What We Are Reading Right Now… GiveAway Time…

I have been wanting to start a new feature on our blog for a while but it is always time to post something else. So today I am diving in and posting a “What We Are Reading Right Now.” These posts will be a book covering the age range of our family and will include a couple of GiveAways… because we know our readers like fab book GiveAways!!! Let’s just dive in and read…

Let’s begin with a book from my book pile:

The Mother Person: You know when you sit down to page through a book and you think you are going to dip in and out quickly and then you read the whole thing from cover to cover in a sitting… this is one of those books!!! It appealed to me on so many levels: there is armchair travel; there is food and of course there is a family, full of personalities!!! After reading this book I thought perhaps we had French ancestors, we are all about long lingering meals and feeding our kids real food – it is not often that “kiddy food” enters our home. I am a firm believer that kids eat everything – often the most exotic things, and the food they don’t like is because they haven’t tried it enough!!! This book was so refreshing, a lovely, easy read. Packed with tips and ideas, especially if yours are the sort of kids who think cheerios are the only essential food group!!! I bought the kindle version of this book for myself.

And now for the kids:

Hood #1: Inhales books by Frances Hardinge and was thrilled to see this book in our box of books to review. A Face like Glass is a fantasy tale about a girl, who has lost her memory called Neverfall. She finds herself in the underground city of Caverna, a distrustful place where faces are expressionless and expert Facesmith’s are paid to teach folk how to make faces to express themselves. The upper-class people of Caverna are specialised tradesmen, living in dynasties, passing on trade secrets from generation to generation. Each clan creates their own delicacy… like cheese that makes you see a summer garden or wine that recalls or removes certain memories. Then there is a lower-class, a downtrodden class, of slaves who do all the work but are not trusted enough to create the delicacies. Throughout the book Neverfall is told to wear a mask and she thinks it is because she is ugly. Actually, it turns out that she can pull faces and they want her to cover up and not reveal their family-trade secrets with her expressive face. She discovers that she is from a world above and helps the slaves of Caverna to escape and attain freedom. The book is a fast paced read packed with intriguing characters. This book really appealed to the “logophile” in our house, as she uses words that we don’t often use in day to day speech, unless you are a word lover like Hood #1. We were given this book by Pan MacMillan South Africa, to review.

Hood #2: This book totally appealed to this potential spy. The author Rob Stevens, clearly has the knack of intrigue and drawing young folk into a book full of impossible missions and terrific challenges. S.T.I.N.K.B.O.M.B – Secret Team of Intrepid-Natured Kids Battling Odious Masterminds (Basically)… is a team of MI6 Spy kids. The task of the young agents is to protect the Prime Minister’s son, while he competes in the Annual Student Games being hosted in London. Mr Grey’s character mirrors Q in Bond – he is the gadget man. His gadgets, were the main attraction in the book, incredible ideas always with a subtle and amusing flaws. This book ranks high in the must keep pile and will definitely be read again and again. We were given this book by Pan MacMillan South Africa, to review.

Hood #3: This book appealed to the scientist in Hood #3 and she perused it for hours… pages and pages of superb photographs… topics ranging from the human brain to genetics, how we communicate and how we age. It is based on the Who Am I Gallery and the Science Museum. This is not just another book about the human body, it is more about your brain and your mind… what makes you You. It contains lots of -ologies: biology and technology, psychology. A fascinating read – packed with facts that kept surfacing at the dinner table night after night – the most intriguing page was the one on sleep and sleep walking!!! We were given this book by Pan MacMillan South Africa, to review.

Hood #4: He loved it… Firstly, short easy chapters, which totally appealed to this beginner chapter book reader. The book is about a young man, Hank Zipzer, age 10, who can literally think of a million reasons why he shouldn’t have to do his homework!!! He creates a number of awesome inventions to prevent doing his homework, they work but never in the way he intends and the homework doesn’t go away!!! It’s not that Hank Zipzer is just avoiding his homework, he struggles to do his homework because he has a problem… Throughout the book he demonstrates how clever he is and how skilled he is with his fantastic homework avoiding skills and at the end of the book when he discusses getting tested with Grandpa – his biggest fear, that people will think he is stupid, is releaved!!! We were given this book by Pan MacMillan South Africa, to review.

Hood #5: Is at the “I love to read any and every picture book in sight stage” and Nick Sharrat is a firm favourite. A young boy is headed for bed and pears out the window with his telescope… does he see a shark? It is one of those clever books with a circle cut out of the page and then when you turn the page you discover it is just part of a sailing ship and he looks again – is that a shark!!! And so on… until his dad convinces him that there are no sharks – but what is that in the ocean behind them!!! Very fun, very clever, the “sharks all have that fuzzy glow feel” which made it a wonderful book to read in bed under the covers with a torch. When I asked what he liked about this book the answer was clear: Everything!!! We got this book from the library last week.

Hood #6:This girl child of mine could not get her hands on this book fast enough… she loves anything schoolish, and I naturally lean the other way!!! So when she saw this book she literally pounced on it!!! And honestly I was happy to help her through it… and so was the “Tricky Witch” who is the little guide through the book… and is there to help beginner readers pronounce those tricky words… lots of games. and fun things to do in this far from ordinary activity book. Not only the fun wipe-clean type of pen but also word cards and suggested games to go with them. Of course it is a Priddy book and we totally loved it!!!We were given this book by Pan MacMillan South Africa, to review.

Hood #7: If you haven’t met the Buttons Family… it is time you did, they are sweet, really sweet and my little girls just love them!!! They are simply delightful!!! A series of First Experience books: New Shoes; Staying with Gran; Playschool; Babysitter; The Dentist and this one about a first trip to the Doctor. Just up the street of Hood #7, who loves playing doctor-ish games and spends a part of everyday playing in her medical kit and doing some family doctoring. The buttons family have three children: Cherry, Charlie and Baby Lou. Cherry has a cold and has to go to the doctor, she is filled with nerves and her brother playing at being an ambulance isn’t reassuring her! But they head off and she discovers that the doctor is really quite fun and the doctor is lovely!!! The kids rush home to play doctor. On the last page of the book there are a couple of stickers that my kids all wanted to have and use for important doctoring projects!!! We were given this book by Pan MacMillan South Africa, to review.

And the se7en + 1th Book:

Hood #8: Well Winston is a dog!!! And so of course our little guy would enjoy it, his love for dogs is fairly legendary!!! Winston has a splinter and he is really quite dramatic!!! He is off on a walk across town to the vet and each of his friends that he meets on his walk across town has to hear the story of his splinter… By the time he gets to the vet… all his friends are ahead of him in the queue…with real injuries… a little attitude adjustment is in order. The lesson is kind of obvious… and my kids totally ignored the story for the sub-story that goes on in the background. The illustrations are delightful and behind the story of the dogs there is a whole world of mice going on a sub-story that had my kids totally intrigued… they couldn’t get from page to page to see what the mice were up to!!! We were given this book by Pan MacMillan South Africa, to review.

We are giving away four of our review books and there will be four winners. Our GiveAway Winners are always carefully selected from the folk that comment on our GiveAway posts. So in order to be a winner … leave a comment saying which books you would like to win… if you want to win all four of them then say so, but if you want to win just one or two of them then mention which books you would like to win in the comments… Next week we put all the names for each book into their own hat and select four winners… one from each hat…

So pick and choose on or all of the following four books and leave a comment:

This GiveAway works in the usual way, just leave a quick comment and you have until the close of play on the 4 August 2012, to enter. We will draw and publish the winner next week and I won’t respond to your comments as I do on our other posts because I don’t want to be included in our own giveaway.

Our GiveAways are open to everyone: If you have won a GiveAway before never fear – enter away. And all our GiveAways are World-Wide – so no excuse – leave a comment and enter away!!!

We want to thank PanMacMillan South Africa for the books that they sent us for review. And we would like to declare that we were not paid to do these reviews, just provided with books. All the opinions are entirely our own!!!