Reading Workshop

Van Allsburg has changed course in his new release - The Misadventures of Sweetie Pie. When I read the reviews on Amazon about how horrible this book was, I had to see for myself. I absolutely love it. But, I also hate hamsters. The story revolves around a girl that gets a pet and doesn't take care of it and it ends up being discarded in a park and other places only to be taken up by another owner. Sounds familiar to me. Many people wrote about how they hate this story. They challenged it as supporting the bad treatment of animals. To that, I would say yes! Children do take poor care of animals and that is what the book is about. Read this to your children and talk with them about this problem, don't skip the book - skip the pet sometimes!

and now for something completely different: I have decided to add a few novels along with my picturebook reviews. To start, there have been some interesting novels with "found" images that I have enjoyed reading. The first, and probably most notable, is Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. This is an excellent dark, fantasy and has been extended due to its popularity into a trilogy. The second book Hollow City has been released and the final should be out in late 2015. The second novel Asylum also uses found images and tells the story of a prep school boarding house that used to be an asylum. The characters uncover the dark secrets in the house....