Yesterday, as I walked Daisy, I listened to an old Brain Burps about Books podcast by Katie Davis. Katie was interviewing the amazing Carol Rasco of Reading is Fundamental. I stopped mid-stride when I heard Carol say something so important. I paraphrase but the gist of what she said was that… … we have keep children […]

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I was walking to pick up this afternoon with a good friend and her amazing six year old son. She recalled a conversation they had just before I joined them. The subject was Harry Potter. Mom: “Do you know how the story ends?” Son: “Sure. Lord Voldemort dies.” Mom: “How do you know that? We’re […]

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Tonight, Katherine was having a hard time falling asleep. In fact, she begged me to sleep with her. She asks this all the time which is strange because we have never been a co-sleeping family. The only time she has ever slept with me is when we go on vacation and the number of beds […]

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A few weeks ago, I was talking with friends about the writing in the Twilight books. The consensus was that while not necessarily high quality literature, the story was not to be missed. I lost an entire day when I first read Twilight. I literally sat down in a chair right after I dropped the […]

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Last night, Katherine and I finally read the amazing, My Name is Elizabeth, by Annika Dunklee. I have been wanting to read this title for ages and am so glad we finally got to it. The story is wonderful. A young Elizabeth absolutely does not want to be Liz, Beth or Betsy and in fact, […]

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I read to the girls all the time as they grew. I always had great new titles scattered all around the house. I did what I  could to turn my girls in to readers. Now that Caroline is nearly nine and a voracious reader, I try to give her lots of independence and let her […]

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The good news is that I got the new lap top that I have wanted for a very, very long time. With it, I am going to introduce all sorts of cool things on this blog. Imagine videos, on-line classes and more. The bad news is that there is a bit of a learning curve. […]

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So I think I made it pretty clear on Monday, that the Highlights Foundation workshop I went to last week was awesome. Now I’m even more excited about it. You see, I have been on Twitter for ages now but I must admit that I never understood it. I found the whole thing so overwhelming […]

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When teaching children to comprehend what they are reading, one of the simplest and most effective strategies is to encourage them to make connections. Connections to other books they have read (Wow! The Humming Room reminds me a lot of Secret Garden), connections to themselves (see below) and connections to the world (Gosh! I think […]

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Every so often I stumble upon a perfect book. Well, ‘stumble’ isn’t quite fair. I found Wonder after reading about it on one of my favorite blogs, A Year of Reading. And then after I started reading it, the book showed up everywhere. Like how when you talk about someone you haven’t seen in ages […]

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