Hailey's Picks: Board Books for Toddlers

I don’t know about you, but around here we read ALL the time. Not just me reading my eBooks or magazines and such. But Hailey loves books already (Especially now that she’s getting a little more of an attention span).

I do have to insist on board books still. She likes to be involved and turn the pages which can get rough at times. It also makes it easier for when she is looking at them on her own. We’ve tried a couple of books with tabs and stuff to lift up but my little monkey is still a little too overzealous with them.

I cringe every time a book gets beat up…I guess it goes back to when I was a little kid and it was ingrained in our brains that bending and tearing up books was a mortal sin or something.

Onward to our current list of faves:              

 

 

 

 

    1)     Noodle Loves the Beach

This is a simple, one-line per page book with cute illustrations of a panda bear and his mom at the beach. This book actually does have some interactivity to it, but it’s definitely made for the age… it can withstand Hailey (and that is sayin’ a lot).

 

2)    Little Blue Truck

Beep, Beep, beep! Love this book…we actually bought it as a special from B&N a while back. A really sweet book that’s a bit longer than your normal board book but it still keeps their attention.  Hailey started out liking it because of the animal sounds and now every time she sees a truck she says “beep, beep, beep”.

 

    3)    Llama Llama Nighty Night

Follows Llama as he goes through everything he does to go to bed. It’s great because it helps with a nighttime routine and she can go along with llama. It has a nice rhyme and cute pictures.

 

 

4)    Tumble Bumble

We actually just bought this book a couple days ago and it’s already a favorite! It’s the story of a little bug as a goes for a walk and meets all kinds of new friends. Soooo cute! Love the nonsense rhyming and adorable illustration.

 

 

5)    We technically have so many books it’d probably take me days to list them all, but some of other standards are Sandra Boynton books and Dr. Seuss (who doesn’t love those?).

Of course we HAVE to have an e book included. Our ALL TIME favorite is Nighty Night. This was the first eBook I bought for Hailey (and it was before the child even knew what a book was). I love it because she can now help to turn all the lights out for the animals so they can go to bed. They just got a couple add-ons where you can get even more animals.  It was well worth the price!

 
 

 

Better a book worm than a TV junky!

CNet

I’ve been reading more than I did when I was in school. I know I feel way better about a night spent reading and lounging around than I do the same amount of time lost staring at a TV screen. I like to mix up the types of books I read from award-winning literary fiction to chick lit, make-you-smarter nonfiction or even vampires (hey, I’m human).

I know the other day when the kids asked on two separate occasions if I had seen a particular advertisement on TV… that I hadn’t watched anything but a Disney Channel show or my recorded shows in a loooonnnggg time! It was actually kinda nice to know that.

To tell ya the truth, I don’t miss it at all!

I don’t know how, but I read seven books over the week. My mom and sister told me about a cool website that offers free Kindle eBooks throughout the day every day! (Even if you don’t have a Kindle you can get a Kindle eBook app for your phone or iPod/iPad) It’s called Pixel of Ink and you can find it here http://www.pixelofink.com/. They have all sorts of books that you may not normally have read, but with it being free you can try it out.

EBook Frenzy

Honestly I don’t know why it’s so much easier and faster to read an eBook than it is to read an actual paper book. Since I started reading on my phone/iPod I have read so many more books that there is no comparison.

One would think with all the kids being home from school that it would slow down, but it hasn’t.  If you take a glance over to the right at my Shlefari list….it would attest to that! The only thing that momentarily slowed me down for a couple weeks was that darn book review I had to do on the early release. Needless to say I’ve been a little leery on signing up for any more of those.

I just finished up 2 books this weekend. An Iris Johansen thriller in her Eve Duncan series called Countdown (6th in the series). My favorite books in the series are the ones involving Eve’s adopted daughter and this was one of them. I liked the book and it was a quick read. It was one of those books that you can’t predict everything that is going to happen….thank god! If you want a synopsis of any of the books I’ve read recently you can hover over it in my bookshelf or go into my Shelfari.

The other book I read this weekend was Gossip by Beth Gutcheon. She is an awesome storyteller and I hated when the book ended. I wanted to continue in her character’s lives to find out what else happened. Always a good sign that it was a good book! I actually had never heard of her or the book, but saw on library web site the huge list of people waiting for it….definitely worth the wait. I'm thinking I'm going to have find some more of her books to see how those are.

I don’t know about ya’ll, but I LOVE getting stuff for free. If you haven’t tried an eBook or your local library….you should! Almost all of the books from the last 6 months that I’ve read have been from my local library. I never even have to step foot in the library or a store and if the book you want isn’t available…just put it on hold and read something else. It’s amazing how fast you go through that wait line without even knowing it!

Only me….and the book review

Let me preface this by saying….all I was looking to do was to read a few good books (for free and early) and then write a nice little review on them. Of course it couldn’t be that easy!

 I’ve been lamenting and stressing over this darn review for weeks. Those of you that know me know that I can read a good book in a day. This book took me a couple weeks to read. I’m just one of those people that once I start something…I need to finish it!

I signed up for a website a month or so ago that gives you the opportunity to get early release books and then you repay that kindness by writing a review on the book. My VERY first book that I won was a book called “Falling into Green” by Cher Fischer. The following is the review I submitted….I also included the email I sent to the editor.

Review:

 “As an Eco psychologist, Dr. Esmeralda Green is skilled at solving the mysteries of the mind, especially if they collide with the laws of nature. But when a body is found below the crumbling cliffs near her Los Angeles home, she is pulled back in time to a tragedy that defies all understanding. When a young girl is murdered at the same cliff that took the life of her best childhood friend, Ez suspects the two are connected - and, having always lived up to her ecological name, she has learned to trust her intuition and the cues that the natural world can offer.”(Book synopsis from Goodreads)

I love a good, strong female character and Esmeralda Green is one. She speaks her mind and does life her way! Her leading man is the hunky TV news reporter Gabriel Hugo Garcia and he keeps her on her toes throughout the story.

The author had very thorough and interesting characters with a very well thought-out plot line that was anything but predictable. I went into reading this book hoping for the best. The story write-up sounded intriguing and something right up my alley. It had a refreshingly new take on a murder mystery, but I had a hard time getting involved with the characters. I think with some more editing of the overly descriptive character descriptions that this book could be much better! It was very distracting to have the same descriptions restated multiple times. I looked forward to the book/characters being ecologically friendly but felt that the emphasis on this could have been toned down just a bit.

When requested for a review I feel compelled to write one, I know all the hard work from the writer and editors that went into this piece of work and hate to take away from any of that.

My email to the editor:

John,

 I wanted to thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to read this book early. I apologize for the delayed review. I actually agonized over writing my review. I wanted so badly to like this book and was very excited about the story line and characters, but the detractors unfortunately won out on this one. I know all of you have to put so much work into each and every book that goes out there…and I by no means want to detract from that! If I can be of any help…please let me know…I just didn’t want any comments I made to come out snarky…so I kept any details to a minimum.

 Thanks,

Anissa