evangelist, begging her older sisters (and me; though I read — and liked — the sequel) to read it, too.

A: Read the ARC of Rump, by Leisl Shurtliff, because C recommended it to her. She liked it, but was annoyed it took too long for the main character to figure out his name. That said: it kept her interested until the end.

C: Snagged the ARC of Rachel Hawkins’ new one, School Spirits. Probably the best way to describe her reaction is through this series of tweets:

(Click to embiggen)

 M: Finished both Finnikin of the Rock and the ARC for Dark Triumph, the next in His Fair Assassins. The short version about both? Everything else — including the mounting physics homework — went by the wayside because she couldn’t finish them fast enough. (Finnikin was slow going at first, but I told her to stick with it and she did. And she was REALLY glad, too.) Great books, both of them.

Maybe next month I’ll get that vlog up.

Laura over at Bitching, Books, and Baking suggested that I need to make my daughters review books on the blog. And since I adore Laura and do (almost) anything she suggests, we’re going to give this thing a try. Short, capsule reviews, written or dictated by my daughters on something they’ve read in the past month.

Enjoy!

We’ll start with K (age 6 1/2), who is, obviously, a budding librarian. She’s reading one of her (and our) favorite books, I Want My Hat Back, by Jon Klassen.

She says, “I like this book because it’s really fun to read and very funny!”

This is what A says about the last few books she’s read (and one movie):

  Hotel  Transylvania ………………………… I’d say about an eight, could be better. Less butt jokes.

  Origami Yoda  ……….. Awesome!!!!!!! 10 for sure! So funny!

  Harry Potter Five…….. Nine, not ten. bet to scary!

 Darth Paper…………. Not as good as Origami Yoda! Eight.

C says: “I  have currently read and finished quite a impressive some in two  weeks (based on the numbers at my school). But one stood out and I think it’s my new favorite book; Son by Lois Lowry. Lowry tells the story of a fourteen year old girl that goes looking for her son that got taken away from her. It was exciting and interesting and I loved the descriptions in it. But the again it’s Lois Lowry so; you can’t really go wrong there.”

And M says that she hasn’t read anything interesting of late. Maybe next month.