Summer Reading and Super Heroes

This year the summer reading program has the hero theme which can encompass anything from comic book super heroes to every day people in our lives. This past week, Emily, her friend Savannah, and I attended one of the special events, hosted by our public library. The guest speaker was cartoonist Jeff Nicholas, a talented local Ohio cartoonist.

He showed the children how to draw a cartoon Dalmatian and asked them what kind of hero dogs they could name. The answers were varied and included seeing-eye dogs, rescue dogs, guard dogs, and police dogs. It was an interesting presentation reminding us that heroes do indeed come in every shape and size including animals.

Emily loves to draw and always practices whatever character Jeff has shown. She even included her version of the Dalmatian putting out a fire in the Father's Day card she made for her dad.

I was therefore compelled to include a book about a super hero of a different kind in this week's book review. What did I select? Why Noodle Man of course. Noodle Man is an extremely funny fictional story of Al Dente and the Dente family. The Dente family business is going down the tubes because everyone in town is ordering pizza to be delivered. Al creates a fresh pasta machine in hopes that it will save his family business, but instead, he ends up foiling a robbery attempt, rescuing two children from a burning building, and saving a damsel in distress. This book is a deliciously humorous tale that also introduces children to many different types and shapes of pasta.

The second book I read wasn't a traditionally heroic type of tale, but it did have a friend who went out of h is way to give his bestie a most extraordinary birthday. It was Toot and Puddle - A Present for Toot by the authoress and illustrator Holly Hobbie. And yes, she is the very same person who is the creator of the famous character bearing her name.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, the sequel, Return To Fern Valley, the soon to be released Cooking In Fern Valley (fall 2015) and my very first picture book, Quack and Daisy! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

Summer Fun!

This summer we have been having tons of fun. No long vacations, just day trips and local events. This past week involved lots of water. First, we rented our local pool for the evening and hosted a pool party for several of our friends. It was a great success with snacks like watermelon, strawberries, grapes, chips, cheese, and so forth. The kids had fun diving, swimming, and sliding, and the adults got to chat and catch up on everyone's goings on.

The very next day was my husband's company picnic which was held at Zoombezi Bay water park at the Columbus Zoo. We floated in the lazy river, hopped waves in the wave pool, rode the water rides, and of course I took pictures.

When it came time for my book review, I grabbed a book from my library stack and smiled. One of the books I grabbed just happened to fit right in with all the water fun we had been having. It was called Who's A Clever Girl by Rose Impey. It's a tale of a clever girl who tricks some pirates into making her the captain of their ship. She's an adventuresome girl and leads them on some merry chases after other pirates. She soon grows tired of the escapades and tells them they are going back to raid and loot her school. The pirates are none to happy about that, but she's the boss so they go along. What happens when they enter the school isn't quite what you might suspect, but is mighty interesting. To find out more, grab your own copy and start reading with your own little scallywags!

The next book I read didn't include water, but it did bring back great summer memories for me. It was called Take Me Out to The Ballgame. The book not only tells the story of two girls whose grandma takes them out of school for a special day at the ball park, but it also shares the famous tune of that same name. I remember singing that song as a youngster. I remember attending Cleveland Indian games. And now, my daughter sings that song as well. There is just something about baseball that implies summer fun.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming September second! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

Ready, Set, Read

Today was the first day to sign up for summer reading at our local library, so Emily and I hopped on over. Actually we drove since the library is all the way on the other side of town, but we arrived just the same. We filled out our registration forms, and we filled out our picture consent forms, and we received our library goodie bag replete with a pencil,  a book mark, the summer agenda.

Then we headed to the children's section to pick out some books. While there I also took a picture of the display I created to match the summer theme of "Dig Into A Good Book". Dig could apply to many things such as treasure, dinosaurs, or bulldozers and construction, but I chose dogs since Emily has so many and wouldn't miss a few.

As you can probably tell, I love summer reading and all it involves. I would also be interested to see  pictures of what your kiddos are reading this summer. Pictures of their stacks of books, pictures of them reading in their favorite spot, pictures of them at summer reading events. It doesn't matter, just send them all to astewart27@neo.rr.com.

Signing off for now with wishes for a bright and beautiful day!