Recent reads

The Brave Learner… Full disclosure, I speed-red the whole second half of this book at bedtime one night and naptime the next day so I could turn it in at the library before they closed that evening. It was so good, chock-full of great tips, but I just didn’t finish the other book I was reading as quickly as I’d hoped and this one was only available for a week since it’s new and high-demand. I won’t implement everything of course, but I still wrote down quite a few great ideas and I can’t recommend it enough to both my homeschool mom friends AND my friends whose kids are in traditional schools! Still so many great ideas for family fun!

Ladycake Farm… I got this book through the Good and the Beautiful Library, one of the classic books they’ve re-released (their version with updated grammar and spelling) to be read by kids around seventh grade. It’s about an African American family buying 40 acres in the 1900s, and the challenges they face along the way. It’s a sugary-sweet story and you might even say it’s a big cheesy at times but I ultimately liked it.

A Life of Lovely*… I adore Annie F Downs and is the young adult version of a previous book I had already read, Looking for Lovely. She shares a lot of really personal feelings in this one and she shared a really beautiful underlying current of optimism through it all. I just loved that, and I just love her outlook on life. I have definitely set this one aside for my own girls to read as teenagers because it really is just an excellent book.

Nate the Great… I never actually read this one as a kid but when I’ve asked people to tell me their favorite childhood read-alouds, this has come up again and again. I didn’t think it was necessarily anything super special, but it was cute and I’m sure my son will like it when the time comes.

Never Let Go… I talked about this one before but now I’ve finished it. I ultimately liked it pretty well. I do like a good mystery but do not like romance stories very much so I just wasn’t too sure about how that might all pan out. I also had a hunch the entire time that ended up way misguided so that is always a fun thing.

*I received a free copy of A Life of Lovely from B&H Books in exchange for this completely honest review.