People that work in bookstores love to talk books. (actually we just plain love books) So of course we’re always getting asked “what are you reading”. Well, this and that, but lately the answer has been Judy Moody. Having kids means I don’t get to read as much as I might want – I mean I don’t get to read as much in the “grown-up” genres. Harper is five almost six and we’ve read every Judy Moody book and are on the very last of the spin off series about Judy’s brother Stink. I can’t really explain the Judy Moody phenomenon – you’ll have to trust me – Judy is cool and zaney and little girls like this stuff.
Another book we have read recently is Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown. This beautifully illustrated book flips the normal childhood experience of finding an animal in your yard and asking your parents if you can keep it. In this story a bear cub finds a little boy and although his mother tells him that Children Make Terrible Pets he still has to find out for himself. Maybe Anna will read this one at story time sometime.
Harper is learning to read and we had a tolerable time sounding out words in the Peter Brown book, while in the Judy Moody books we are usually so carried away by the story that we don’t work on our reading as much.
Check out Judy Moody here.
and Children Make Terrible Pets here.
and if you’re wondering the boy child is still way into truck books.
This is the power that Jeannette Walls gained when she wrote 
That’s Nathan Englander on the right of Adam signing copies of his new book What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank. Look for it in February!
Earlier in the week, I posted a blog about The Orphan Master’s Son:
What’s the story, though? Jun Do is, as the title suggests, the son of the orphan master. His mother, vanished, was a singer. Because he grows up among the orphans, though, everyone assumes that he too is an orphan. He is put to work doing the jobs that orphans are given, the lowliest tasks in the country. Eventually Jun Do is trained as a soldier and sent to patrol the pitch black tunnels running under the DMZ and over to South Korea. He learns to fight without seeing. From there, Jun Do is recruited to become a professional kidnapper, stealing unlucky citizens from Japan. He accomplishes his missions, but he also glimpses the world outside of North Korea, where the electricity doesn’t shut off in the evenings, where people are free to talk and play and go where they please. Jun Do, though, returns to his homeland.
This post originally appeared in 
To see Jesmyn Ward accept The National Book Award fast forward the video to 35:00. Don’t miss the part where she mentions Lemuria!