The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare “This looks like a terrible book. This looks like the worst book in the world.” That’s what Eli said when I told him we were reading The Sign of the Beaver as our homeschool reading book* (which is a...
Invisible Inkling by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Harry Bliss As someone with four kids between 1 and 8, it’s really, really hard to find a bedtime chapter book that pleases everyone. There really aren’t that many books out there that are simple enough to...
A Pet for Petunia by Paul Schmid Warning: do not read your children A Pet for Petunia if they are eating. I made that mistake, and by the end of the book, there were tiny chewed-up bits of yellow pepper all over my dining room table, because of the uncontrollable...
I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll, illustrated by Howard McWilliam Zuzu hasn’t been this obsessed with a book since Sixteen Cows. I read I Need My Monster at least once a day right now. It’s a nice twist on the monster-under-the-bed classic: a boy discovers...
The Hiccupotamus by Aaron Zenz Let’s just jump right in to this one. Here’s how it starts: “There was a hippopotamus/Who hiccuped quite-a-lotamus/And every time he got’emus/He’d fall upon his bottomus.” Now, you are either thinking...
Cabin on Trouble Creek by Jean Van Leeuwen I have no idea how I stumbled upon this book…somewhere I saw a description of the plot and something about it being nonstop action (and since we’ve read a few too many no-action dreary books lately, it seemed...
