May reads

May was a pretty decent reading month for me. 

GROWN-UP READS:

📖 Bible study: May was really a very weak Bible study month for me. My baby's morning routine shifted and I did NOT do a good job shifting my routine to make it work. I'm trying something different in June so we'll see how it goes!

📖 Beyond Ivy Walls (Christian, historical fiction)... This is a Beauty and the Beast retelling I enjoyed. I really like Rachel Fordham's books. I've liked two others of hers even more. 

📖 Raising Gen Alpha* (Christian, nonfiction)... This was such a fantastic read! I am Raising FOUR gen alphas and I think all the time about this very strange world that's become so foreign to me, about how to prepare them for things I don't even understand yet. This was a very helpful and very inspiring book I've been talking about and recommending to so many of the moms I know and love! 

📖 The Wings of Poppy Pendleton (Christian, historical fiction, time slip)... This was my personal fiction read and then my book club joined in. I want to be very clear that this book contained some heartbreaking situations for children but it was so well done. I was really hooked and kept feeling excited, all the way to the end, to see how it would all work out! 

📚 Plus applicable sections of Mom Heart Moments and The Wonder Weeks.

📖 I also read a little less than half of Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World for book club. We all had the same feelings- we liked the message, liked the writing, but didn't finish the whole book because we felt we'd already gotten what we needed from it. 

 

YA & MIDDLE GRADE READS...
📖 Brightwing Tales: Mole's Misadventure (Christian, middle grade, fiction)... This was a well-written story with a great feel to it. I think most of my bookworms will really enjoy it. For parents, there were a few mentions of bathroom/bodily habits snd the mole smokes pipe tobacco.
📖 A Chameleon, a Boy, and a Quest (Christian, middle grade, fiction)... One of my teens adores Africa stories and is going to Love this one. *There is a brief mention of a dead dog I know might upset some children.
📖 Living Water in the Desert (Christian, middle grade, historical fiction)... A friend loaned this to us to see the Christianity side of history in Iran. My oldest and I both read it and liked it.
📖 Nothing Else But Miracles (secular, middle grade, fiction)... This is a WWII homefront story about three children living alone in NYC while their father is deployed. I believe I learned about it from Read Aloud Revival, though I could be wrong. There were a few things I didn't totally love but it was overall good, I did cry near the end, and I added it to our 7th grade list.
📖 Remarkables (secular with a lot of faith mentions, middle grade, fiction)... I really enjoyed this story. It was focused on family and friendship with a light time travel mystery thrown in. There is a heavy topic (a young man's father blames himself for a death and has turned to drug addiction to cope) but I felt that it was handled well for my 7th grader.
📖 Running Out of Time (secular with faith mentions, middle grade, fiction)... My 3rd grade teacher read this Aloud to theclass and I very much liked it. After reading Remarkables and seeing that this author is obviously a Christian, I thought I'd try this one again. I do like Remarkables a lot more but I still enjoyed this one and am fine with my 7th grader reading it. 

📖 Surprise Endings: Christy Miller book #4 (Christian, YA, fiction)... Christy drove me a lil crazy in this one but I was still generally happy with it and with the growth arc. Why are these books so compulsively readable to me at my age?!

📖 The Unlikely Story of a Pig in the City (secular, middle grade, fiction)... I thought I was going to have a problem with family dynamics in this one but I ultimately ended up fine with it. It doesn't look like a Christmas story but it is! I have decided this will be our 2026 Christmas read-aloud.
📖 Wild Times at the Bed and Biscuit (secular, chapter book, fiction)... This was book two in this animal series and I was fine with it. 

📖 Zoey and Sassafras: Dragons and Marshmallows (secular, chapter book, fantasy, TGTB Book List)... This was cute and a fun one for animal lovers. I'll try book 2, too. 

📚 PICTURE BOOKS WE LOVED: Daddy, How Much Do You Love Me? // Eric Carle's Search and Find Vegetable Garden (this month's book from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library) // Every Heart // Lovely Beasts

Favorite read this month: Raising Gen Alpha

* I received a free copy of Raising Gen Alpha in exchange for an honest review.