Paint and Pixels

Sorry we've been gone... we've been reading

My absence from my blog this summer has many reasons. The biggest one is that my kids are out of school, making it nearly impossible to do much other than spend time with them. Even painting has had to take a back burner this summer. Well... except for painting with bubbles and painting murals on the fence and painting faces and legs and feet... and whatnot... but not real painting.
I've been spending quite a lot of time admiring someone I used to know who was able to spend the summer crafting everyday, exercising, making delicious meals, all while maintaining a blog. She was me two summers ago, and I'm quite jealous of her. Not sure how she did it.
We've done a LOT of reading this summer, so I thought, what better way to break back into the blog than by sharing some of our favorite and most unfavorite kids' books that we've discovered at our local library.

First, our favorites:

1. Here Comes The Garbage Barge!


Typically, we choose our books from the library by looking for those with good illustrations. Luckily, this one had an interesting, and thought provoking true story to go along with it. It's all about trash.

2. The Man Who Walked Between The Towers



The illustrations in this one weren't anything too special, but the story was. Rocket found the book and recognized the story from a true documentary that we watch about it a couple years ago, called "Man on Wire". The book was a good childrens' version of the documentary. We read the book quite a few times before it was due back at the library!

3. Ticket to Ride



I chose this book JUST for it's illustrations- and it was worth it just for them. The words are cute too, but the illustrations are what made the book. It took us a good half hour to finish the book because we spent a lot of time looking at each picture. Whenever I read a really really good book, I make a point of emailing the author- because authors aren't really celebrities, so I've found that they don't tend to get irritated by fan mail. They seem to appreciate hearing from someone whose read their book. He emailed us back and gave us some more insights into the illustrations, and told us some fun things to look for! We also requested that the library buy his other two books, and they said that they would. We can't wait for them to come in!

4. Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life

We picked up this book one day when I was running by the library to pick up a book for myself that was on hold. Roxanne asked if she could get a book too, but we already had a lot of books out so I told her she could get ONE book. So she chose THE BIGGEST book in the library- which was this one. It is 20 inches long and almost 15 pounds! The art of Charley Harper has a beautiful simplicity to it, and we found that it was very inspiring for the kids own artwork! We accidentally returned this book VERY VERY late because it was so large and it wouldn't fit on my library book bookshelf, so I put it somewhere different and forgot about it for a while. Oops.

5. Charley Harper Coloring Book


We didn't actually get this one at the library. I got it at the Denver Art Museum gift shop. When I saw it, I remembered how much Roxanne loved the illustration in the huge book, so I got her this coloring book, which has colorless versions of some of the best pictures in the larger book. Roxanne has been making some beautiful watercolor paintings with it!

Now, our Unfavorite Books

I feel a bit foolish admitting to checking these books out, because their titles should have been dead give aways that these were bad books. But somehow I doubted the titles and suspected that they would have happy endings. They didn't... proving that you SHOULD, in fact, judge a book by its cover- or at least by the title on its cover.

1. Michael Rosen's Sad Book


As it says, this book is sad. Really sad. Too sad for kids. I felt like crying. The kids said it was just boring, not really sad, but maybe they are insensitive.

2. How to Cook Children


After only one page of this book, I had read just about every word that I have forbidden my own kids from saying. It also touched on many gruesome and crude subjects I didn't want to have to explain the meaning of. That's when I shut it and refused to keep reading, and the kids were very upset. They said that so far, it had been the best book they'd ever read. They have bad taste in books sometimes.

Only two more weeks left before the kids go back to school! We finished our library reading charts today and plan on going to the library this afternoon to redeem them for Elitches tickets. Happy Summer reading to you too!