Friday Library Trip: Toddler Picks and Mommy Picks

I’m beginning to notice that the toddler likes to pick books that have something familiar about them or are about one of her favorite topics.

This week’s Toddler Picks:

That’s Not My Train by Fiona Watt (author) and Rachel Wells (Illustrator)

Choo Choo! We’ve read several of these “Usbourne touchy-feely” books now and she picked this one up, both because of the train, and because it looks similar in style to the other books. Interestingly enough (to a mom anyway) , I enjoy the touchy feely part more than she does. She just likes the repetitive text.

Moo Baa La La La by Sandra Boynton

The toddler has read this book about a zillion times with the iPad app, so she was excited to see the real thing. Though, she kept trying to see if the pictures would respond to touch like the iPad app pictures do…

This week’s Mommy Picks:

Ribbit Rabbit by Candace Ryan (Author) and Mike Lowery (Illustrator)

I really love this book. It was out on the shelf, selected by one of the librarians, and I couldn’t resist the hilariously clever title. Inside, the text is equally hilarious and equally clever. And the story stars an adorable frog, a rabbit (or a “hop hop” as my daughter calls it), as well as a robot. Beep boop!

Busy Birdies by John Schindel (Author) and Steven Holt (Photographer)

My daughter wanted a book with an owl in it and I picked this one. Lovely rhyming text accompanied by gorgeous photos of colorful birds in action.

#picturebook #fridaylibrarytrip #animalphotos #boardbooks #blogseries

Friday Library Trip: From Boat to Beach and Back Again

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts. We’ve read a ton of books in the interim, (and actually we go to the library on Thursdays now, but oh well). Here are a few favorites:

Tugga-Tugga Tugboat by Kevin Lewis, Illustrated by Daniel Kirk

The toddler chose this one because there are rubber ducks inside, but she continued to love this book because of all the fun rhymes and colorful illustrations.

I Took the Moon for a Walk by Carolyn Curtis, illustrated by Alison Jay

The toddler has learned to say both “moon” and “walk” and thus this book was a natural choice. She loved the illustrations and whenever it was time to read she would say, “Moon, moon!” and point to this book.

I See (Board Book) by Rachel Isadora

To be honest, I wasn’t immediately drawn to the illustrations of this book, but the text is so wonderfully simple, describing the things a toddler might see over the course of a day.  My daughter absolutely loved this one. She got a kick out of identify the objects and animals she recognized.

A Day at the Beach by Lauryn Silverhardt, illustrated by Jason Fruchter

Sigh. My daughter has only seen one or two episodes of Dora, but as soon as she saw this book at the library, she wouldn’t put it down. I had trouble getting her to relinquish it so we could check it out. The book itself is fine, with simple text and some colorful beach objects to identify, I just wish it wasn’t a book based on a TV show. But I guess I should just be happy that my daughter loves books so much.

#bookreview #picturebooks #fridaylibrarytrip #boardbooks #blogseries

Book review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater is a shorter, Team Jacob version of Twilight minus those pesky vampires, and with a more believable romance (the characters are almost the same age!). I’m not kidding when I say this book is similar to Twilight–there are so many similarities between Stiefvater’s main female character, Grace, and Bella from Twilight that I often stopped and scratched my head to wonder whether or not the similarities were intentional. From Grace’s distant relationship to her parents, to her self-sufficiency (guess who does all the cooking in the family?), to her superior attitude toward her classmates, the two could be sisters. But if I were to choose to re-read Twilight or to re-read Shiver, I’d choose Shiver in a heartbeat. Not only because it’s shorter–but because I actually enjoyed the book, and at times I couldn’t put the novel down because I wanted to know what would happen. Because of this novel, I might actually admit that I am a paranormal fiction fan after all, even though I’ve claimed not to be.

But Shiver isn’t without it’s flaws. Grace’s best friends feel rather thin as characters and I often found I had trouble caring about them. Also, the voices of the two narrators (the aforementioned Grace and werewolf Sam) were a little too similar for me. We are told quite often by many characters that Grace is a type-A personality, but from her word choice to her metaphors, her voice was just too similar to artsy-emo Sam for me to believe this. I was often confused about who was doing the narrating and had to flip back to the beginning of the chapter to see how the chapter had been labelled.

The pacing was also a little bit slow for my taste. While I was gripped from the very first chapter (a very very strong opening chapter!), once we were introduced to all the characters and the romance began, the story drags a bit without much plot development. I grew a little weary about hearing how in love the two main characters were and how sad it was that they couldn’t be together forever, to the point where, with so many other exciting things happening behind-the-scenes, I often wished the romance hadn’t been the focus of the book. (Side note–I also found the biomedical plotline in the book very strange and a little too unbelievable, but that could just be my medical brain piping up when I should just ignore it. It is a book about werewolves after all :) )

All in all, I think Twilight fans will be delighted with this book, and people who want to read a solid YA paranormal romance but weren’t able to get past some of the clunky writing in the first Twilight book would do well to check out Shiver. As for me, I’m definitely going to check out the next in the series.

#bookreview #werewolf #twilight #shiver #maggiestiefvater #YA #paranormal