Friday Library Trip: Duck, Duck, Fish!

My one-year-old and I went on another trip to the library today! Today I let her do all the choosing.

But before we get to the books from the library, here’s a book we purchased last week:

Ducks Go Vroom (Step into Reading) by Jane Kohuth and illustrated by Viviana Garofoli

The author of this book is a friend of a friend, but the baby honestly loves this book. Her thing these days is to have me read the first few pages of a book and then move on to the next one. But with this one she actually reads the whole way through! She’s crazy about ducks and she loves the simple, rhyming onomatopoeic words (read: sound words).  We’ve had this book for only a week, but we’ve read it about a million times now.

Okay, now on to the library books:

Two Dumb Ducks by Maxwell Eaton III

As I’ve said before, the baby loves ducks and she picked this book up right away.

Tubby by Leslie Patricelli

I think she chose this again for the rubber duckies. And because we have a bunch of other adorable Leslie Patricelli books at home.

Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin by Tad Hills

The baby loved the Duck & Goose book we chose last week and liked the look of this one too.

Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell, Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

Sigh. More ducks.

Ten Little Fish by Audrey Wood, Illustrated by Bruce Wood

Surprise! She was fascinated by the fish and started making pop-pop-pop (bubble) noises with her mouth when she saw this book. She insisted that I read it twice while we were at the library.

#bookreview #picturebooks #fridaylibrarytrip #boardbooks #library #blogseries

“No offense, but…”: The book review every writer is afraid they will get

All this talk on various blogs about whether or not writers should be posting negative book reviews has got me thinking about my own fears as a writer. It’s so scary putting your work out there. What if people hate it?

So I thought–why not write out what exactly I’m afraid of? Below is just a snippet of what my nightmare book review would look like. What would yours look like?

—-

Dear Amazing Author:

No offense, but I just finished reading your book and man was it bad. I mean REALLY bad. I can’t believe you wasted five years of your life on that drivel. The only reason I made it through the whole thing is that I couldn’t BELIEVE anyone had actually published it. Your main character (who, by the way, shares a name with my best friend’s new pet rattlesnake), seemed like a whiny brat. Why would anyone care what she thinks? I sure didn’t. I really wish you had chosen a different main character.

No, scratch that. I don’t think any of the other characters are any better. I’m pretty sure you stole them all from J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkein or someone else with better initials than yours. Not to mention that the plot that you probably thought was so original has been done a million times before.

Only better.

I saw all the twists and turns coming–it didn’t help that some of them were on the book jacket. Or that the whole thing was based on your life. What…you thought no one would notice? Come on, face it. Anyone can see that the real reason your main character doesn’t have parents is because of your deep seated anger toward your own. There’s no way you would have written it that way otherwise. Because you obviously don’t have much of an imagination based on what I’ve read.

And don’t get me started on your dialogue. How unrealistic can you get? No one talks that way in real life and I’m not sure anyone would want them to.

Anyway, I hope the bookstore accepts returns. Good luck trying to get your next book published!

Yours faithfully,

Fan Girl

Image Credit: Words ripped from my heart by Chapendra, on Flickr

#bookreview #writing #writingtips

Friday Library Trip: Mommy’s picks and Baby’s picks

My 1-year-old and I went to the library today. She ran around, choosing books at random, while I went through and looked at them carefully. Eventually, she sat and flipped through a few of the books she had strewn on the floor (Sorry librarians! Don’t hate me!). We took home a couple of her favorites and a few of mine.

Mommy’s picks:

Brown Rabbit in the City by Natalie Russell: I loved this author’s previous book, Moon Rabbit and wanted to check this one out.

On Mother’s Lap by Ann Herbert Scott, illustrated by Glo Coalson: I loved the illustrations and the repetitive, soothing text. Looked like a good bedtime read (and indeed it was helpful during naptime).

Pooh (Giant Board Book) inspired by A. A. Milne, illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard: A Pooh-shaped board book! How cute is that? Though I have to admit that I was more drawn to this book than she was since she doesn’t really know about Pooh yet.

Baby’s picks:

My Dog, Buddy (Scholastic Reader Level 2) by David Milgrim: She likes dogs, what can I say?

Duck & Goose, 1, 2, 3 by Tad Hills: She also loves ducks.

How Little Lori Visited Times Square written by Amos Vogel, pictures by Maurice Sendak: She also picked out this book (I think because it is a small book and was easy to pull of the shelf) but I didn’t end up checking it out for fear that she’d tear it to pieces. Worth taking a look at though for older kids because of the absolutely hilarious ending.

I’m hoping to make library visits with the baby a weekly thing, but we all know what happens when you have a baby and try to make plans. :P

#bookreview #picturebook #fridaylibrarytrip #boardbooks #ducks #library #blogseries