our favorite books: denmark

because we read in two languages at our house, we have lots of favorite books. we'll post about the ones in english today and do the danish ones another day.

for a long time, our best and favorite books were all charlie and lola. it's a UK series by lauren child and features cool mixed-media/cartoon characters called charlie and lola. every book begins with, "i have this little sister lola, she is small and very funny..." and all of the books are told by lola's big brother, charlie, but they're really mostly about lola.

the illustrations are good, the text is interestingly placed on the pages and the stories are super cute. there's even a really cool one about fair trade and this new one called "look after your planet."



sabin hasn't even seen that one yet, so when i get home (i'm in oslo for the next few days, working), i'll have to show her. it's a BBC series as well as a bunch of books, but i believe it started as books.  and now sabin can read these herself, tho' they're something we've been reading and enjoying together for several years.

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our other favorite at the moment is anything by roald dahl. we've read so far:

• george's marvelous medicine
• the twits
• the witches
• the enormous crocodile
• matilde (we're about halfway through this one)

still on our shelves to go:

• the BFG
• charlie and the chocolate factory
• james and the giant peach

these tend to be bedtime reading that i read to sabin, they're a bit dense yet for her reading abilities, especially in english, since she hasn't had english yet formally in school and i haven't pushed her with it. she needs to solidify her reading skills in danish and then the reading strategies she learns will help her pick up the english.  and it's not that she's not reading english. she can read most of fox in socks.

i'm looking forward to reading the laura ingalls wilder books with sabin, perhaps we'll tackle those this summer. and we've also read the first two harry potter books as bedtime stories, so maybe we'll move back to those when we're done with our roald dahl period. 

To Tell a Tale

Addie's reading ability has really soared this year. She went from barely making it through a picture book with frustration to cruising through a chapter book in a couple of days. This success is in part of these three characters:

Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park

Junie B. Jones just can't help getting into all kinds of scrapes. After all, going to school, and having to ride the smelly old school bus, and making new friends isn't easy. She really can't help it when she shouts out loud in class. After all, if that dumb May, the class tattletale, wasn't always calling attention to Junie B.'s behavior, she wouldn't have to yell at her, would she? Then there's that meanie kid, Jim, who is always teasing her and making life miserable. And it's really hard to follow the rules, when there seem to be so many of them.

She does her best, but life just has so many interesting possibilities, which often land her in trouble with the teacher and her parents. No matter how mixed-up things get, one thing's for sure --- you'll have a good laugh reading about Junie's adventures in kindergarten and first grade. And, by the way --- that's Junie "B." --- as she will firmly remind you, if you happen to forget.

review by Ann L. Bruns

Rainbow Fairies by Daisy Meadows

All kids love magic, right? Well this magical adventure is a perfect introduction for all little girls into the world of book series.

Rachel Walker and Kirsty Tate meet on their way to Rainspell Island for holidays and quickly become friends. While searching for the end of a rainbow they discover an old, black pot. Inside the pot is Ruby the red rainbow fairy. Ruby explains that evil Jack Frost has cast her and her rainbow sisters from fairyland in anger that they forgot to invite him to the midsummer ball. Ruby turns Rachel and Kirsty into fairies and takes them to fairyland to meet the king and queen and receive instructions on how to rescue the other six fairies.

So begins book one of the series. (from reviewstream.com)

School Days - Laura Ingalls Wilder

School Days is the latest favorite. I am sure this has to do with our cold snowy stop to the homestead in South Dakota during Spring Break. These books were compiled by taking chapters out of the original series. It does make for easier reading then the longer original books. She also read Animal Adventures in this same series.

All of these are a series of books, which if fun to go from one story to the next for Addie.