Books, books, and more books! Oh, My!!!

We read a lot. We love books. Perhaps, love might even be an understatement. Books feed our family's soul like trees, water and the open horizon. Did I already say it, we LOVE books! This summer we've fallen love with some wonderful children's books.

When we first moved into our house, a few of the previous tenets failed to move out -- in other words, our house had a family of six squirrels living in our attic. After a few back and forth struggles between them and us, they were FINALLY and hopefully forevermore banished from our house. It took us three years, but we are just now able to enjoy their antics in our yard. So, when we stumbled upon this children's book, it was just the right time for a squirrel book. "Those Darn Squirrels!" is a cutely illustrated book about one man's journey into the realm of squirrel appreciation.

What a teacher that Miss Smith is. I hope Kai and Norah have a teacher this hip! She comes on the scene running her classroom like (but not looking like) every other teacher until she opens her incredible storybook to read aloud to the class. As she reads the story, the characters jump from the book and play out the story in front of the kids. When the story is over, the characters return to the book except for the day that Principal Rittenrotten reads aloud from the book. I won't spoil the ending for you, but trust me the illustration on the last page of "Miss Smith's Incredible Storybook" provides a lot of interesting fodder for little minds.

Norah's two favorite books this summer were "The Cow that Laid an Egg," (the girl just loves her chickens -- I think her 8 month old self fell in love with chickens at my friend Charla's house) and "The Foggy Foggy Forest," which is loads of fun with its vellum overlays.

All of these books are a delight to enjoy with your child(ren). In fact, we've renewed and checked out these books numerous times this summer from the library. And, that is saying something...since we believe that there are so many books and so little time.