Review: Baby Loves Political Science: Democracy! by Ruth Spiro

I love these kinds of books and, more importantly, so does my toddler. Don’t get me wrong, we also enjoy the cutesy traditional bedtime stories, but Middle Brother already enjoys something meatier. The Baby Loves series, in case you’re not familiar, is board books with age-appropriate education. This particular one, obviously, is about democracy. The …

Review: Cicada by Shaun Tan

I have mixed feelings about Cicada. It’s beautifully illustrated, I feel like it has an important message about human existence, and yet it’s pretty depressing for a children’s book. Cicada starts with an insect working at a human job but being treated as sub-human. He can’t afford a home, so he lives in the company …

Review: Red by Jed Alexander

I realized it’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a children’s book. We’re in that fun phase where Middle Brother wants the same books over and over, so it’s been a while since I’ve read a new one. Red actually isn’t new. We’ve had it four a year or more. We enjoyed it for a …

Texas Book Festival

When Big Brother was Only Brother, we started going to the Texas Book Festival in Austin. He was 11 when I discovered it, so we went for the weekend and hung out at YA panels all day. My non-reader would actually read if he heard the author talk about the book. We went a couple …

Review: My First Yoga ABC by Teresa Anne Power

You haven’t really gotten to know me as a mom yet, so you may not know that I’m a scrunchy one. I’m all for natural childbirth if you can do it. I didn’t have time to choose for my last two, but big brother had to be induced and there was definitely an epidural. I …

Review: The Babysitter from Another Planet by Stephen Savage

Middle brother has been weird about storytime, lately. He says he wants to do stories, he spends a great deal of time picking out the book he wants, and then after the first page, he announces “The end,” and forcibly closes the book on me. He’s an active toddler, so this isn’t totally unexpected. I …