What My Kids Are Reading: January 5, 2018
Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece
Well, it’s a new year, and with that comes…well, really more of the same when it comes to reading with my kids! I don’t have any specific goals for their reading, just that they keep doing it. I saw a great idea from Mom of Wild Things, and I’m going to try it this year for myself. She keeps a notebook and writes down every book she and her kids read together. I love this idea because we read A LOT, and I’m interested to see, at the end of the year, just how much we really do read together. The list may be getting shorter since we’re reading longer chapter books now, but I’m certain the number was well into the hundreds when I would read them a bunch of picture book every day!
Since we are still on Christmas break, we’ve been doing a lot of reading together, so this week I’m sharing two books we read together and one book that my kids keep out all the time and constantly reference.
I can’t wait to see what you read with your kids in 2018 too!
What We’re Reading Together
Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece
Thank you to the Kid Lit Exchange for the review copy of this book! I’ll start off by saying that we absolutely loved Fallingwater. It’s a picture book retelling of how Frank Lloyd Wright built one of his most famous houses, named Fallingwater. It’s simply written, but engaging enough that my 9-year-old was super interested and asked if we could buy our own copy to read again. I learned a lot too! Wright built this house on top of a waterfall, and the engineering that went into it is amazing. We watched a couple of short videos online about the house right after reading the book, and it made us all want to learn even more! Even if you think your kid wouldn’t be interested in architecture (I didn’t think mine would be), I highly recommend this book! They loved that it was about a real person and that the possibility of visiting that house is available. (Which also made me wonder why kids are so much more interested in non-fiction than adults…)
Most People
I learned about this book from Kate over at The Loud Library Lady, and it is a wonderful book. Most People is about how most people in the world are good, and even though there are some not so nice people out there, the good far outweighs the bad. It also briefly touches on how sometimes people who do bad things can change. (This is illustrated by showing a little boy stealing an apple on one page and apologizing on the next.) If your kids are asking a lot of questions about why some people do bad things, or they’ve seen something scary in the news, this is the perfect book to explain that a little bit, and to open discussions about people in the world and how you can do good things.
The Book My Kids Are Obsessed With
Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia
My 9-year-old bought this at the school book fair before Christmas, and he and my 6-year-old read it every day. Every. Day. And this book is not playing around when it calls itself an encyclopedia. Whatever you want to know about Star Wars, down to the furniture used throughout, is pictured and described in detail. My kids are obsessed with it, and they both love to read it and then show me exactly which laser blaster thing each character uses and why. If you have a Star Wars fan in your house, this makes a wonderful gift! (If it’s an encyclopedia it’s educational, right??)