Here are the books my boys got for Christmas, from us, family members, and Santa (yes, still! With the biggest winks and nods yet!). And yes, they did get gifts other than books as well 🙂 Read more…Book bonanza!
9yr+
Audiobook review: Big Hero 6
Title: Big Hero 6 Junior Novelization (Disney’s Big Hero 6)
Author: Irene Trimble
Narrator: MacLeod Andrews
Length: 2h 18m
Format: Audiobook
Age group: 8+
Fourteen-year old Hiro Hamada is brilliant but wastes all his time hustling at ‘bot fights in dark alleys instead of focusing on his future. He worships Tadashi, his older brother, who rescues him from scrapes and encourages him to think bigger. Everything changes when Hiro loses his big brother in a terrible accident at a famous robotics lab where Tadashi was developing a health-care robot named Baymax. Heartbroken, Hiro teams up with Baymax and with 5 of Tadashi’s friends when he realizes that the explosion at the lab may not have been an accident at all.
You may be surprised to hear about Big Hero 6, the audiobook! The movie was of course a huge hit and no doubt your kids, like mine, saw it when it was released. But the audiobook is really well written and read with a beautifully resonant voice by MacLeod Andrews. Read more…Audiobook review: Big Hero 6
You’re covered: 20+ book ideas for boys this holiday season
Wow, December already! List-making time if ever there was one. So, what’s on your bookish gift-list this holiday season? I’d love to know. And so would other readers, as we all scramble to get organized for the holidays.
As for the lists I am making, here’s one from me to you: 20+ gift ideas for the boys in your lives. From tried-and-true classics to unusual finds, BookishBoys has you covered. Read more…You’re covered: 20+ book ideas for boys this holiday season
Headed toward family, hearth and home
It’s Thanksgiving here in the U.S., and with that comes the onset of the holiday season. Maybe you’re driving to your parents’ right now for a Thanksgiving feast… maybe you will only be heading home in a few weeks for Christmas, Hannukah or the New Year. Perhaps you will travel by air or by sea, by road or by rail, or perhaps only by way of your dreams.
No matter what the mode, know that the journey home is a universal experience. It remains a powerful and persistent motif in all of literature, with children’s literature being no exception. Read more…Headed toward family, hearth and home
Audiobook review: The Star of Kazan
Title: The Star of Kazan
Author: Eva Ibbotson
Narrator: Patricia Connolly
Length: 10h 15m
Format: Full length story
Age group: 9+
When Sigrid and Ellie, maids for a family of Austrian musicians, find a baby abandoned at a small church among the Alps, they are utterly bewildered. They bring the foundling home to Vienna and eventually raise her as their own. All is well until Annika, now a young girl, unexpectedly inherits a box of costume jewelry, and a mysterious German aristocrat emerges claiming to be Annika’s long-lost mother. Read more…Audiobook review: The Star of Kazan
Audiobook review: The Adventures of Ulysses
Title: The Adventures of Ulysses
Author: Bernard Evslin
Narrator: Todd Haberkorn
Length: 4h 30m
Format: Full length story
Age group: 9+
The Adventures of Ulysses, by Bernard Evslin, is a vivid retelling of The Odyssey for tweens and teens. Odysseus’ desperate, decade-long quest to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, makes for a tale that is chock-full of adventure on the high seas. Read more…Audiobook review: The Adventures of Ulysses
Audiobook review: Matilda
Title: Matilda
Author: Roald Dahl
Narrator: Kate Winslet
Length: 4h 30m
Format: Full length story
Age group: 9+
If you aren’t enamored of Kate Winslet already, you are bound to be after listening to her reading of Roald Dahl’s Matilda. We were captivated by her telling of this dark but fascinating tale, in which – as many of you know – little Matilda Wormwood uses her genius and talents to escape mistreatment at the hands of many adults including a headmistress and her own parents. Winslet animates all from the shyest tyke to the stentorian Trunchbull with a superb range of voices and accents. Read more…Audiobook review: Matilda
The magic begins when you open a book…
This is perhaps most truly said of pop-up books, where the very act of turning a page mobilizes the mechanisms that get the book’s key characters and details leaping out at you, seemingly magically. With their hidden engineering and their vivid, 3-D imagery, pop-ups can entrance the most book-detesting kiddo. Especially because the latest pop-up book creators are taking their art and science to a whole new level. Read more…The magic begins when you open a book…
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