reviews

We had an all too rare sun­ny sum­mer day yes­ter­day, so the fam­i­ly and I walked to the library (most­ly to drop off oodles of books), and then we went shop­ping at our local inde­pen­dend book­store in hon­or of Save Book­stores Day. My daugh­ter was con­sumed by a book we had just bought at the Friends of the Library used book­store (hope­ful­ly that counts–save libraries, too!). My hus­band was con­sumed by after­noon nap and sun­shine. So, the two of them sat out­side togeth­er in the sun doing their things while the boy and I went into Uni­ver­si­ty Book Store. I love hang­ing out in there. They have a great chil­dren’s department!

After much delib­er­a­tion (the boy is deci­sion-impaired), we set­tled first on:

Physics: Why Mat­ter Mat­ters by Dan Green and Simon Bash­er.

This non­fic­tion series pub­lished by King­fish­er (called the Bash­er series, after the com­mon illus­tra­tor and cre­ator) includes top­ics in sci­ence, math, the arts, and lan­guage arts, and each one we add to our col­lec­tion holds both kids enthralled. Each one is a paper “Face­book” of what’s what in the giv­en sub­ject, treat­ing each top­ic as a char­ac­ter and list­ing its behav­ior and vital sta­tis­tics. They’re per­fect for boys, because they feel like those game cards (Poke­man, Bak­a­gan, Yu-Gi-Oh, and what­ev­er else) with the stats, short descrip­tions, and fun art. They’re per­fect for girls because they make abstract con­cepts char­ac­ters, and sud­den­ly we care about them (stereo­typ­i­cal, I know, but it sure works for my daugh­ter and me). High­ly rec­om­mend­ed! I know our fam­i­ly will be buy­ing many more.

Then, he picked out:

Myth­i­cal Crea­tures by James Harpur and Stu­art Mar­tin.

This one is sim­i­lar in feel to the ‑olo­gy books from Can­dlewick, which he loves. A hit, and no night­mares. Yay!

Can I just pause to say how proud I am of my non­fic­tion-lov­ing boy? *smile*

Final­ly, I bought myself this nifty shirt:

I think it’ll be per­fect to where to KidL­it­Con in Sep­tem­ber, which I’m already signed up for. Are you?
The kids were too busy read­ing to walk back home again with­out face-plant­i­ng some­where along the way, so we all hopped on the bus back home.
Did you make it out for Save Book­stores Day? What did you buy?