Loving the Red Pyramid

Hi Kids,
I've been reading a fair amount (and I'm going to Maine tomorrow with a pile of books), but must say that this week I've spent most of my free time reading the new Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid. If you liked the Percy Jackson series, you will like this book--which has many similarities. In this one, the main characters, Carter and Sadie, are siblings who discover that they are descended from the Egyptian pharoahs and that they have magical powers. After their mother dies and their father is abducted by Set, the Egyptian God of Chaos, they need to use every power they have and every god and magician they meet (and there are many) to liberate their father and keep Set from destroying North America. Good action and quite funny in places.

Looking for book ideas?

Hi Kids,
I've decided that I'm going to try to get as many kids as possible to help pick the best Children's book for Massachusetts this year. Salem State College runs a contest each year where they nominate a bunch of books and ask kids to read at least FIVE and then vote for their favorite in March. I'm going to start a book group for grades 4 and 5 when we get back to school to read these. In the meantime, there is no reason you cannot start reading some. (I've already read a few--and they are good so far--Home of the Brave is may favorite so far). If you want to get started, you can click on the link in the column on the right to get the book list! Let me know if you read any.

LOTS of reading this week

On Thursday and Friday, I finally got to read a whole bunch of the new books that came into the library this summer. I decided instead of just reading one novel, to try to read a lot of shorter books. I finally read a Babymouse book and a Who Was biography (some kids call these "big head" biographies because of the crazy pictures on the covers). I liked them both, but since I love biographies--I think I liked my big head Marco Polo better. I also read Yummy--a great fairy tale collection and Once Upon A Time--a nice collection of folk tales from Spanish-speaking countries, and these were both very good. I really like a funny book called What Really Happened to Humpty Dumpty, which was sort of like the True Story of the Three Little Pigs. I read it to a second grade class and we all loved it--including the teachers. I also found a book called Just the Right Size super interesting. It tells why animals are the sizes they are and how this helps them (it turns out that there is a good reason that people cannot walk on ceilings and whales cannot fly).