"The Elf on the Shelf" by Carol V. Aebersold and Chanda A. Bell

My rating 5 out 5.
Where the book came from: purchased at book store

Synopsis:
This comes as a set with a hardcover book and an elf. The story talks about the story of the elf who is visiting just until Christmas Eve. He is magical but has promised Santa not to talk to children. At night he reports back to Santa at the North Pole and then returns and hides in a new place to be found the next day. At the back of the book there is a place to write your elf's name and the date you started the tradition as a family.

Thoughts:
I heard a lot of my friends talking about this book and was interested. It seemed a bit high in price to me, but we used a coupon and a gift card which made it seem more reasonable. My children loved the story and got so into it. We purchased it yesterday and this morning they were so excited to come downstairs to find Elfie (our current name, we haven't decided for sure so I am waiting to record it in the book). It helped a bit with some behavior and fighting issues. Although the illustrations in the book were not quite as good as I had hoped for, the fact that my children love it and are having a good time with it makes up for that. i would recommend this book to people with small children

"The Best Nest" by P.D. Eastman

Although we have a home library in our area there is another library that is actually closer to our house and that I go to more often. Because we need to apply for a library card at the home library and then receive an Access PA sticker to be able to check out books at other Pennsylvania libraries neither of my older children had cards yet. We rarely go to the home library because the children's section is very small and doesn't have much open space to sit and browse while the other library has a big children's area, bean bag chairs, and board books that aren't alphabetized (so they are totally small child friendly). Tonight I took my first grader to our home library so he could sign up for his own card. It was really exciting for me to see him receiving his card and checking out his first non-school library book. Books are such a big thing at our house and I really want to foster a love of not just books but of going to the library.

One of the books we read together was "The Best Nest". It was a fun book to read. The male bird loves the nest he and his wife have but she decides she hates it so they go out looking for a new nest. Each place they find turns out to be unsuitable for one reason or another and they finally end up back at the first nest. I liked how it showed them being dissatisfied with their nest for no reason other than it was old. I think a lot of us replace things that don't actually need to be replaced just because they are old or we are bored of them, when they are still perfectly good. What a good story to give to children and we can hope that some of it sinks in and makes an impression!

"The Magic Hat" by Mem Fox

It took me longer to get to this than I meant too. My children and I are going to be picking a book of the day each day and hopefully we'll (or I'll) make the time to post a review of what we thought of it. I wanted them to have their own page online to look at and be proud of. Tonight one of the books we read was The Magic Hat by Mem Fox. This book was new to all of us (although as a teacher I know I've read her books before just not this one). We all loved it.

Summary:

A magic hat blows into a town and as it lands on people's head it changes them into animals until the wizard comes and takes it back and they all change back. When the wizard puts the hat on he changes into a little boy happily walking down a path.

Thoughts:

I love how Fox has portrayed imagination. At the end the boy is walking away with all the magic that we all have, just fail to see sometimes when we get busy during the day with all the little things. My children really enjoyed the rhyming words and predicting which animal would come next based on the rhyme and the rhythm of the book was fun. They were able to read part of it to themselves as well due to the repetition, rhymes and use of sight words in the text. We checked this book our of the library but I can see it making repeat visits to our house. Definitely fun for younger readers!

Children's Books

My children and I read a LOT. There are so many books on our bookshelves that I know logically it would be a good idea to start weeding through and donating or giving some away and I just don't want to. Each one of them has different interests which I know will get even further apart as they get older. Plus because they are all different ages they are each developmentally ready for different types of books. I thought it would be fun for me to try blogging with them so I am going to let them each help me write some review of the books we read together. Hope you're ready for an assorted variety of kids books!