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Kids Book- The Things I Love About Friends

July 11, 2015 by Samantha 4 Comments

By Trace Moroney

The Things I Love About Friends celebrates the everyday events that make up your child’s experiences, while emphasizing the importance of sharing ideas, interests, goals, and feelings with others.

There are so many things to love about friends — sharing ideas, interests, feelings, and fun times. It’s important to learn how to be a good friend. This book in The Things I Love series by Trace Moroney celebrates the everyday situations that form the basis of our children’s experiences. Spending time with your children and giving them love and care helps them to celebrate who they are, building resilience and self-respect.

This beautifully produced series shows examples of creating positive thought. It has been carefully designed to help children feel loved, nurtured, accepted, and safe, ultimately increasing their confidence and self-esteem.

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My Thoughts

My son loved this sweet book, the illustrations and story are adorable. It focuses on what good friends do and what makes a good friend. Kids want to have great friendships, but can sometimes have a hard time making or keeping friends. Maybe the child is bullied or feels bad about themselves. This cute book gives positive images, thoughts, and ideas on friends and friendship. This book would be good for children up to about 2nd grade.

You can grab this book on Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, and more.

Nickerbacher-The Funniest Dragon- Great Book

April 29, 2015 by Danielle Leave a Comment

Disclosure: The Nickerbacher- The Funniest Dragon was provided for me in order to facilitate my review. All opinions are my own and honest. I am disclosing this in accordance to FTC Guidelines. Please see “Disclose” tab for more information.

Being a teacher as well as a mom of young children, I am a huge fan of childrens’ books. I am always on the lookout for new great books. I must say that Nickerbacher did not disappoint.

About Nickerbacher:

Dragons are magical. Some are ferocious, some are friendly, and some are silly, but wahtever kind of dragon it is, we love reading about them and their incredible adventures. Nickerbacher is a very special dragon. He wants to make his family proud of him, but he doesn’t want to be like all the other dragons. He’s afraid to tell his papa that there are enough dragons to guard princesses.

Peace, Bugs and Understanding – Cute New Kids Book

March 27, 2015 by Samantha 6 Comments

My son loves to be read to, and will hopefully be a big reader like his mom. He likes pretty much anything, from the classics, to comic books, to “cute” books, and more. I’m glad he likes diversity in reading, hopefully it means he’s open minded. One of the latest books we have read is “Peace, Bugs and Understanding,” the newest children’s book by Gail Silver in her illustrated series beginning with Anh’s Anger.

This books is about finding peace instead of anger, and encourages children to look inward and be calm when they feel anger. It deals with meditation on a child’s level- which I think is pretty cool, and timely for us since my son is about to start kids classes next month. We both do yoga already, and I meditate, and feel this would be good for him as well. Like his mother, he has some tendencies that this could help. (Don’t we all, right?) Maybe starting younger would be helpful.

This is a cute book, easy to follow, with relatable characters and problems. We are going to find the first two books of the series as well so that we can read them all.

More About the Book

The newest (and final) installment in the series is “Peace, Bugs, and Understanding: An Adventure in Sibling Harmony.” Emotionally charged siblings experience harmony in lieu of rivalry when they discover Metta, a practice that has helped people transform anger into loving kindness for thousands of years. In addition to being an author, Gail is the founder of Yoga Child, a Philadelphia business that teaches children about yoga and inner peace.
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The Ideal Woman – New Book About Finding Oneself

February 12, 2015 by Samantha Leave a Comment

The Ideal Woman, a new book by Roy Espiritu, is not about what you might think. It sounds like it might be about looking for the woman that one finds ideal, or who the ideal woman is, or how to become the ideal woman. Instead, it is one woman’s journey, torn between two worlds and two cultures, two countries and two lives, where she is often put on a pedestal because of her looks but then looked at sideways due to her heritage. She is often forced to walk a fine line, and trying to find herself and what she wants for her life.

The book follows the life of a woman named Pearl and her family. It centers on Pearl, but because of the importance of her heritage, her family is a big focus as well. Pearl has a Filipino mother and white father, which causes strife between both families, although both adore Pearl. Pearl spends her time mostly in the USA, but also spends plenty of it in the Philippines, where many people apotheosize her for her looks. One family fixates on her, and wants her for their son. A courting process begins, and Pearl has to decide how she wants to live her life and what she really wants. How she “behaves”, dresses, thinks, acts, dresses, even her family’s history comes into play.
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At the Crossroad – new book

February 12, 2015 by Samantha Leave a Comment

I recently finished reading the book At the Crossroad. For me, it was a real page turner, hard to put down, with engaging characters and a good storyline. Perhaps I should stay “story-lines”, as the book follows 4 people. All four are quite different from each other, yet their lives are intertwined deeply. None of their lives go as planned or as you think they would- which honestly kept the book very interesting. It also seemed realistic to me, no wild and crazy plots that made it seem implausible, and you find yourself genuinely interested in the characters and wanting the best outcomes for them.

The outcomes are not what you would expect, the lives take them where you would not necessarily think they would- which is one of the reasons the book was so interesting. Set at a time of military unrest, which seeps into the book but is not it’s major theme, the characters fight to find themselves, their place in the world, and to a sense of justice and happiness in a time when those are hard to find.

Tempting though it may be- do not judge this book by it’s cover. The cover is awful, so very unprofessional and poorly done- but the book itself, the writing is good. The story is unique and compelling, you will be drawn to the characters. Ignore the cover- read the book.

I, too, was hesitant to read this book after I saw the cover. When I see shabbily done covers, it usually means “vanity press” or “self published” and that the book is going to be a hot mess, full of spelling and grammatical errors, and mostly a just the author strutting and fluffing his own feathers in print. I am not a fan of most vanity press. However- this book is NOT along those lines. It is well written, and I truly enjoyed it. This is one of those cases that you truly should not judge a book by it’s cover- literally. Normally I would not dedicate time to discussing a cover, but I know I wouldn’t have given it a second glance had I not known what a good book it was, so I wanted to mention it.

About The Book

The decisions we make at every crossroad in our lives shape our destiny. In her first novel At the Crossroad, Olfet Agrama pens a romance/adventure book filled with passion, forbidden love, faith and power – – the perfect book to give that special woman for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day.
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The Tale of the Proud Chicken – book for kids

February 11, 2015 by Samantha 7 Comments

The latest book in the Tales of Little Overhill series is now available. The new book, Tale of the Proud Chicken is a fun read for kids that also gives a moral. It has a good plot that kids can benefit from, learn from, and enjoy as well. The images are beautiful, and having animals as the main characters is fun for children.

I first read this to my son, then sent it in with him to his school. His class really enjoyed the book, and they thought that the chicken was funny and silly. They liked the chicken’s adventures, and were relived when he went back home. Being a bunch of 7 year olds, they all pointed out that he wasn’t really a proud chicken, but a proud rooster- which is true, little rats, lol. After we read the story, we tried to guess what Bible story The Proud Chicken was most like.
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Filed Under: book review, evergreen, kids, review Tagged With: book review, kids book, review

Review and Giveaway- Little Gestalten Books

February 5, 2015 by Samantha 34 Comments

There are seemingly no end to the good reasons that parents should read to their children, not the least of which is the simple act of bonding time. I read with my son all the time, but he knows that as part of his bed time ritual, he gets his song, his story, his “made up” story, and then we have to put good dreams into his head. It’s kind of a long story how that came about, and bedtime starts about 40 minutes before actual bedtime, but it’s a nice way to end the night.

We are always looking for great new books. We find them everywhere- the bookstore, the library, book sales at his school book swaps- you name it. His newest books are really beautiful, and something a little different. If you are a big reader, and have little ones who love to read (or to be read to), you will want to check out the new Berlin-based children’s book publisher Little Gestalten and their debut line of beautiful, high concept, totally unique picture books. Critically acclaimed, The New York Times Style Section says “Little Gestalten….marries thoughtful storytelling with supercool visuals.”

Issun Boshi: The One Inch Boy – This classic Japanese fairy tale tells the story of Issun Boshi, the tiny son of an old, long childless couple. His mother had longed to have a child for so many years that she finally added “even if it is a very small one” to her wish. When the elderly couple did in fact bear a son, he turned out to be only one inch high. He was thus called Issun Boshi, Japanese for one-inch boy. Tiny and brave — these are the two most striking characteristics of Issun Boshi. Although his parents raised him very lovingly, Issun Boshi realized one day that he would not grow any taller. He then left his home to set off on a journey to find his place in the world.
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Filed Under: book review, giveaway, kids, review Tagged With: books, kids, kids books

The Littlest Bunny Book- Review and Giveaway

February 3, 2015 by Samantha 62 Comments

As Easter hops closer, some of us want to get our own little bunnies in a festive mood. What do you do in your house? We decorate, bake, and of course, read lots of Easter books (and watch occasional movies, too). One of the newest books I have found is “The Littlest Bunny”, which is really cool because it lets you choose your state or province and personalize your book that way.

Each book in The Littlest Bunny Series features art and text created especially for a specific state or city, including all 50 states as well as cities in Canada.
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