Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
Detective Gordon: The First Case by Ulf Nilsson is part a mystery story but also part a story of friendship in a friendly forest. Detective Gordon, a toad, is the only officer in the forest, and he sits alone at his desk. When a hungry and lonely forest mouse is caught stealing nuts from squirrel’s winter
I’ve been blogging on this page for eight years now. It’s kind of hard to believe that my oldest child was five months old when I began. Here I am, two more children later (and the youngest is 5 months old), and I struggle to find time to read the books I love let alone
Tru and Nelle by G. Neri is a book about a young Harper Lee and a young Truman Capote. In this book, however, Harper Lee is known as Nelle and young Truman is Tru. I often heard that the book To Kill a Mockingbird and the characters in that book were based on the childhood friendship of Harper
DNA Detective by Tanya Lloyd Kyi and illustrated by Lil Crump is a information-packed book to explain the basics of forensics with the frame of a robbery that needs to be solved. I enjoyed reading the story, and since I love crime shows, I loved the forensics in it too! DNA Detective jumps right in
The Queen’s Shadow by Cybele Young (Kids Can Press, March 2015) is a most unusual picture book for older readers about how animals see. It is difficult to identify as a fiction or a nonfiction, simply because it has elements of both! In The Queen’s Shadow, a motley gathering of animal friends have gathered at
Homer Price by Robert McCloskey (originally published 1943) is a classic about a clever small town boy. Over the course of the six stories in the volume, the reader discovers a bit of hilarity about small town living in the middle of the century America. I loved the fact that although it was somewhat realistic, the
Two years ago, I wrote about how much I enjoyed the first of the Precious Ramotswe Mysteries, a new series by Alexander McCall-Smith sharing the childhood mysteries featuring Precious Ramotswe, the future Ladies’ Detective. I enjoyed the second and third in the series as well. Simple mysteries give the young children reading a chance to feel
The Case of the Vanishing Little Brown Bats by Sandra Markle (Millbrook Press, September 2014) is another fascinating scientific mystery. As with The Case of the Vanishing Tree Frogs, which I read and reviewed a few years ago, Little Brown Bats is about a species of animal that is mysteriously disappearing in the world. In
One of the first posts I have on this blog centered around one of my then-favorite authors, Alexander McCall Smith. Although I have since refocused my personal reading around classics (and Dickens, Eliot, and Wilkie Collins now vie for the favorite author designation), McCall Smith is still an author I have a special place for,
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