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Tales From the Treehouse – DKCanada and How People Lived: Snapshots of Life From Prehistory to the Present

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DK Canada’s How People Lived is a great book for school aged children who love culture and anthropology. Payton, 11, loves things like social sciences so I knew this book would be a huge hit here at out house. There is a glossary in the back and this book covers many cultures, ethnicities and eras from cave dwellers to the current times.

You can follow DKCanada on twitter for more information about their amazing book selection. How People Lived got a $$$$$ out of $$$$$ from Payton. I agree because it’s crammed full of facts, history and important information. I wouldn’t recommend for anyone under age 5 and really I’d say it’s ideally suited to ages 6 and up to 13.

Blurb from back of the book –
“See how ancient Egyptian farmers train baboons to collect fruit from trees. Feast your eyes on the spectacular fireworks and dragon dances in medieval China. Watch a viking raiding party preparing for a strike on enemy territory in search of gold and silver.”

DK Canada is a hardcover $20.99 in Canada, 80 pages.
I received a copy of this book for purposes of review. My opinion is 100 % my own.

Too Hurt to Stay Review

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I started reading Too Hurt To Stay and then my mother passed away unexpectedly and my hobbies all fell by the wayside for a time. Grief and funerals took the place of reading for fun. The topic matter of Too Hurt To Stay intrigued me, but at the same time I was a bit apprehensive that picking up a heavy book right after such a trauma might plunge me into a deeper sadness. Eventually my heart felt ready to tackle Casey Watson’s world. In all honestly this book, a memoir, is not as devastatingly sad as I anticipated. It is quite simply an honest story from a foster carer’s perspective about one little boy who came into care and was her charge for a time. Too Hurt to Stay is about an 8-year-old boy declared born evil even before he hits Casey’s home, a place they also learn is his last chance at foster care.

Casey is a specialist foster care provider in the United Kingdom. Casey Watson is a pseudonym and has written many books in a similar vein on children in care. I look forward to reading more because her writing style is straightforward and easy to read and her topic is enlightening. Casey is married with children and has three grandchildren. She lives with her husband Mike. The couple care for the highest needs children with no place else to go.

Spencer comes to Casey’s home with a huge bag of tricks and the couple is warned in advance, but has some difficulty believing a boy of 8 could be a match for their skills. But as time wears on and the honeymoon ends Spencer reveals every last one of his behaviours, which all resist modification techniques. Casey never gives up on Spencer despite the fact that he is a pretty excellent confabulator who seems to lack a conscience and acts, at times, feral. Spencer’s visits to his biological family are taxing on everyone and they don’t go well at all. Casey suspects Spencer’s Mom is an alcoholic and she has too many children to care for. But strangely Spencer’s file states he asked to be put in care on his own. That seems at odds with what Casey sees and hears and so she does a bit of investigating and learns there’s a bot more to his situation that everyone thought.

The epilogue here is a lovely wrap-up. Too Hurt to Stay gets a $$$$ out of $$$$$. It’s a good read, with a solid story. I would recommend it for any of my fellow adoptive parents or foster care providers. It is always helpful to gain real situational stories about the behaviours of hurt children. This is a hard topic matter, but a worthwhile read. Too Hurt to Stay has many lessons to teach other foster care providers.

Too Hurt to Stay is by Casey Watson, Harper Element, 2012, paperback, $14.99, 294 pages.

Tales From the Treehouse – Zoe’s Room #giveaway

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Zoe’s Room is a sweet story about sharing and sisters. We loved it here and are happy to share our giveaway with you also. This one was so good it was a natural catalyst to getting our Tales From the Treehouse series kicked off for the season again. Zoe is a little girl, a wee bit of a princess, with a bit of a knack for turning her room upside down after lights out time at night. She adores creative play and her imagination is magnificent. Please click through the video review above to see what my kiddo thought. Ainsley enjoyed this one very much and took it to school to share with her entire class.

It gets $$$$$ out of $$$$$.

ZOE’S ROOM (NO SISTERS ALLOWED)
By Bethanie Deeney Murguia
In Stores Now
Picture book for about ages 3 to 5. (I overestimated the age for this in our vlog review, but I think it can go a lot older than the suggested age of 5. My 9 year old liked it here.) 
Three winners will get a copy of Zoe’s Room: US ONLY!
·         A copy of Zoe’s Room (No Sisters Allowed)
From the Press release:
About the book
Zoe rules as Queen of the Universe — or at least, her room! — in this sweet, funny companion to Zoe Gets Ready.
Zoe is the Queen of the whole Universe … but her favorite place in the Universe is her own room, where she hosts tea parties, builds empires out of blocks, and gazes out upon the stars.
Then her parents announce that her little sister Addie is moving in to Zoe’s room. Little sisters aren’t good at tea parties (too rude), block-building (too clumsy), and starwatching (just plain too young!). So the Queen’s new roommate is a royal pain . . . until Zoe discovers that even her smallest subjects can be useful in a storm!
For ages 3-5 years.
About the author
Bethanie Deeney Murguia earned an MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Bethanie lives with her family and her fifty pound lap dog, Disco, in Sausalito, CA. She is the creator of Zoe Gets Ready and Buglette, the Messy Sleeper.

To Win a copy leave a simple comment here and tell me where you are from (US ONLY) and who this is for? I will draw with random.org on June 28th. Three winners. US only. 

Please Look After Mom: A Review

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Please Look After Mom is a beautiful, sad and lyrical tale for anyone who has ever had a Mom or been a Mom. This one came to me as part of the national book club influencer program for http://www.EverythingMom.com and I found myself reading it with difficulty. This is not an easy story. The plot begins when the mother of a successful family in Korea goes missing at a train station in Seoul. It is an amazing rapid start to the plot that cannot help but hook you instantly. The mother, it is revealed, has been suffering stunning headaches and previously battled breast cancer. Through each one of the grown children, the mother’s story is revealed slowly as that of a young girl who grew up in poverty in the Korean countryside and could not be educated or kept safe beyond a certain age. So instead she was presented to a man, a stranger, for an arranged marriage. Together they build a home and have four children. The young mother excels at feeding and nourishing things. Her gardening ability is unparalleled. Everything she touches blooms and her young family grows strong and successful. But they move on and for the most part still see their mother as she is defined within the context of home. The mother is a martyr and she goes to great extremes to nourish family and farm. This is a book with a unique narrative style utlizing the second person throughout. That is a quite uncommon technique as most novelists employ first person or third person. Often second person is tricky and not well done. But here the effect is one of drawing the reader fully into the story almost as their own character, a family member themselves participating in the retelling of the mother’s life and the search. It is a remarkable accomplishment. Some chapters are told from the viewpoints of the different children and the husband as well. As we meet each one of the adult children we discover them realizing how little they know of their mother’s inner life. It is a sad statement of fact that the daughter, a writer, when preparing a poster seeking help to find the mising mother, doesn’t know her mother’s true birthdate. A further sad statement on the marriage is revealed in the chapter when the hard as nails father of the family returns to their marital home and lays in bed overcome with grief that astonishes even him. He reflects on his habit of always walking too far ahead of the mother as a habit that may have led to her disappearance. And he understands too late how uncaring this one daily ritual must have seemed to his spouse. He understands too late also that he should have fought harder for better health care for his talented and undemanding wife. He feels guilt and shame and suprising amounts of love. Similarly each of the children realize the many sacrifices their mother made daily and they wonder if she was ever happy. They are all healthy and very successful in their fields. “After Mom went missing, I realized there’s an answer to everything. I could have done everything she wanted me to. It wasn’t important. I don’t know why I got under her skin over things like that.” Please Look Ater Mom is sad and beautiful and not for the faint of heart. It is a great story of sacrifice and, despite its fictional basis, speaks volumes about family relationships. It speaks to of the heart’s many facets and the grief that comes with losing your strongest anchor in the world. “Even though Mom’s missing, summer will come and fall will come again and winter will come, like this. And I’ll be living in a world without Mom.” The daughter has always had such a complicated relationship with her mother, but she alos realizes her mother’s impact too late. She wrestles as an unmarried female with whether her mother succeeded in life, or was ever happy or content. She grapples too with how good a daughter she was or was not. Her desparate search is weighted with all of the events in her past and her unexpressed sentiments. It is pure tragedy. It is a rare book that causes a reader to reflect on their own life with an eye to change. This one has that ability.

Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-Sook Shin, is by Random House Canada. $29.95 hardcover and 237 pages (translated from the Korean)

This is a $$$$ 1/2 out of $$$$$.

I received a copy of this book for free in order to review it.

Skinny – A Fun and Frightening Look at Kid’s Camps

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Skinny, by Diana Spechler is as divine as a gourmet dessert. I suspect this is one novel that will be found on many beaches, and in the hands of many at the cottage, this summer. Skinny is delicious, smart and funny. Skinny is a unique story inspired by the author’s summer stint at a children’s weight loss camp. It is a work of creative non fiction. It takes a serious jumping off point and an austere subject – health issues, both physical and mental, relating to childhood obesity, and it spins that off into a tongue in cheek almost satirical look at an industry that is perhaps out of control. It is a savvy title that can at once refer to the weight loss industry itself and the ‘skinny’ or truth at the heart of the relationships people have with food. There were moments when Skinny reminded me of a Michael Moore documentary on food. There were other moments when the main character Gray also harkened back to the main character at the heart of the Margaret Atwood novel, The Edible Woman. As the novel begins Gray, the main character, 26, is dealing with deep grief and guilt. Her very obese father has recently died. “After I killed my father, he taught me that honesty is optional,” she states. In the wake of his death she finds that she is unable to stop eating. One day, as Gray hunts through her father’s financial papers and emails, she finds evidence she has a half sister, Eden. Eden’s private life is quite exposed through social media and so Gray already thinks she knows a lot about her half sister when she signs on as a camp counsellor at the weight loss camp Eden is attending. The characters in Skinny are composites, which shouldn’t be surprising as these characters are much too funny, ironic and colourful to be entirely real. Take Lewis, for instance. Lewis is the camp founder who, without spoiling the ending of the book is slightly hypocritical and completely full of himself. He is a full blown narcissist who takes $11,000 per child for a summer that promises to transform children from overweight, bullied, victims to svelte, healthy members of society. Sheena is the very comical former foster child from the wrong side of the tracks who ascends to activities coordinator and wins the love of all the campers. She is also slightly deranged. Mikey is Gray’s moody boyfriend back home and Bennett is the well sculpted summer fling, an assistant at the camp. Spechler is a talented writer effortlessly moving between flashback type scenes and present day. She writes with skill and expertise, and the flow of the narrative is never strained, despite the jumps back and forth in time. Her flashbacks are so organic that the reader hardly knows they are happening and isn’t ever jolted. Spechler is also the author of Who By Fire.  She lives in New York City and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Details, Never and Glimmer. Skinny is contemporary in its topic matter and cultural references and somewhat horrifying in its harsh look at the obesity industry. If even a portion of this story is true as the author says it is, Skinny will be slightly horrifying for a whole group of parents that spend money sending their children to overnight camps. 

Skinny, by Diana Spechler, Harper Perennial, 368 pages, April 19, 2011, New York, Paperback $14.99.
Thriftymommastips gives this one a $$$$ out of $$$$$.
I received a copy of the book free for review.

The Weird Sisters

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The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown is a clever indulgence of a book, a bittersweet treat that will appeal to those who love literary fiction, or a passion for Shakespeare. The Weird Sisters is the story of three sisters, Rose, Bean and Cordy, or, when read as a contemporary and smart adaptation of King Lear, Rosalind, Bianca and Cordelia. Lear, in this telling of the story, is a professor at the University of Barnwell, a big fish inside a rather small bowl. He lives his life entirely in plays and books and recites bits of dialogue where conversation should be, and that makes life with this patriarch challenging and awkward. In current vernacular he might have been diagnosed with something akin to Asperger’s disorder or giftedness. He possesses brilliance and he is a remarkably loyal husband to an equally brilliant and scatter-brained wife, but he also is socially inept. Imagine being raised as the child of two parents such as these. Minds on fire all the time and yet often unable to stop thinking long enough to perform the most basic of domestic tasks required to raise a house full of girls. And so naturally the eldest of the girls, Rose has become the motherly figure, organizing everyone’s lives. As her fiancee has accepted a teaching position abroad for a time in England, Rose is adrift, back home again, not really by choice, but mostly due to the fact she cannot make up her mind if she truly wants to get married. As the story begins, there are three sisters, each returning home austensibly to help their mother battle breast cancer. But as the plot unfolds, it is revealed that each sister has their own reason for returning home. Each has failed in their attempts to live outside this tiny community on their own. Bianca, Bean, is home because she has lost a job, having stolen funds to keep herself living in the New York fashion she is accustomed to. Her clothing, material goods and lifestyle of flirting and disposing of men has caught up with her legally, and her age has also begun to interfere. In a particularly poignant scene Bean, desparate to prove her worth by seducing a man, heads to the Barnwell poolhall and finds a sad group of men on the prowl. Despite her self and her reservations, she pulls out all the stops trying to seduce them, men she wouldn’t even begint o look at twice in New York, and yet here she must settle. As she is honing in for the kill, a group of young women enter the bar and the lovely Bianca is tossed aside, like last night’s leftovers. “What did this mean for her? What do you do when you are no longer the one worth watching? When there are women less beautiful, less intelligent, less versed in the art of the game who nonetheless can beat you at it simply because of their birth date?” Rosalind, Rose, is the homebody, the eldest daughter, faithful and loyal to her family, but a brilliant mind in her own right, unable to realize her full potential, unable too to move on to England where her fiancee has accepted a job as a professor. She is the martyr of the trio. Will she be able to rise above that stereotypical role in time to save herself? Cordelia, Cordy is the baby of the group, an overgrown Hippy roady, allowing the winds to blow her about, never finding anchor until she is forced to re-examine her lifestyle due to an unexpected pregnancy. 
Each of the three sisters has a complicated relationship within the family. As the narrator puts it in the start of the book. “See we love each other, we just don’t happen to love each other very much.” They are each a great deal more like their parents than they think they are, and therefore everyone exists slightly socially awkward in the world and much too reliant on the plots and words that they have read and internalized. As their mother prepares for a mastectomy, the narrator says: “Another family might have made preparations. Another mother might have cooked casseroles in Corningware and frozen them, labeled with instructions.” Instead to the hospital each of the sisters brings with her, a book in which they will escape and avoid having to confront real life. “Instead, we would do what we always did, the only thing we’d ever been depebndably stellar at: we’d read.”
In some ways this book is also a charming look at a marriage that is quite remarkable. There are glimpses here that illustrate how interconnected husband and wife are, growing even more intertwined as they are challenged by cancer. There is a comical aside here by the sisters, noting the irony of the fact that so much literature is written on the impact of divorce and none written about the equally onerous impact of a marriage that is epic in strength and duration. How, states one of the sisters, could we ever be expected to find for ourselves a love that is so great? The Weird Sisters is a charming literary coming of age story and a savvy retelling of Shakespeare. It is a dark look at the relationships within a family and the many ways in which family can often simultaneously support, nurture and hurt each other the most.

The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown, Feb. 2011, Putnam Books, Penguin Group Canada, 336 pages, $24.95 US or $31.00 Canadian.

Thriftymommastips rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$.

I received a copy of this book in order to facilitate the review. This in no way impacts or alters  my opinion.

The Search: Blog Tour

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The Search is a quiet little charmer of a book. A romantic story set in Amish country, The Search is part three in the Lancaster County Secrets series of women’s Christian romance novels. This story centres around two young women, one named Bess and the other Lainey O’Toole. At first it is unclear what the two women might have in common and how their stories are intertwined. Bess is the grandaughter of Bertha Riehl, and she is sent for the summer to Pennsylvania to help care for her grandmother after some surgery has left Bertha in need. Well, the surgery turns out to have been a bit of a stretch and the grandmother, a bit of a scheming puppet-master. Bertha is a comical character who Bess learns to love over the course of the summer. Bess and Bertha and the farmhand Billy will all work together throughout the summer at Rose Hill farm, living off the land and learning how to grow roses. The roses, of course, are a metaphor for the characters within the book, some blooming like Bess, others slowly withering like Simon and Bertha and, yet another group still twinning together like the hybrids Billy has learned to graft into new variations on the traditional flower. Throughout the summer Bertha mischieviously tells Bess she must teach her how to drive a car and repeatedly “borrows” a police car to give her lessons. When Bertha manages to get herself and Bess thrown into jail, her son Jonah must return home. Thus Bertha successfully orchestrates the return of her son Jonah, Bess’s father. Lainey O’Toole has remained in Stoney Ridge following some car troubles. She is an aspiring chef who once lived in Stoney Ridge and didn’t intend to return, but winds up spending far more time there than intended. While she is there revisiting her old home, she is confronted by her past and the choices made so long ago, on a night when Jonah and his young family were involved in a horse and buggy accident just outside Lainey’s old childhood home. When Bertha Riehl’s brother, the drunk Simon, who has been shunned by the Amish community for many years, is near death, Bertha seeks a family member to donate bone marrow. Finding a match for the old miserable Simon starts a whole subplot that will call DNA and lineage into question. When Bess is eventually found to be a perfect match, everybody but Jonah, it seems, understands what that must mean. This is a story well told. Suzanne Woods Fisher has successfully created several strong female characters that really are the heart of this book. The author shows restraint and purpose in capturing the reality of Amish life. Suzanne Woods Fisher is the author of The Choice and The Waiting. I have not read either one of the earlier stories, so I know that this novel can stand on its own, or in the context of the series. Based on how much I enjoyed this story, I would happily choose either of those other books. Getting to know the characters in The Search was enjoyable. The characters are engaging and well rounded and driven by psychological struggles and romantic desires. I found this book to be a nice surprise and truly enjoyed the strong female characters.
The Search by Suzanne Woods Fisher, Jan. 2001, Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, US $14.99, 297 pages with discussion guide.

Thriftymommastips rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$.
I received a copy of this book in order to review it. The opinions in this blog are my own.

Friday Blog Hop and What Would You Read to Your Daughter?

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This is a fun Friday bloghop for book lovers started by parajunkee.com. I thought I’d pop on by there today and find some new books. Also featured blogger Julie at My Five Monkeys asks If you have a daughter what do you want to read to her? I have a list that I have already started reading both of my girls and I have to say this is one of the best parts of parenting. The reading and sharing the love of the written word. On my list is Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland (future as they aren’t old enough yet) and so far we have worked through: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Delta, Charlotte’s Web, the Life of Pi, The Velveteen Rabbit, Ramona and Beezus. When I was a kid I also loved Heidi, so I suspect I will get to that one soon too. Meanwhile, we are eagerly awaiting the new Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe movie. No, we are not Harry Potter fans here. We enjoy classics and we discover some new amazing authors together too. This week I found Lunch With Lenin, by Deborah Ellis and am now committed to working through her entire collection of books so that I can steer Payton in that direction soon. Ellis writes novels that are socially aware and that tackle global issues like Aids and poverty and drugs. I even found a reference to FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder) in the recent Lunch With Lenin.

Dork Diaries: Tales From The TreeHouse and a giveaway

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Tales From The TreeHouse series with my daughter Payton. This is our own mother-daughter book club vlog. Expect to see more. These are timely pre-teen girly books with snappy drawings about girls in middle school. Think Diary of a Wimpy Kid for girls.

thriftymommastips rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$. I received copies of these books to review, but I am not paid for my opinion. My opinion is all my own.

I have one copy of Dork Diaries: Tales From a Not So Popular Party Girl to give away to a lucky reader.
To enter:
1. Follow me on twitter @inkscrblr
2. Leave me a comment here with contact info and one good tip for keeping older children 9 + engaged in reading.
3. Follow brainfood on GFC. See side of blog.
I will draw for this on Sept. 30. Open to Canada and US.

A Dozen Different Ways to Keep Kids Reading All Summer

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TwitterMoms came up with this idea as part of an I Can Read books campaign running with Harper Collins and since I’ve been mulling this topic over for some time I thought I would post today some of my tips for summer reading.

1. TEACHER: Think like a teacher. On sunny days at your child’s school they take the lesson outside to vary it up a bit and make magic memories. Pick a topic that is summery or sunny, or even the opposite of that, and read outdoors underneath a tree. When it is superhot we make fake snow and read a winter book set in the Arctic.

2. MAGAZINES: Subscribe to magazines so kids can peruse at their leisure. My eldest daughter got a gift subscription to Chickadee magazine many years ago from my mother-in-law. After my mother-in-law passed away I kept the subscription going because Payrton loves it so much. What a great gift and a great legacy. Now we have Chirp for my youngest daughter, now 6, and Chickadee and even a French magazine to keep them learning en francais.

3. READ ALOUD: Don’t underestiamte the power of oral storytelling. Pick a big fun book you always meant to read together and schedule it for the summer. Delve into Chronicles of Narnia or Anne of Green Gables. We started The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe together about three weeks ago and I’ve read about five pages a night each night. We are almost done now and I have no idea what will be next. (which brings me to next tip.)

4. BE A DRAMA MAMA: Act a bit to bring it alive. Something about summer and the drama camps my kids do makes me want to try on different accents. So for three weeks I’ve been faking a British accent and the kids love it. I’m reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, so it only makes sense.

5. THEMES: Pick a theme and bring it alive. Maybe science books, and do some experiments too to help illustrate the theme, or a craft. I have experiments over here at http://www.thriftymommastips.blogspot.com/ There are a few cool books that give you hints on how to do this. One of them was reviewed by me here many months ago. It was called the Parent-Child Book Club,by Melissa Stoller and Marci Winkler.

6. LIBRARY: Take them to the library for their fun summer programs. Walk or ride bikes, or haul the wagon behind you. Most library programs are free and they often will do a summer story time. Some do summer reading contests.

7.  BOOK STORE: Visit your local Chapters/Indigo or Smithbooks and have them pick one new book.

8. MOVIES AND THEATRE: Movies can be complementary to books, and so can theatre. Check out what’s coming soon at local theatre and if your kids like to watch performances as mine do then read the book and get tickets for the play. We have seen a few interesting theatrical shows. Recently my children saw Velveteen Rabbit. It didn’t make them want to read less, but more.

9. READING NOOKS: Book corners in the house. Books in the van or car. Books that travel. My kids never go anywhere without books. When they are handy, then during a quiet moment they are easy to choose. Also stash them in every room of the house. I mean – every room. Audiobooks also count.

10. PHONICS OVER FROSTED FLAKES: I will use tools like the I Can Read books a lot this summer for my youngest who needs to build confidence before entering grade one. I will use them in the morning and read with her at breakfast. I do this on purpose because my active girl loses interest later on in the day and is sharpest in the morning. Also if she senses that I am trying to get her to work then game over. So we will be reading over the Corn Flakes.

11. FIND FESTIVALS: Summer is a great time to get outside and look for local writer’s festivals and story-telling festivals, even children’s festivals. Almost always there is reading going on there. Having someone else do the reading while you sit beside your child in the park and absorb another wonderful season…what could be better?

12. COOKING: Cook and bake together. Have them read the recipes. This is a great math and reading activity. Not to mention Yummy!

“I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms blogging program to be eligible to get an “I Can Read!” book. For more information on how you can participate, click here: http://www.twittermoms.com/forum/topics/share-tips-for-getting-kids-to?