Library Craziness

Twice this month I've made huge trips to local libraries in which I've checked out twenty-odd picture books to see which ones we like and might be willing to recommend (particularly for a unit study I'm working on for mater et magistra magazine). There are plenty of ones that needed only a quick glance before I didn't bother and several that we finished reading, but were only so-so. Here is a list of our favorites so far:

Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts! by Lynne Truss

Wonderful Words: Poems about Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins

As: A Surfeit of Similes by Norton Juster

How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear?: What are Homonyms and Homophones? by Brian P. Cleary

What's Inside: Fascinating Structures Around the World by Giles Laroche

Here are two more that we haven't quite finished reading yet (just nosed through quite a bit) and really liked so far:

G is for Googol: A Math Alphabet Book by David Schwartz

Go Figure! A totally cool book about numbers by Johnny Ball

P.S. We're also in the process of reading Ethel Pochocki's Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints (from Bethlehem Books) and really like it so far. There have been a few spots that made me furrow my brow or that seemed just a little too silly, but these have been more than compensated for by some incredibly beautiful stories that are really well done. There was a little bit in the story of Juan Diego that bothered me (a little off on the Aztec story) and an aspect of the story of St. Nicholas that I thought pretty disturbing for young children, but some of the other stories, like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Thomas Aquinas are really lovely and the one we just finished - on St. Paul Miki and St. Charles Lwanga - has an absolutely stunning and incredibly appropriate explanation of the martyrs. Fabulous stuff and I very much look forward to reading the rest. Oh yes, and Ben Hatke's illustrations (he also illustrated Angel in the Waters by Regina Doman) are wonderful!