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Bear Grylls Survival Camp: A Timberdoodle Review
This is a sponsored post. I received this item from Timberdoodle in exchange for an honest review. These thoughts and words and opinions are, as always on this page and in real and regular life, all completely and totally my own. _________________________________ Since they watched the first show with this guy, they’ve been hooked. My boys love Bear Grylls. They’ve watched lots of iterations of his show and they’ve read a handful of books by this guy. (They even share the animal name in common with him. Although I don’t think Bear is his given name, my boys’ actual middle names are Fox and Hawkeye. Well, I guess technically Hawkeye…
Keep Reading . . .
Five Finds Friday (Cadbury eggs & impulsive purchases)
45.
Stitch Fix: We Tried It!
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Juliet’s School of Possibilities: A Book Review
Expectations are infinite.Time is finite.You are always choosing.Choose well. It’s the heart of this little book. A brand new release. Non fiction. A parable. A fable. A moral of the story kind of book. Written by Laura Vanderkam, a time guru, this book is basically a story that teaches readers a lesson. Honestly, it was an impulse pick up at the library. The cover was red, it caught my eye, and it was on the new releases shelf – which meant I had to read it and return it in 14 days. Usually too risky for me. (Those pesky library fines, you know.) The idea and the concept of a…
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Scary Close: A Book Review (& some feelings this book unearthed as well)
It was just sitting on the shelf at the library when I was looking for something else. Donald Miller. Scary Close. I haven’t read anything by this author in ages. Last two novels I read of his – Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years – felt like I read them in another life. Which – technically, I did. Impulsively, I grabbed it and added it to the stack. Books about the Grand Canyon, the National Parks, Nelson Mandela, the Empire State Building, Twilight (yeah, that’s what one of my kids picked up), drawing guides, a couple Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and this Donald…
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The Awakening of Miss Prim: A Book Review
After I finished the beautiful and spunky and darling The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society novel I was forlorn. (I mean, you know, forlorn for precious literary novels.) I’m always working through a non fiction book (or six, whatever) but those aren’t books I can read at night before I go to sleep because then I forget everything about them. And they aren’t books I pick up for a little refreshing break in the afternoon or evening. (The Road Back to You or For the Children’s Sake isn’t exactly light reading for me.) So when Judy Kay suggested that I might really enjoy another book with a…
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East of Eden: A Book Review
Maybe it was November when I started it. I know I have finished a dozen other novels between then and now. I had to read about a hundred pages to really begin to get into this one. East of Eden. I am not exaggerating when I say this was a THICK novel. The longest I’ve read in ages. 778 pages. To be exact. Small print. (Every time I picked it up I thought, “Oh no. I guess I actually need reading glasses.”) John Steinbeck. I was on my routine of trying to read a classic in between my modern or non fiction reads. I’m not drawn…
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Wonder: A Book Review
“Thank you God for good books to read,” London prayed in our before bed family routine. And the good book she was talking about on this particular evening was the book called Wonder. Actually, the specific book was a sequel – or companion book really – to Wonder called Auggie & Me. We started with Wonder – maybe a month or so ago. It’s a novel that’s been out for more than five years I think but now that there’s about to be a movie released based on the story, it’s reappearing on the front shelves of book stores. I sort of hate that I am only…
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Dr. Bonyfide, Science Books: A Timberdoodle Review
This was the year that I knew our science would take a giant shift in the Wildwood Halls of Ivy. London started high school which means the rules all change and there is a particular order and type of science that she has to cover. She’s taking Biology this year but I didn’t want to have all of the kids take high school biology because, of course, my elementary students couldn’t keep up with that. We’re still doing a weekly Nature Study together because it’s important to me, but this year I decided to have London take biology and Bergen and Mosely (7th and 8th graders) are trying a…
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Love Him Anyway: A Book Review and a Blog Tour
It was a first for me. An unsolicited invitation in my email inbox. “Would you like to read this book and review it?” I think I might have said yes just based on the sheer novelty for me of the question. Also, I like reading books and I already write frequent reviews for what I pick up from the library book shelf on my own. So this seemed like a perfect opportunity. The publisher is local and the author has local ties as well. (And you all know how I feel about local.) As it turns out, it was actually a little more than just a request to read…
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Raymie Nightingale: A Book Review
Kate DiCamillo. It’s a name in children’s literature that you can count on. So many of my favorites have been penned by her hand. (I read that DiCamillo faithfully writes five pages five days a week. I feel so undisciplined, Ive wasted forty three years already. How many pages would that have been? Someone do the math for me so I can feel worse about my unproductively.) Because of Winn-Dixie. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Flora and Ulysses. The Tale of Desperaux. The Magician’s Elephant. Tiger Rising. The Mercy Watson series. (You guys, have you read Edward Tulane? My word. It’s beautiful.) Raymie Nightingale was sitting on the…
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Things to Say to a Dead Man: A Book Review
It probably wasn’t the best book to pick up post midnight when the sleeplessness was taking over. The name of the author had drawn me in when I saw the little collection of poems. Jane Yolen has been a favorite children’s author in our family for years. She’s written young adult historical fiction we have enjoyed – a book about the holocaust whose name is currently slipping my mind. She’s written dozens of children’s books we check out over and over again at the library. All of those great dinosaur books about manners, books about birds and so many more. I don’t think I was even aware…
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Brown Girl Dreaming: A Book Review
For the longest time I’ve noticed a poster hanging on the end of the shelves at our local library. It featured the novel Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. While the kids search for their allowed number of books on our library visits, I sometimes peruse the cookbook shelves or the poetry shelves. I scan the non fiction children’s section looking for a title that might fit what we are already studying. I grab a few books from the easy readers section for Otto and Piper. As I was walking around and adding interesting choices to my bag, my eyes fell on Brown Girl Dreaming on the shelf,…
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The Excellent Lombards: A Book Review
Sometimes a book finds you. It’s been a while since I finished a novel purely for pleasure. I’ve been reading novels for Book Club and non fiction books for teaching and learning and whatnot, but I have been missing just reading for fun – the kind of reading I encourage my children to do every day. Our town’s library has a shelf with new releases. It’s a shelf I usually veer away from as the new releases are due to be returned in 14 days or less. Which might seem like a perfectly reasonable request to perfectly reasonable people. Of whom I am not. Jane Hamilton’s name popped out…
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Five Finds Friday (Italian deliciousness & a classic novel that I missed)
Oh Friday, you keep sneaking up on me. FUNNY This conversation was funny: “Mom, can I google birds and bees?” WHAT? “Can you google what??” “Birds and bees. I am writing a story and I need to see some art images for both birds and bees. This story has both animals. Can I use Google to find pictures of birds and of bees?” “Oh. Yeah. Sure.” FASHIONABLE Piper is by far the easiest of my children to shop for. She likes most all clothing that you buy for her. Isn’t this dress from GAP adorable? FLAVORFUL London and I celebrated her thirteenth birthday (and…
