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

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At first, I thought Teaching Kids to Think by Darlene Sweetland and Ron Stolberg (Sourcebooks, March 2015) had a deceptive title. I had thought it would be  about helping kids learn and logic through academics. Rather, Teaching Kids to Think is focused on helping parents raise children that think through the basics of everyday survival and life, emphasizing

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Chloe and the Lion by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Adam Rex (Disney Hyperion, 2012), is a unique book about artistic creation, not a book about a girl meeting a lion. It’s difficult to begin explaining. Let me start with a description of the artwork, as mentioned in the front matter: The art in this book was

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As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been struggling to post thoughts on the books I’ve read recently. But I saw this article and knew I needed to get these thoughts up now. The topic is an interesting one, and that article about the book I just read reminded me to get in gear and gather my

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When, in 1918, a clerk erroneously ordered twelve times the number of children’s books intended, Western Publishing Company may have faced ruin. Instead, the company persuaded Woolworth’s department stores to sell it, a practice unusual since children’s books were normally only sold during the holiday season. Years later, in the 1930s, one publishing novice was

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Favorite Authors When I was a child, I would go to the library on my bike with a backpack full of already-consumed books, return them, and get another full backpack full of to-be-read books. Sometimes I’d go through a series, reading every single one as they were available at the library. Other times I went

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