Archive for June 28th, 2007

A Booklist List

June 28, 2007 @ 11:08 pm | Filed under:

I promised some friends I’d put together a list of my favorite booklists. Here we go, then:

Ambleside Online—click "Books" under each year. Don’t miss the "Additional Books for Free Reading" at the bottom of each list.

Reading Your Way Through History and Love2Learn.net.

Chinaberry Books.

The Sonlight catalog—order a paper copy to keep around for good historical fiction recommendations.

MacBeth’s Opinion—especially good for nature & science books, but lots of other categories there as well.

The 1000 Good Books list and its sister list, 100 Great Books.

Lots to choose from at The Baldwin Project, which I posted about here.

Here are the Newbery and Caldecott winners from 1922 and 1938, respectively, through 2007.

The Horn Book Awards.

Join the Literature Alive discussion group for lively conversation about favorite books.

The Real Learning Booklist—especially the picture book suggestions in the early years.

Also good for picture book ideas: the books used in Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row, even if you aren’t planning on "rowing."

Oh, and Sherry Early’s Picture Book Preschool recommends wonderful books for your youngest listeners.

For enjoyable books for kids of all ages, you can’t go wrong with the selection at FUN-Books.

Speaking of fun, here’s a fun one: the "100 Cool Girls of Children’s Literature" list at Jen Robinson’s Books Page. I’m mighty proud to say that my Martha made the list.

I have a list of our Favorite Fictional Families over at Bonny Glen.

I’ll add more lists here as I think of them…I know there are other good ones I’ve used.

A Nice Offer from a Reader

June 28, 2007 @ 7:18 am | Filed under:

I’m pulling this up from yesterday’s comments, to make sure it doesn’t get missed. Amber responded to my call for planner reviews with this kind offer:

OK, this is really funny! I was
looking through my drawer about five minutes ago (because my toddler
had unpacked it, of course!) and I came across my Small Meadow Press
Circle of Days planner. It is a lovely little planner, but it just
didn’t work for me. I thought of you and your series last summer, and I
was thinking I would email you and see if you’d be willing to offer the
planner to whoever might have use for it. Then I went to your site to
get your email address and lo and behold, here’s this post staring at
me!

I don’t need the planner and since I’m moving in less than a month
(eek!!) I’d rather not take it with me. I’d really like for someone to
have it though who could use it – it seems like such a shame to just
recycle it! Anyone interested?

That’s so nice! Leave a comment if you’d like to take her up on it. First commenter, first served!

Wascally Wabbit Twail

June 28, 2007 @ 7:09 am | Filed under:

I guess it started with an episode of The Pink Panther. That blue aardvark must have put the song in my head: I found myself humming an old Sesame Street tune. I couldn’t remember more than the first line. I’m an aardvark, and I’m proud…

YouTube came to my rescue.

On the YouTube page, there was a link to the clip where the orange is rolling around the kitchen, and stuff flies out of drawers to become its face: the rubber-band mouth, the mop hair. Naturally, the second the orange has a complete face, it sings an aria from Carmen. That’s what fruit secretly lives for, you know: the chance to perform opera. Every orange is a secret diva.

Of course after that we had to watch The Rabbit of Seville and Kill the Wabbit. Ain’t YouTube swell?

(Speaking of YouTube, Sandra Dodd has just posted a page with clips of an Animaniacs geography song. The words are the names of every country in the world. One clip shows the countries on a map; the other shows flags. Cool! Other neat stuff on that page too.)