Blog Tour: From Dark to Light
Thank you to Pink Umbrella Books for sending me a copy of this book and including me in the blog tour! All opinions are my own!
Do you remember what you were doing when you were 12? I don’t, but I’m certain it wasn’t anything as industrious as Isabella Murphy, the 12-year-old author of From Dark to Light
From Dark to Light is the story of a little pumpkin seed, Pumpker, and his two sisters, Plumpalicious and Plumpilina. They are planted in the ground together, and Pumpker just wants to get back out of the ground and find a family to love him. (It doesn’t help that his sisters are kind of annoying, as sisters can be, and won’t talk to him.) But when Pumpker and his sisters grow into pumpkins and are taken home with a family, together, they find that they have more in common than they thought, and Pumpker finds the love of a child he’s been wishing for.
You guys, this is the sweetest book, with the most fun illustrations. Both of my boys (ages 6 and 8) loved it, and my 6-year-old has been asking me to read it over and over. The basic story, of a pumpkin seed wanting to grow up and be loved by a family, is wonderful in itself, but it is the underlying message that I really love. The fact that a 12-year-old wrote it makes it even more impressive. Seeing Pumpker overcome tough times (being stuck in the dirt with slimy worms) to reach his goal is inspiring to kids. He also has to deal with his sisters, who think he’s weird and aren’t super nice to him, but at the end they discover that he’s “not the only weirdo,” which shows kids that we’re all different, and everyone has something in common, no matter how different they seem.
This book is great to read aloud (there is a lot of text on the pages, so it’s not a one sentence per page picture book), and the pictures are so beautiful to look at. This is a perfect fall book to add to your collection! (Or to start a new one!)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Review: Reading People
Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything
My personality traits don’t determine my destiny, they inform it.
If you listen to Anne Bogel’s podcast What Should I Read Next or read her blog Modern Mrs. Darcy, you’re probably aware that she’s more than a little into personality. (And if you don’t know who Anne Bogel is, for shame! Just kidding. But seriously, go check out her blog and podcast. They are very well done!) Before Anne, I wasn’t really aware of all the personality typing books and programs out there, aside from whatever quiz we were made to take in high school that supposedly told us what job we would be good at. Now? I’m fascinated.
Anne’s book, Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything
As I read the book, I kept thinking, “yes, yes, yes, this is me, and this explains a lot.” (And in case you’re wondering, I’m an INFJ, enneagram 2.) Anne is a talented writer, and she explains that different personalities, and how we often mis-type ourselves, so well. For example, I’ve been told for most of my life that because I was involved with theatre and choir and wasn’t shy onstage that I was an outgoing extrovert. So I always wondered if something was wrong with me because I really prefer staying home with my family to going out, often have to talk myself into going out with friends (not because I don’t want to see them, but because I would just rather be at home), and have anxiety over making phone calls to strangers. Turns out, I’m not crazy, weird, or an extrovert. I’m an introvert who happens to be comfortable on a stage. (You really can’t see the audience when those blinding lights are on.) If I had realized this earlier, I think it would have helped me make some different decisions, or at least make more informed decisions. I identified with almost zero extroverted traits, and almost all the introverted ones, and that was eye-opening.
In addition to realizing some important things about my own personality, I was able to learn how to better communicate with people who have different personality types than my own. Knowing where I’m coming from, personality wise, and understanding where another person may be coming from, has already helped me become less frustrated. (And I’m sure helped my family become less frustrated with talking to me!)
For me, Reading People
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
EXTRA!
Another thing I love about Reading People is that you don’t have to read straight through. You can pick and choose the chapters that are interesting to you, only read about your specific type, and then go back and read some more if you want more information. It is truly a great resource.
[Top]Review: Emma in the Night
Thank you so much to Texas Reader Girl for loaning me her ARC of this book!
The moment I had not been prepared for—the one thing I had not ever imagined in all those years—was that my mother would not recognize me.
I’m not going to lie. The initial thing that drew me into this book was the cover. It is haunting, and I wanted to know more. Happily, the inside of the book surpassed the outside. Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker is a psychological thriller perfect for fall (but really any season, to be honest), and I found myself reading as fast as I could, anywhere I could, to find out what exactly was going on with Emma.
The Tanner sisters, Cass and Emma, disappeared three years ago. Early one morning, Cass shows up on her mother’s doorstep demanding that they need to go back to “the island” for Emma. A detective and a forensic psychologist interview Cass multiple times, piecing together a strange story of kidnapping, a mysterious island off the coast of Maine, and a baby. In addition, the psychologist is convinced that something isn’t quite right with Cass and Emma’s family life, and it may have something to do with why they were kidnapped.
I loved this book. It’s not only a thriller, it’s a study in narcissistic personality disorder and just how far someone with that diagnosis will go to put themselves first. The level of manipulation (I won’t tell you which characters-I have to leave some spoilers out here!) in this story is wild. I found myself wishing I could give advice or hugs to some of the characters in the book, and I might have actually talked to the book . . . out loud . . . because a certain character (ahem, Cass and Emma’s mom) was so frustrating.
I don’t want to say much else, because there are a lot of twists and turns in Emma in the Night
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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What My Kids Are Reading: October 13, 2017
Happy Friday! The format is a little different this week. Instead of featuring three books my kids are loving, I’m going to review one, because I loved it so much and because I think it remains an extremely important book for kids of all ages today. (And to be honest, I think some adults could learn a lesson or two from it.)
The Story of Ferdinand
I bought this book because I wanted to read it to my kids before the Blue Sky movie version is out in December. Book before the movie, kids, always remember that. I was expecting a simple book about a happy bull that didn’t want to fight. And it is that, but it is also so much more. I was so taken with the message of this book that I did a little research about it. Ferdinand was first published in 1936, and was immediately labeled a pacifist story. Hitler ordered that all copies of this book be burned in Nazi Germany, but Stalin allowed it as the only non-communist children’s book allowed in Poland. It has been called everything from fascist to communist to pacifist to a story about gender nonconformity. And of course, it’s been banned in many countries.
Sounds a little more interesting than a simple story about a bull.
The story is set in Spain. Ferdinand lives on a farm with other bulls. All the other bulls want to socialize and run around and show how tough they are. Ferdinand is perfectly happy sitting under a tree by himself and looking at the flowers. When a bee stings him one day, he runs around in pain, snorting and stamping the ground. He is immediately recruited for bull fighting, and thrust into the ring. Instead of getting angry or scared, he simply sits down and enjoys the flowers all the ladies in the audience are wearing on their heads. He is poked and prodded many times, but he never gives the audience what they want. Ferdinand stays true to his nature.
What immediately struck me was how fantastic this is for kids who are happy being by themselves. Not lonely, and not by themselves against their will, but kids who prefer to sit quietly rather than be in a crowd. Kids are so often told or forced to go play with other kids, to go be social, to play sports. And those things are important. But some kids really, truly aren’t comfortable with any of that, and that’s ok. Ferdinand the bull shows them that even a big, tough bull needs quiet time as well.
It is also a wonderful example of how it’s ok to be different, even though everyone around you acts the same way and expects you to act like them. Ferdinand didn’t let anyone, not even bull fighters with spears who poked at him, change who he was or how he wanted to live. I think that’s a lesson we can all appreciate.
If you’re like me and are new to Ferdinand
EXTRA!
This is a great article on Huffpost about how to talk to kids about the deeper meanings in Ferdinand.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-day/the-story-of-ferdinand-ta_b_5504402.html
[Top]Review: The Rules of Magic
Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with a digital galley of this book – all opinions are my own!
The summer had started them thinking: If they were not like everyone else, who, then, were they?
Y’all, my love for Alice Hoffman runs deep. I’ve been reading her books since high school, and she writes magical realism like no one else. I recently re-read Practical Magic
In Practical Magic, Gillian and Sally live with their aunts, Franny and Jet, after their parents die. They spend much of the book denying their ancestry and both being fascinated by and trying to ignore the strange things the aunts do to help the women in their small town. The Rules of Magic is about Franny and Jet, their childhood, and how they came to be the women of Practical Magic. Franny, Jet, and their brother, Vincent, live in New York City, where their mother sets strict rules for them. But once a year, they visit their aunt Isabelle in a small Massachusetts town where their family has lived for centuries, the house on Magnolia Street. They, too, are trying to escape the Owens’ family curse, where magic rules and love leads to misfortune. But as Franny and Jet grow up, and Vincent makes his own way, they discover that you can’t outrun your destiny.
This is more blatantly magical than the first book, where magic is talked about and hinted at, and I have to say that I loved that. I loved seeing exactly what the Owens siblings were capable of, and how they dealt with that from youth into adulthood. I don’t want to say that I liked this better than Practical Magic . . . but I think I did. The characters are so well-written I felt like I knew them, and I wanted to hug all three siblings and help them somehow. I also really appreciated the added suspense in this novel. Hoffman is a beautiful writer, and I will read anything she writes, but The Rules of Magic contains an element of suspense that she doesn’t usually include, and it worked really well. The beginning story is interesting and will keep your attention because of the characters, but the end of the book will have you reading as fast as possible to find out what happens.
Like in her other books, Hoffman sticks with some tried and true themes: family is family, being an outsider is hard, and being true to yourself is important. She uses these in a lot of her books, but never feel tired because she introduces new ideas in every story, and this one felt fresh too. I think she takes a lot of things from her own life and weaves them into her stories. Hoffman used to be notoriously private, preferring people to just read her books and ignore her, leaving her alone at home. If you read The Rules of Magic closely, that theme of the importance of home is loud and clear. No matter where the characters go, or what they go through, they always go back home. The house on Magnolia Street draws everyone back in, and remaining close to home becomes very important to all of the Owens women.
The Rules of Magic is one of Hoffman’s best works yet and, selfishly, I hope she writes more about the Owens family, because I cannot get enough. This is great all year, but especially perfect for your nightstand in October!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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