I hope you had a terrific weekend.  Mr. Eaves came home from a week of canoeing and camping with a few of his friends.  We celebrated Eliza’s birthday and I worked a bit on the greenhouse.  You’ll be able to see our progress at the back – to – school cookout.  It’s pretty exciting.  In and around lots of online reading I finished a few books that I think you’d have fun reading.  I finished Wednesdays in the Tower and reviewed it on Kids’ Books 101, along with Chained.  I really came to love that story though I had to work hard to stick with it at the beginning.  It would be a great book to read with a friend.  There is so much to think and talk about.  It feels like it takes place a long time ago, but it is now.  The characters are different and interesting.  I kept wondering why some of them made the choices they made and what would have happened if they’d made different ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Captain Awesome to the Rescue is fun and funny.  It’s the first in a series that is still growing.  The good thing about Eugene  is that he loves comic books and super heroes.  The bad thing is that he just moved and has to start making friends in a new school.  Because of this his super secret super hero alter-ego comes to the rescue.  It’s pretty funny how Captain Awesome saves the day and rescues the class pet.  It also great how Captain Awesome teams up with Nacho Cheese Man – it is good to have a friend.  This is a quick and easy book to read – but the fun story made me want to know more.  I am on the look out for the rest of the series – they’ll be in 3E whenever you’d like to find out more about CAPTAIN AWESOME!  Come borrow them.

It had been a while since I’d read a Clementine book and I was glad that Clementine and the Spring Trip came to the top of my “to-read” pile.  I like her!  In this book the 3rd and 4th grades are going on a field trip to Plimoth Plantation.  She and Margaret have it all worked out – they’ll be partners and then Margaret won’t have to worry about any of the “dirty” stuff becasue Clementine won’t mind doing it at all.  Then Olive joins Clementine’s class and everything gets upset – it works out in the end of course, but it’ll surprise you.  Let me know what you think.  I would love to have Clementine walk out of her book and join our class – she had great ideas and a great attitude.  We’d have a lot of fun with her in our school.

Leave a comment and let us know what great books you’ve been reading!

It has been a fun week with lots of family and friend gatherings at our house.  That means lots of cooking and cleaning and the kind of work cuts into my reading time!  Hey – how can that happen?  It does.

I thought I would try to read some nonfiction this week.  I read The Fantastic Mr. Dahl by Michael Rosen reviewed here and Spiders by Nic Bishop along with Stronger than Steel by Bridget Heos.  I know lots of you may think spiders are creepy.  I’m pretty sure that walking into cobwebs freaks you out, but have you ever stopped to wonder how spiders make their silk and spin their webs.  Have you ever paused to consider how many different types of spiders you’ve seen?  They run, they jump, they drop and spin.  They are large and small, hairy and delicate.  They are never beautiful until you take time to consider how miraculous they really are.  After you read Spiders go for a walk and notice – what types to do you see?  Where do they life?  Stronger than Steel is from the Scientists in the Field series.  It is a very challenging book to read.  If you’re interested in spiders it is something you could read in bits a pieces as you learn how scientist are experimenting with spider silk and its possible uses.  You might be grossed out, but I think you’ll be totally amazed as you think about all the things that scientists wonder, question and do.

I’m also reading Wednesdays in the Tower by Jessica Day George.  (It’s the second in a series – you can read about Tuesdays at the Castle here.)  Celie and Castle Glower are connected in a special way.  Celie loves her castle.  She is interested in seeing how it changes and grows.  She cares for it and it cares for her.  Castle gives her special and important things to do.  This time Castle asks Celie to hatch and raise a griffin while uncovering the mystery of Castle’s past and the disappearance of griffins from the sky.  Every page will have you wondering right up to the very end.

Next on my pile are Captain Awesome, Chained and the 4th in The N.E.R.D.S. series.  Joe told me he enjoyed reading Tim Green’s Deep Zone.  That part of a series about football.  The author has written about baseball too.  Joe said it was great and he has pretty great taste in books and lots of experience with that genre.  What are you reading?  Let us know when you leave a comment.

Hi Everyone,

How’s your summer going?  I am hoping that it is fun and relaxing, busy and creative.  When vacation started I thought I would write 3 posts a week:  once for reading, once for math and once for fun.  That’s been challenging – my fun isn’t 4^th grade exciting.  It’s calm and mostly related to nature, some to art.  This summer I’ve seen a pair of red-eyed vireos in our yard.  For two weeks they chased and terrorized any blue jay that flew into the open.  They chittered up behind the jay, snapping their wings like whips and swooping in around their heads until the jays fled back into the woods.  Now both types of birds can be in the yard together.  I am guessing that means the vireo babies have fledged.

I saw a red-bellied woodpecker for the first time Friday.  Wow, do they have red heads and black and white checkerboard backs.  I didn’t see its belly so I don’t know what color that is, but what an amazingly beautiful bird.  When I was little a story in one of my mom’s books told of a lady making poppy seeds cakes.  She didn’t want to share them with hungry travelers.  Each time someone asked for one, she would make it even smaller than the cake before.  Eventually her stingy nature caused her to turn into a woodpecker dressed in the colors of the clothes she had worn – a red cap, a white shawl, a black skirt and white apron.  The final picture showed the woodpecker.  That picture always bothered me I because it wasn’t real.   It didn’t look like the woodpeckers I had seen  – that is until Friday.  Finally after all these years I understand. ( I copied both of the bird pictures from www.allaboutbirds.org from Cornell Lab of Ornithology.)

I have begun a mini-inquiry about dragonflies.  I am trying to keep track of the types I see and I am hoping to discover if there will be more of them now that there are less bats since they both eat mosquitos.  I’ll let you know what I discover.  So you can see my “fun” is not very exciting, but it’s just right for me.

 Reading though – of course I can share some of what I am reading.  Here’s my stack so far.  The new ones that I think you all might like are at the top:  The Sasquatch Escape by Suzanne Selfors and The Truth of Me by Patricia MacLachlan.   I bet you can imagine what encouraged me to buy The Sasquatch Escape!  It is the first in The Imaginary Veterinary series.  It takes place in Buttonville.  There is nothing much happening there since the factory closed.  Ben is staying the summer with his grandfather and he can’t think of anything worse.  On the way from the airport Ben looks up and sees a bird (?) as big as a helicopter (?) with a tail (?) and suddenly Buttonville doesn’t seem too dull.  Pearl, from the Dollar Store, saw it too and she thinks it landed at the abandoned factory.  Before they can go to check it out, Barnaby, Grandpa Abe’s cat drops a bat on Ben’s bed.  “Grreeaaatt,” he thinks, except it’s not a bat.  It’s a baby dragon.  And that’s when the adventure begins where the Imaginary World and the Real World meet.  Yes, there is a Sasquatch along with the dragon – well, rightly called a wyvern -which makes this a perfect book for lots of readers from our class.  You’ll have fun with it.

The Truth of Me is a gentle story.  I was thinking about how all Patricia MacLachlan books make me feel calm.  I like how they just make me stop and think.  Robert is going to stay with his grandmother while his musician parents are on tour.  That’s great with Robert because it means he’ll be spending each day with his two summer best friends; Ellie, his dog and Maddy, his grandma.  She is special.

Maddy has powers all her own.  Powers that other people don’t have.

Jack and Lizzie (Robert’s school time best friends) know this, too.  They have met Maddy.

“Maddy had gifts,” says Lizzie.

“Do you mean magic?” I ask.

“No. Gifts,” says Lizzie.  “That’s different.  Remember when she was here and the birds came down from the trees to see her?”

“And a fox came?” says Jack.  “It came right up to her?  The animals seem to know that she is safe.”

“They want to be close to her,” says Lizzie.  “That’s her gift.  They trust her.”

During the summer, Robbie (what Maddy calls him) discovers a bit about his gifts and a bit about the truths that make him who he is.  It’s nice to know what makes you a special person in the world.  I wonder what your small truths are.

I hope every thing is great – I’m thinking about you and hoping you are doing everything that’s fun.

Hunter Moran Saves the Universe by Patricia Riley Giff ended up being pretty funny.  Hunter is a twin.  He and Zack are the middle kids with two older and two younger sisters and brothers.  They pretty much do everything together and while they don’t mean it, pretty much everything goes wrong.  There are a lot of mishaps along the way to a happy ending.

When I read White Fur Flying by Patricia MacLachlan I immediately thought of Caroline.  It’s a perfect story for a dog lover.  At the opening of the book Zoe and her family watch a family moving into the house next door. Zoe’s dad is a vet and her mom rescues Great Pyrenees and finds new home for them.  Animals are a big part of their life.  They always have a least one that is coming and one that is going.  The new family next door doesn’t seem to be an animal kind of family.   There is an aunt and uncle and Philip – who has chosen not to talk.  The families are very different – but the dogs don’t care and of course make all the difference in the world.  White Fur Flying feels good to read.

And because I was on a dog roll, I read Because of Shoe, a collection of short stories by different authors all about dogs.  My favorite is about a science fair project where a boy becomes a dog.  Read it and let us know what your favorite story is.

 

 

 

 

If you want to read something longer try In Search of Goliathus Hercules reviewed here or Vengekeep Prophecies.  It’s one of this year’s Great Stone Face books and I’ll be reviewing it on Kids’ Books 101 next.  Hope you’re finding some great things to read – let us know what they are.  Happy Reading!