Spiderkids

We took the kids to see Mary Poppins Returns with some very belated summer reading passes.  They were, of course, fascinated by this display poster for Into the Spiderverse .  This is their best attempt out of several at trying to jump like Spiderman :)

Favorite Books of 2018

And here are all of my favorites!

Fiction

The Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

This follows a modern-day Syrian refugee and a medieval-era young woman traveling with a mapmaker.  I loved seeing the ways the stories mirrored each other without feeling trite, and I think it does a great job of approaching the refugee experience in a way that is honest and emotional without being brutal. The medieval storyline is actually a fantasy storyline, so you get both types of book.  This was probably my favorite fiction for the whole year.

The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd

I read a lot of historical fiction.  My number one pet peeve is when the characters are modern people, plunked down in the middle of historical scenarios.  This was very happily and notably NOT the case in The Indigo Girl.  It's based on a true story of the woman who was the first to introduce large scale indigo growing into the South.  She was brave and in many ways ahead of her time, but many of the ways she responds and interacts were so realistic to the colonial era.

The Bear and the Nightingale and The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

These are the first two books of a series based on Russian mythology right as Christianity is starting to spread across Russia and the folklore is losing its hold on the people.  These books feel like magic and they also make Russia come alive.  I read them in the middle of a hot, hot summer and they're like their own kind of air conditioning :) Russian mythology is really interesting to me because you can see it intersect with a lot of classic, Grimm Brothers-style fairy tales, but mixed with a wilder, freezing culture. The third one just came out and I am eagerly awaiting my library to get it in!

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

I have a lifelong love for mystery novels.  This one follows an early female lawyer in 1920's India.  It's a little bit like the Maisie Dobbs books in terms of the era, but where those books are really grounded in the realities and long-term consequences of war, this one focuses more on the patchwork of cultures and religions in India.  She's investigating a case about three widows living in purdah, which means she's basically the only person who can help them.  It's firmly rooted in the place and the time and the culture but is still a good mystery that you are excited to figure out along with the main character.

Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce

Emmy thinks she's getting her dream job as a lady war correspondent, but it turns out she's actually the assistant to an advice columnist who refuses to respond to anything "unpleasant."  She responds anyways...which may or may not be a wise career move.  The narration is charming and Emmy feels like a very real young woman from the 1940s, but it still is a realistic expectation of London during the Blitz.  I loved the relationship between her and her best friend!

Nonfiction

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

This book one a very, very well-deserved Pulitzer two years ago for non-fiction but it just showed up at my library this year.  Pulitzer follows poor families around Milwaukee and talks about the structures that influence the poor. What happens when you know you really can't be financially stable?  What happens when your family is evicted? It talks about poverty becoming a business.  It's really well-researched and asks some really important questions.

 The Escape Artists by Neal Bascomb

This isn't the first time a story about a daring wartime escape has shown up on my list, and it probably won't be the last.  This one is about a set of Commonwealth pilots and their efforts to escape Holzminden, a terrifying German prison camp.  Bascomb is a really interesting writer and reallly builds the sense of suspense and adventure.  (He also has a book called The Winter Fortress about some sabotage against the Nazis in Norway that narrowly missed my top five last year).

 Palaces for the People by Eric Klinenberg

I LOVE sociology books!  A sociology book talking about how important city libraries and recreation centers are?  Basically talking straight to my heart.  If you are familiar with sociology, you've possibly heard of a concept called "social capital," which talks about how people turn their personal relationships into help for their life and future.  Klinenberg is talking about a concept called "social infrastructure", which basically means that you can set up your city in a way that means social capital can develop.  He had so many great examples and it was theoretically sound, plus also, pretty much everyone I know in my city that isn't someone from church, I know from the library or the rec center.

 The Lost City of Z by David Grann

On one level, this is the story of a Victorian explorer desparately searching South America for mythical lost cities.  It would be interesting even just on that level, but the author keeps going and talks about the costs of obsession for the explorer.  He also talks about his own obsession in chasing the story of this explorer...which is funny and also compelling.  How far WILL you go for answers, fame, or closure?  Plus, it's got a really satisfying ending.

Grocery by Michael Ruhlman

It's possible that most people will not like this book as much as I would, but you can't really overstate how much I enjoy grocery stores.  I will go to grocery stores to "window shop" much more often than I will go to the mall. It was so interesting for me to read the "behind the scenes" of how food gets to your grocery stores, how grocery stores decide what to stock, and how grocery stores influence the state of food and eating in America. It made me want to go to the grocery store, but also to never ever run a grocery store.

Miles's Favorite Books of 2018

Here are Miles's favorite books!  As has been the tradition the past few years, Miles is writing the captions because I don't really read what he reads.  This year, he has also decided to put them in ranked order for you.

10) Epic by Conor Kostick

Note that this is my #10, even though I was in a race with one of my friends who also checked out another copy of this book.  It was 400 pages long and I read it in 3 days.  It's about this boy who is playing this video game and he is trying to defeat these 9 people that are pretty much a team of doom.  He ends up defeating them but not in a way where he actually beats them in a fight or something.

9) Restart by Gordon Korman

Gordon Korman has been one of my favorite authors this year.  Another book on this list is also by Gordon Korman.  This is my #9 and I still read it in about one or two days because I stayed awake all night to read it and then Mom took away the nightlight and I got really mad because I couldn't read in the dark anymore.  Curses!  This book is about a juvenile delinquent who falls of a roof and gets amnesia.  This is one of my least favorite plot lines but since it's by Gordon Korman who is so awesome it's still here.

8) Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Hatchet is one I didn't read overnight because I got it after the horrible ban of all nighttime book readings.  I still read this one very frequently.  It was free and I got it at a Provo Library book giveaway.  The main plotline of this book is there's a boy and his parents are divorced so he's going in a plane to give with his dad for a little bit.  The guy who is flying the plane has a heart attack and they crash in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.  Also, it is a very unknown fact that it's the Canadian wilderness in the fall.  That's very cold and they don't have insulation.

7) Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly

This was also after the horrible nighttime reading ban.  This was a very good book and sometimes I locked myself in my room so no one could disturb me reading it.  This didn't work well because Elliott would yell "Let me in!"  This one is #7 on my list for a few reasons.  First, I would have put it lower if it didn't seem kind of realistic enough that some of the characters had a few connections to my life (except for the part where someone falls into a well with his guinea pig) and then a person shuts the lid to the well).  He got stuck there for at least 20 chapters.  Also, this has many references to a book called Gulliver's Travels.  Mom has approved of this and knows that it's true because she read the book.  Of course, most Newbery books are pretty cool (see last year's The Girl Who Drank the Moon).

6) Invisible Inkling by Emily Jenkins

This was a really pretty cool book.  It's about this guy and his father owns a store.  It's an ice cream store.  He finds an invisible animal eating their secret stash of ice cream! 

5) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

I like that since I read it close to the movie adaptation that they didn't put in pictures from the movie in the middle of my book.  They were at the end so I didn't have to read them.  There's a girl and her father can travel through dimensions using the tesseract.  I looked it up and actually a tesseract is a four-dimensional cube.  In yo FACE, Madeleine L'Engle!  They go on an epic quest to defeat a brain who is using mind control to try to take on the entire universe.  And multiple dimensions.  Mom's note: I'm glad he read this, because when I referred to my friend's neighborhood as Camazotz, he knew what I meant.

                                                    

4) Masterminds by Gordon Korman

First, I thought this book wouldn't be fun.  Then, I read the first chapter and decided to stay up all night.  Luckily, the nighttime book ban wasn't on yet!  The point of this story is that there are these kids that live in a city that is the most perfect city in the world.  Their classes at school are harmony and contentment...why?  The kids realized this was actually a rotten experiment that uses cloning and that they were in major danger once they turn 15 so they escape.

3) Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

I have mixed feelings on some of the humor in this book.  Sometimes I miss it and don't know why it's funny.  The rest of the time I'm like "Yes.  This is so genius."  This is probably one of my favorite comic books of all time and I would have willingly read it all night before the horrible book ban of doom.

2) Danger is Everywhere by David O'Doherty

I think I dislocated my jaw laughing!  I found this book at the Provo Library.  We were only going there for dance so I only got 30 minutes to read it each time, BUT I basically got one hour to read it in total and never got to finish the book because someone else always checked it out.  Nooo! I got to finish it when I got it for my birthday.

1) Harry Potter (full series) by J.K. Rowling

This is just the right touch of fiction, fantasy, mystery, and a couple of other genres that I'm not going to list because that's boring.  The major plotline comes in around book four.  Otherwise, it's just some pretty awesome stuff that only matches that plot when it talks about Voldemort.  My mom thinks that the most useful spell in the world is Accio because she is always losing things.  (don't see this mom).  I read all of these between August and December.  In total it's about 3000 pages. I can't think of a single page that I didn't think was epic.

Molly's Favorite Books of 2018

Here are Molly's favorite books from this year!  You can really tell that she's become a much more independent reader.  She's helping me write this post, so the first few sentences are all her thoughts!

 Ivy + Bean by Annie Barrows

These books are really cool.  They are about two girls who didn't want to be friends but they eventually became friends anyways.  There are 11 books in this series and Molly has read all of them.  She can't put them down once she starts!

 Mercy Watson to the Rescue by Kate DiCamillo

These books are so hilarious!  This pig named Mercy Watson and her owners get into so many adventures. 

 Nancy Clancy by Jane O'Connor

Molly says this is the best book ever!  They turned Molly's beloved Fancy Nancy books into chapter books, so this was perfect.  Nancy Clancy is one of her favorite characters.

 Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson

This is a series of graphic novels that Molly loves.  If you understand Molly's love of unicorns, you will understand how she feels about these books.

 Guess Again! by Mac Barnett

This is the funniest book in the whole entire world.  The author really plays with what you expect to come next in the rhyme and then does something entirely different and very funny.  Actually, all three kids thought this was hilarious and made me read it multiple times in a row.

 Pocket Full of Colors by Amy Guglielmo

This is the biography of one of Disney's female artists in the 1960s.  Among other things, she did all the art design for It's a Small World.  The colors move throughout the book and the illustrations are awesome!  Molly also loves art so this was fun for her to read..

 A huge variety of non-fiction animal books

Molly checked out a lot of non-fiction animal books from her school library.  She was particularly fond of any book about cats.  As she now wants me to write "Cats! Cats! Cats!"

The Princess in back and the Science Fair Scare by Shannon Hale

This is the next of the Princess in Black adventures, still a big favorite for Molly!  This book has a goo monster.  There are four other princesses and another hero, The Princess in Blankets

 Eerie Elementary by Jack Chabert

Molly says these are so scary! It's another series for young readers. Orson Eerie tries to eat students and other scary things happen like a clay dinosaur turns into a melting clay dinosaur that is real and tries to take all their money.  Molly has read all of these that our library has so far.

Babymouse by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

This is another graphic novel series.  They are awesome.  They are about Babymouse and she tries to be the queen of the world. Molly says these are cute cute cute.

Elliott's Favorite Books of 2018

Favorite book posts are my favorite books of the whole year!  Elliott's favorite books are mostly funny.  They aren't quite as focused on giant trucks as last  year but those still make an appearance :)

 Bigger! Bigger! by Leslie Patricelli

This little girl can build as big as her imagination goes...but will her creations stay up?  Elliott loves to build with blocks and he loves simple books like this with very few words because he feels like he can read them himself.

Dinosaur vs. Santa by Bob Shea

Can Dinosaur be very, very good this Christmas?  Dinosaur wins!  Elliott loves this whole series (there's also Dinosaur vs. Mommy, which might be my favorite, if only because Dinosaur MAY bear a passing resemblance to some children in this house, along with a bedtime, potty, library, and school version)

Hello, Door by Alastair Heim

This has some similiarities to Goldilocks and the Three Bears...but if Goldilocks was a sneaky fox burglar trying to rob the bears' beautiful Georgian mansion.  Elliott and I both love the charming illustrations.

 The Little Fire Truck by Margery Cuyler

I lost track of how many times we read this rhyming book about a day in the life of a fire truck but it was well over a hundred.  In three weeks.

 Hug Machine by Scott Campbell

You can give a hug to anything as long as you are prepared!  Porcupines?  Whales?  No problem.  This is probably the cutest Valentine's book I've seen.

 The Itchy Book by LeUyen Pham

Dinosaur's don't itch....or do they?  This book combined Elliott's love of silly things with his love of dinosaurs.

 Mix it Up!  by Herve Tullet

This is an interactive book about how colors combine.  It's perfect for three-year-olds because it's a great combination of simple concepts and magical-seeming effects.

 The Octopuppy by Martin McKenna

Edgar wanted a dog.  Edgar got Jarvis, the best octopus ever...who tries really hard to be a dog to make Jarvis happy.  It's funny and it's sweet and the pictures are great

Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt and Peanut Butter and Jelly by Ben Clanton

The first of these books made it on Molly's list last year.  This year, it was Elliott's turn to carry these sweet books about two best friends all over the house.  They were particularly popular during potty training, which means we spent a LOT of time sitting in the bathroom and reading these together.

 It's Shoe Time! by Bryan Collier

This is another one that we have read over and over and over.  It's time for a little girl to pick her shoes.  When she picks shoes that don't match, their partners go out to find her and fix things.  It's another very early reader that's fun for very beginning readers to pick out the words they know.

Unplugged by Steve Antony

This book is adorable!  Blip loves his time on the computer, but one day he gets unplugged and accidentally falls outside.  You see how he does all of his adventures, only better, outside.  It goes from black and white into color when he leaves the house.

Eleventh Anniversary

Gerrit and I went on an actual date for our anniversary this year.  Who knew?  I honestly can't remember the last time we went on a date on our actual anniversary.  It's not timed in a very convenient way.

We started out the night at a new Argentine restaurant.  Gerrit served his mission in Argentina so he had been really excited about it.  The best thing we had was a passion fruit drink, probably followed by the factura (kind of a dulce de leche croissant) and the chicken empanada.  Our main dishes were authentic (according to Gerrit) but not necessarily delicious.

Our next stop was Evermore.  Evermore is kind of hard to describe.  It's basically a fantasy/role-playing themepark.  It's not really in my wheelhouse.  It's a little more in Gerrit's wheelhouse, but not entirely.  We went around and did the different tasks on their "treasure hunt", but you can also do an interactive quest where you talk to a bunch of different characters and basically just carry around different props around the park.  Gerrit and I decided we were both fine with skipping that.  I was looking for someone I know from the rec center who works there, but if he was working that night, he was in so much character makeup (there's a lot of dwarf/elf characters) that I couldn't recognize him.

 It was SO COLD that night.  It was maybe 15 degrees when this picture was taken.

 The Christmas lights were fantastic.  It really was a beautiful place.

 Our favorite thing that night was the animals.  This little horse, Big Red, is the cutest animal in the entire universe.  They also had a really outstanding reptile show and my only regret is that we missed their bird show.

 We left a little earlier than planned because we were very cold and had seen basically everything, so we ended the night at a new dessert restaurant.  That's German chocolate cake hiding inside that shell, and you had to pour caramel on it to dissolve the shell.