Hello Readers! Welcome, and Happy New Year with warmest wishes for a healthy and happy 2024 to you and yours!
It has been a great year of “read-alouds” this year for my son and I! Additionally, I am happy to announce that my son began his own bookish journey this year and began selecting and reading his first proper chapter books! So, for the first time, there is one book on this list that I have not read and is wholly recommended by my son alone.
Enjoy! And have a lovely New Years’ Day!
This is the sweetest story, balanced on a broomstick with a wonderfully sarcastic cat. We had not yet seen the Studio Ghibli version, so went into it completely fresh, and were delighted! I loved that most of the characters were good natured and kind. Great introduction to starting and growing a business.
Becoming a great torero like his father is what is expected of Manolo. How can he follow his own heart and mind without letting everyone down and appearing the coward? But somehow, Manolo finds the courage to take control of his own life….the ending is magical…my son and I both “had something in our eyes”. A novel that both entertains while speaking out against bullfighting.
We read one Harry Potter every year in the autumn and have so far kept pace with MinaLima’s releases of their amazing, illustrated versions. Although we definitely enjoyed the first and second books, we both felt “Azkaban” to be a step up from the other two and whizzed through this book like lightning!
A fantastic example of how you can broaden horizons through reading. Introduces the history of cinematography and filmmaking in a unique and ingenious way as we follow Hugo’s journey of discovery. Both my son and I were completely enchanted! This is a thick book but reads fast as so much of it is in pictures.
This was a favorite of my childhood that I shared with my son. Every chapter has something exciting happening: a buffalo stampede, a flood, a fire – this book does not sit around!
Do keep in mind that it does reflect outdated attitudes, in the form of the fears white settlers had as they moved through western territories, towards our First Nations peoples. Because of this, I would recommend it as a “read-aloud”, as it can then be censored/discussed as you see fit. Based on threads of a true story: diary entries made by outpost attendants on the Sager children.
Based on real events, Norwegian kids are enlisted to help a town move its wealth to safety during Nazi occupation by smuggling gold on their sleds while posing as kids just enjoying themselves at play. It is a gentle introduction to WWII and had us both “at the edge of our seats” towards the end!
Be still my classic-loving heart! One of my son’s favorites from this year is Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge. This was actually one of our first reads of 2023 and there were parts that seemed a bit tedious so I was surprised when my son listed it in his top 5! But it makes perfect sense – an ice-skating race, lost treasure, a mystery, fathers lost and fathers found, a beautiful story!!
This was the year my son began reading proper chapter books on his own, and we have this Wings of Fire series (along with his school teacher who made these books available in her classroom) to thank for it! He (and several other kids we know) are crazy about these books, which revolve around five young dragons, called dragonets, who are raised in a cave and protected so they can one day fulfill a prophesy to end a war between the three dragon queens: Blister, Blaze and Burn.
Coming in second place is The Lightning Thief. Before reading it, we read the D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, which has itself become a modern classic and stands the test of time. Having the background in Greek mythology made this especially interesting, but either way, this book is riveting, adventurous, exciting, and provides a great hero for kids struggling with learning disabilities. This version illustrated by John Rocco is amazing, but becoming more and more expensive.
The Wild Robot series is unique, beautiful, and riveting, and each of the three books so far in the series has made it into my son’s top 10. However, The Wild Robot Protects tops them all. The wild robot, Roz, must find a way to keep “the poison tide” from spreading so goes on a mission to find the “ancient shark” who may have the answers she needs. A gorgeous story about how systematically working together can bring about real and effective change.
