Spring Recommendations for Children

My son sometimes goes through periods where he is not as interested in reading as he is at other times. When this happen I know it is time for some new books to rekindle his love of reading. Right now we have lots of new books at our house because our Scholastic book order came in and we went to the library to exchange our old library books for new ones. I personally love good children's books and thought I would share a handful of my current favorites.

An Egg is Quiet The illustrations and layout of this book are absolutely beautiful. I also like it because you can choose to read only the main points and still have a cohesive story for younger children, or you can read the more detailed information if your audience has a longer attention span or has questions.

Come On, Rain! When reading this story you can easily put yourself in the main character's shoes and feel how desperate she is for rain. It is also has a fun ending and I like the watercolor illustrations--very fitting for a story about rain.

This is the Sunflower I am not a big fan of books with cumulative rhymes, but my son really enjoys this book and it does a nice job of showing what flowers need to grow, as well as how birds help to spread seeds around.

Living Color This is a non-fiction book that shows children the variety of color that animals can be and teaches them about many exotic animals. This is not a book you would want to read in one sitting, but rather take your time looking at over a couple days.

Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! My son loves the silly and off-beat humor in this book. It is part of a series and I believe we have checked them all out at the library at one time or another. He was extremely excited to find out I had bought this one for him. When it come to books, I don't mind spoiling my children at all.

Little Pea I have saved the best for last. This is the funniest and most creative children's book I have read in a long time. I am tempted to give a hint as to what makes it so funny, but I don't want to ruin the element of surprise. It is by the same author that wrote the OK Book, another very entertaining story. If you have an recommendations for children's books, I would love to hear them.

The Appeal

I haven't been that excited to write a review of this book, probably because the book itself was somewhat of a disappointment. I have been a John Grisham fan since high school and have read nearly every book he has ever written, but The Appeal has to be my least favorite. If I could describe this book in one word it would be SOAPBOX.
It's not that I don't agree with what he is saying, we do need campaign finance reform in this country. It would be nice to know that our elected officials are not being bought by special interest groups and were only are representing the interests of their constituents. However, if an author is going to use a fictional story as a way to express thier political beliefs, I think it should be done much more subtely. This book could have been so much better if he had only focused on the story and not the message he wanted to send. It did pick up in the last section of the book and there were some twists that I didn't see coming, but in the end Grisham just couldn't get off his soapbox and give his readers the kind of story we are used to getting from him.