What My Kids are Reading #6

Man, it's been a long time since I posted one of these.  We finished school a little over a week ago, so now I finally have a bit more time for posts again.  (We usually finish off mid-May and then start again mid-July because May and June are lovely weather here, but by mid-July it's so hot and sticky outside we're all just staying inside most of the day anyway, so might as well be doing school.)

Here are some of the books my kids have been enjoying lately!  My mother-in-law brought the first Traction Man book along with her when she visited last week, and my girls loved it so much that we found the sequels at the library.

Sarah (6) and Tootie (4)

Traction Man is Here written and illustrated by Mini Grey -- a little boy gets a new action figure for Christmas and takes him on imaginative adventures all around the house.  It reminds me a little of Toy Story and my own childhood.

Traction Man Meets TurboDog "" -- the little boy's parents decide that Traction Man's trusty "dog" pal, Scrubbing Brush, is germy, so they secretly throw him away and replace him with a "better" toy.

Traction Man and the Beach Odyssey "" -- the little boy takes Traction Man and Scrubbing Brush to the beach, where an overenthusiastic dog sends Traction Man on an epic journey.  This one is my favorite, but they're all such fun to read.

Sam (8)

Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright -- I got Gone-Away Lake as a birthday present when I was about Sam's age, and read it over and over.  I didn't know there was a sequel until Sam found it at the used book store a while back.  I need to read both of them one of these days.  From what I recall of the first book, two kids find an abandoned town or something?  

Coding with Scratch Workbook by Dr. Jon Woodcock -- I got this for Sam to use while school is out because he really wants to learn to code, but I don't know much about it.  Two of Cowboy's brothers are computer coder dudes, and they both highly praise Scratch for teaching kids about it, but I didn't know enough to really help Sam do cool stuff.  He LOVES this book, and did all the projects in it in less than a week.  I got him another book in the same series that does games on Scratch, and he's starting that one now.


I'm not reading anything longer aloud to them all just now because we're still trying to figure out our summer days and when a good time for that would be.  I'm working on creating our summer reading program, and hope to have that done later this week, at which time I'll probably haul out a longer book to begin with them all.  If my summer reading program idea works out the way I want it to, I might post about it, we'll see :-)