This is a liturgy we created as a family for the season of Advent. Originally, we created it for our Sunday home church practice when we couldn’t go to services because of COVID. (If you want to read more about how we did home church with a 5 and 2 year old you can read…
Author: Amy Rogers Hays
Newbery Review #94 (The Crossover, The Alexander, 2015)
2015 Newbery winner, The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, is a free verse novel about two African American middle-school, basketball-loving, twin brothers. They are sons of a semi-pro player who had a career in Italy, (Evan tells me this is reminiscent of Kobe Bryant who grew up partially in Italy when his father played there), but his…
Newbery Review #93(Flora & Ulysses, DiCamillo, 2014)
2014 Newbery winner, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo is the tale of the girl, Flora, who loves her comics, and her divorced father who gave them to her. She also finds herself with her own superhero squirrel who she saved from death-by-vacuum and gained superpowers in the process. Ulysses, the squirrel,…
An Ordinary November Day: Hour by Hour Pictures #onedayhh
This is my 5th year of participating in the fun Instagram hashtag #onedayhh, where you take and post a picture an hour of your ordinary day. Thankfully, my kids still think me taking a ton of pictures of them is really fun, and they were pretty patient with my mommy paparazzi (more than my husband…
Newbery Review #92 (The One and Only Ivan, Applegate, 2013)
2013 Newbery winner, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is a book about a gorilla named Ivan who is living in small cage in a mall next to an old elephant named Stella and a tiny mangy stray dog named Bob. When the mall’s owner buys a new baby elephant, Ruby, to help the…
Newbery Review #91 (Dead End in Norvelt, Gantos, 2012)
The 2012 Newbery winner is Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos. In a funny, fictional autobiography, Jack Gantos’s mid 1960s summer is ruined when he accidently shoots off his father’s Japanese sniper rifle. His only reprieve from two months of being grounded is to help his elderly neighbor Ms. Volkner write obituaries for the…
Encouragement for Early Potty Training Around Age Two
Last week, I was chatting with a friend at the park about her upcoming second baby when she asked me to weigh in on whether to try and potty-train her first child who is about to turn two. Yes! I said, that’s the perfect time to potty-train. I gushed enthusiastically about how great it is…
Newbery Review #90 (Moon Over Manifest, Vanderpool, 2011)
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is a tale set around the fictional (but inspired by a real) town of Manifest, Kansas. Told half in the summer of Depression Era 1936 and half in the end of World War I 1918 and 1919, Abilene Tucker is a young girl dropped off for the summer of…
Newbery Review #89 (When You Reach Me, Stead, 2010)
2010 Newbery winner, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is the story that Miranda began to write to the sender of mysterious letters from the future. The letters predicted the future in a way that made Miranda trust that they were authentic, and the letter writer said that there were several things she must…
Valuing A Mother’s Work: 7 Books that Helped Me See Motherhood in New Ways
Dignity in motherhood can be hard to find. I clearly remember leaving a well-baby check-up for my fairly small baby daughter with myself covered in that mustard-brown baby poop of a nursing baby. Of course, she was in a new diaper and a fresh set of clothes because I had brought those with us, but…
Newbery Review #88 (Graveyard Book, Gaiman, 2009)
2009 Newbery winner, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman is the tale of a boy called Nobody (Bod for short) who was rescued and raised by the ghosts of a graveyard when he was a baby. Part fairytale, part retelling of The Jungle Book, this book takes its place among the great works of children’s…
Newbery Review #87 (Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, Schlitz, 2008)
2008 Newbery winner, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz is a set of 19 related monologues (plus 2 dialogues) about children during the Middle Ages in England. In her forward, she writes that while she was working as a school librarian, a group of students was studying the Middle…
Newbery Review #86 (The Higher Power of Lucky, Patron, 2007)
2007 Newbery winner, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron (2007) is the tale of Lucky and her search for a family. After Lucky’s mother dies, her father contacts his first wife, beautiful French Brigitte (who had divorced him when he refused to have children), to come look after Lucky in the middle of…
40 of the Best Picture Books for Two Year Olds
Last year I put together a list of tried and true favorites for one-year-olds. That list could have been titled “Lily approved books” because she is considerably more picky than Jackson was (or the other two-year-old children I’ve nannied) about which books she does and doesn’t like. And that “discerning taste” continued into her second…
Newbery Review #85 (Criss Cross, Perkins, 2006)
2006 Newbery winner, Criss Cross, by Lynne Rae Perkins, tells the story of four teenagers on the verge of high school who have crisscrossed paths, switching narrators each chapter as they tell and retell the story of their summer. Incorporating illustrations, poetry, and connected small vignettes, the book is loosely based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer…