the kids are picking away

It's the time of month again where we look at what my wacky trio has been reading, sharing in the Kids' Picks love over at 5 Minutes for Books. For the sake of brevity, something that I'm admittedly pretty terrible at, I opt to highlight two of my kiddos' most favorite recent reads. Without further ado...

Let's start with the youngest, my 22-month-old, truck-obsessed wild Pudge. When we found these two books at the library a couple weeks back, he was beside himself with excitement. I have to say that I quickly became a fan of these uniquely shaped books for their layered format, clear and attractive photography, and simple text. (You can't tell from the cover image, but they aren't rectangular-- they're cut to shape the vehicle they're illustrating.) Digger and Fire Truck, from the fabulous DK books, will most definitely be renewed the maximum amount of times from our library!


Let's go forward 18 months in age, and see what the 3-year-old is into these days. More library books for her- one that she chose and one that caught my eye. Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells was her choice, and after watching some episodes of Max and Ruby on tv, I can't help but read these stories with Ruby's measured (and somewhat annoying) voice. Red is in that age/stage where she 'reads' books to herself, sometimes making up the story based on the pics for unfamiliar books. But with one like this, a story that she knows and adores, she's pretty good about telling the story with so much of the actual text. Fun to listen to, seriously. Her other pick is one that I grabbed off the 'new books' shelf, and we are both enchanted with-- Library Mouse: A Friend's Tale by Daniel Kirk. The story is cute and engaging, but what I happen to think is most spectacular about this one is the illustrations-- you've just got to look at this one for yourself to fully appreciate Kirk's re-creation of book covers of all sorts in the library setting. It's amazing- and even Pudge has gotten excited to see "Fire book!" (Goodnight Moon to all of you who might not associate the fireplace as the biggest feature of that one.) It's really quite amazing.


And finally, let's jump all the way up to the reading habits of our resident 9-year-old, JAM. When I was thinking about the books to pull from our shelves for this post, I instantly imagined two titles for JAM, but I thought I'd check with him to see what he would identify as the ones he's most into these days. I have to admit that I was pretty stoked to know that I had been spot on with my picks, for it took him all of 30 seconds to name the very same books! The first one is a book that we're reading together every night (and one that I'll be reviewing for 5M4B soon), Captain Nobody by Dean Pitchford. Since I will be reviewing it, I don't want to say too much just yet, but I can say wholeheartedly that it's a book that we both are incredibly invested in. It's a fantastic middle grade novel, and I will be highly recommending it in my review! We have 6 more chapters, I think, so we're hoping to finish in the next two days or so. His other pick is a book that he borrowed from his classroom library last week, Attack on Pearl Harbor by Shelley Tanaka. This book is just perfect for satisfying his budding curiosity about history (he can only get that from his father), with age-appropriate factual text and a mix of illustrations and photographs about the time period.

That's what we're reading 'round these parts. How about you and your little ones? Link on up, or simply leave a comment, over at the Kids' Picks post on 5M4B.


Ready to be curled up with a book myself,