Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Last Giveaway of Scholastic Books - Leave a comment and win!

UPDATE: The winner of the books is Liz of The Low Down on Family O.

First off, thank you so much for the great reading recommendations! My family and I, and all fellow APISS readers, are totally reaping the rewards of your great book picks. New library and book store picks are worth their weight in gold.

For the third and final week, the Scholastic Summer Challenge people are happily giving away another pack of free books to an A Parent in Silver Spring reading family. Just leave a comment below with four of your family's fave children's books and you'll be entered to win four new books tailored to your child's age and reading level. The winner will be randomly drawn. Woo hoo!

The Scholastic Summer Challenge is a program to ensure kids don't fall victim to the "summer slide" - a loss of skills that can occur when they're out of school and out of practice. The website, parent resources and Summer Reading Lists all help keep kids' skills current.

Here are my own family's recs for this week:

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake...by Laura Numeroff, illustrated by Felicia Bond $11.55 Hardcover. The latest in the "If you give a [insert animal] a [insert treat]" series by Numeroff and Bond. Both my kids started jumping up and down when they heard there was a new one, and this one featured their favorite animal and their favorite crack cake vehicle. This story goes from merry-go-round to beach to museum and is cute as the series' predecessors.

Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken by Kate Dicamillo, illustrated by Harry Bliss $14.03 hardcover. The author of Tales of Despereaux, Dicamillo is the master of making bravery both accessible and exciting for children. My daughter and I are obsessed with the feminine heroine Louise, who longs to leave the hen house and feels danger in her soft feathered breast. Kid picture book perfection.


Mouse Tales (an I Can Read Book) by Arnold Lobel $3.99 Again I head back to the late '70s for the books of my own childhood, but I have rarely found tales funnier than the seven little stories in Mouse Tales. Although Lobel won the Caldecott medal and had a distinguished career (God rest his soul), the amusing tales he told his second grade class and then put to paper are the books we grew up with and now share with our kids. They're also perfect for new readers, and good jokes = good readers, I'm convinced! More Lobel: Mouse Soup, Owl at Home and all of the Frog and Toad books.

If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries: Poems for Children and their Parents by Judith Viorst $6.99. Another iconic author for '70s and '80s children, Viorst captures the trials of kid-dom in her sensitive, silly poems. My second grade teacher read the title poem and then asked the class to write what we would do if we had the same power...my first ever writing prompt. Thank you Dr. Viorst!

Well, there's my 4 for this week - what are yours? Leave your 4 titles in the comments for your last chance to win a personally-customized pack of new books for your child's library, thanks to Scholastic!

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