In honor of Ramadan, I wanted to offer a book list to help bridge an understanding between Muslins and people of other faiths. It’s actually taken me more than a year to assemble this book list as I am not familiar with this topic. I hope that you will share your favorite books and I will add to this list. I wish you love and peace during this Ramadan celebration!
Category: Best Books for Kids
Best picture books, chapter books, young adult books, graphic novels and non fiction for kids.
Wonderful Comprehensive Pop Up Mythology Book: Encyclopedia Mythologica (for ages 5-15)
Encylopedia Mythologica covers Ancient Egyptian gods as well as the more famous Greek and Roman gods. The book also covers Norse, Middle Eastern and Native American gods. Like the other books in the series, the pop ups are magnificent and there are pop up pages-within-pages chock full of interesting stories and factoids.
What I love about this book series (and I think I own them all) is that it entertains at many levels — younger kids will love the pop ups and may only want to read selectively, and older kids can absorb a lot of information by exploring all the smaller pop up pages. This is a great non fiction book for reluctant readers and Middle School kids since 6th grade typically covers Greek Mythology.
New Picture Book Reviews
I’m been asking for and getting a small pile of books these days and haven’t been posting on them. I was at a loss about how to present them … individual book reviews? But there are lots of bloggers who do that. Sometime in the middle of the night, I got the [random] idea of a short stack of books. Like, it could be any amount from 3 to 10, like a stack of pancakes. I decided to rank the books in the order that we liked them. Let me know what you think.
The Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan: Book Club for Kids
My 5th grade daughter’s book club got invited to the 5th grade boys’ book club because they had a special guest, William Maliul, an articulate and engaging Lost Boy of Sudan, who came to speak about his experiences in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the United States. Brothers in Hope was the book club selection and though it is a picture book, the content is suitable for a 4th or 5th grader.
Best Easy Readers: Geisel Award (aka Dr. Seuss)
The Geisel Award is given annually to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year. It was founded in 2004 and the first award year was 2006, so it’s a fairly new award. That’s great because it’s a list that is actually plausible to work through! What Easy Readers have you and your kids enjoyed? Let’s add it to the list!
Argentina: kids books, artisans, and gauchos
We travel this week to Argentina. When I think of Argentina, the first thing I think of is beef but there is more to Argentina than just cattle. I wanted to explore the gauchos (Argentinean cowboys) and indigenous people.
Go The F**k to Sleep: Two Takes on Parenting
Getting kids to sleep is such a politically charged topic for parents. There are the co-sleepers who are vehemently opposed by the Independent Sleepers. Caught in the middle? The parents who get no sleep and still have to function the next day. Here are two takes. Go the F**k to Sleep is by Newton (my town) funny man Adam Mansbach whose jack-in-the-box kids are fodder for humor. If they are keeping him awake, it’s clearly enhancing his sense of humor.