Book Post #5 of 2024

There isn't much better than summer reading!

My Reads

If you're looking for a book that will make you question everything you think you know about traditional schools, look no further than Instead of Education by John Holt. This book was first published in 1976, so it was interesting to read about what things have changed in traditional education/compulsory schooling since then and how much hasn't changed at all. This was somewhat of a dry read but absolutely thought-provoking. 

Katherine Center's newest book is The Rom-Commers, and I of course loved it! I have enjoyed each & every one of her books that I have read. 

Yellowface was a hard book for me to read at times. The protagonist was just so unlikeable & unrelatable that it make the book difficult to enjoy. It was interesting, but it wasn't a home run for me.

I think I have read all of Sally Hepworth's books. Darling Girls is her newest release, and while I enjoyed it there were sooo many glaring typos & editing errors. The first book of hers that I read was The Secrets of Midwives, and I don't think any of her other books have ever lived up to that one in my opinion.

It has been a while since I read anything by Jojo Moyes, and then I randomly stumbled upon Someone Else's Shoes on our library's "New Releases" shelf & picked it up. I really enjoyed this one!


Read-Alouds with the Kids
We are big Kate DiCamillo fans around our house. When I happened to spot The Puppets of Spelhort in our library, I immediately grabbed it! I was especially intrigued since it is the first in a new series, and our beloved Mercy Watson tales just concluded. While we all enjoyed The Puppets of Spelhort, we didn't feel compelled to pick up the next book in the series.

We just finished Astrid the Unstoppable, and I can't say enough good things about it! We all thoroughly enjoyed this book! We realized about half-way through this read-aloud that the author of this book also wrote Adventures with Waffles, which we read maybe 3.5 years ago or so. Astrid lives in a cold, snowy, mountainous place where sledding & skiing happen regularly, so we especially enjoyed this setting as Alaskans. But even if we didn't have that connection, you can't help but love Astrid!


Audiobooks
I am not a huge audiobook or podcast person. I don't think I ever listened to a single audiobook until we took our national park trip to Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountain, and Carlsbad Caverns a few years ago & we all listened to the first Harry Potter book together in the car. Then fast-forward to our PCS to Alaska when we knew we'd be without service for hundreds of miles & we listened to quite a few audiobooks on the Alcan! Since we were roadtripping through Alaska over Memorial Day Weekend to Homer, I checked out the Read Aloud Revival audiobook recommendations and picked out a couple books from the list that were available on our Libby app. We all really enjoyed The Mysterious Howling, which is the first book in The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series. The kids immediately put the subsequent books in the series on hold at the library when we got home from our trip!

We also listened to Peter Pan, which felt like a safe, classic bet. Shelby & Brady were really enjoying it, but Hadley immediately recognized the narrator's voice {Jim Dale} and just couldn't stand listening to it...and honestly, I felt the same way. So we got about half-way through this one & had to stop.