children

All good children's stories are the same: young creature breaks rules, has incredible adventure, then returns home with the knowledge that aforementioned rules are there for a reason.

Of course, the actual message to the careful reader is: break rules as often as you can, because who the hell doesn't want to have an adventure?

― Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Vol. 3

The largest population of orphans anywhere in the world is within the pages of children's books. This Barnes & Noble article gives a nice list of some of the most familiar: Little Orphan Annie, Anne (of Green Gables) Shirley

I read Dad is Fat for my book club and, as a group, we reached several conclusions.

- If you have children, Gaffigan is really funny.

- If you don’t have children, he’s just “meh."

- While reading the book is okay, listening to Gaffigan read his work is much better. If you can, choose the audio.

-We all love how adoringly, respectfully, and admiringly Gaffigan speaks of his wife. I, personally, will be crushed if, five or ten years down the road, we find out they actually hate each other and are just pretending for the book.

My favorite two essays are “Dogfight," where Gaffigan expresses

This book is a combination of short stories of Niequist's life with a focus on difficulties having children. She is a woman of faith and relates her stories to spiritual lessons which she realized after each individual experience. Almost every chapter is tied to a specific dish which she cooked for a particular experience and she includes recipes at the end of the chapters. I thought that this book was interesting because it was an intimate portrait of a woman's struggle with being thankful for what she had while wanting a larger family. Her stories were well-written and provides readers with

Parents: if you’re looking for a few hours of uninterrupted time to yourself, check out Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney--for your kid.  NoveList, an online database the Library subscribes to, is a great resource for books.  It lists the minimum reading level for this book at 2nd grade and the maximum reading level at 8th grade.  I’d agree that’s about right.  If you’ve got a 7-year-old Human Reading Vacuum, a 14-year-old reluctant reader, or anyone in between, it’s a good bet they’ll become engrossed in this book.  

I let our seven-year-old Human Reading Vacuum stay up way past her

I didn’t expect to love the book Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, by Anne Enright.  The silly, cutesy title and cover photo inclined me to shrug my shoulders and hide what I was reading in public.  And the first essay was a strange, confusing thing that I still haven’t untangled.  Luckily, I didn’t start with the first essay.  I started with the introduction. And in the introduction, Anne Enright won me over.  She says, about women who write about motherhood, “It is the way they are both smug and astonished.  It is the way we think we have done something amazing, when we have done no

Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is a wonderful, magical fairy-tale fantasy that is aimed at children but doesn't talk down to them—and is written in a way that will appeal to adults, too. It's a fantasy in the same vein as Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom Tollbooth, and L. Frank Baum's Oz books. In The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, 12-year-old September is whisked away from her home in Omaha, Nebraska by the Green Wind and taken to Fairyland on his steed, the Leopard of Little Breezes. September has a wondrous, mysterious

Laurel’s life is going according to plan.  She has come a long way from her trailer- trash beginnings in the hills of Alabama.  Happily married with an adored 12-year-old daughter, she lives in a “perfect” gated Florida community.  She hasn’t seen her uncle’s ghost since leaving Alabama and she has managed to shield her husband and daughter from a past she longs to forget.  But her world begins to fall apart when she finds her daughter’s best friend in Laurel’s pool – after the girl’s ghost appears to Laurel.  Police investigate and find the drowning to be accidental; but Laurel doesn’t

How would you learn to use stairs if you lived every day of your first five years in an 11' x11' room? What it would it be like to see a bird flying, or know what a blade of grass looks like? That's life for Jack. His Ma has been held captive in the room for seven years. She bore and raised Jack there, living off the frugal "generosity" of their captor. Told entirely by Jack, this poignant and often oddly funny narrative begs the question "what kind of ROOM are you living in?" Jack is not a victim. He knows nothing else. Room, chair, rug, duvet and other items are his world and his family. I

This nifty book has colorful pictures, which are heartwarming and uplifting. The inspirational read is for mothers or anyone to enjoy. A great book to flip through when you are in line waiting or on break.

Government information for children, parents, teachers, and librarians is readily available at the Gov Doc Kids Group Wiki (http://govdocs4children.pbworks.com/). This site is rich in internet government information resources especially designed for children. Also available are instructions for the annual Constitution Day Poster Contest
(http://govdocs4children.pbworks.com/Celebrate+Constitution+Day+with+us!). All children K-12 are invited to enter.

Christy Hayes has it all: Olympic medals, a thriving business she built from the ground up, a dashing and successful CEO husband and all that comes with him. It’s more than she ever dreamed of. But it’s all about to come crashing down after her beloved housekeeper passes leaving Christy the guardian of her 11 year old grand-daughter Renata. With Renata come responsibilities that upset the balance of Christy’s life. And she is forced to make choices that neither her Olympic training, nor her business acumen have prepared her for.

Ridiculous characterizations and unlikely business situations