Books

Have you read the vampire books by Stephenie Meyer? The teen vampire werewolf romance books by Stephenie Meyer? Me neither.

Okay. I did read them. A bit. Because they’re set in the Northwest and Ms. Meyer went to BYU so I feel some sense of loyalty. I was just going to dip my toes in and read a bit so I knew what everyone was talking about. That was a year ago. In August when book 4 is released, I’m going to Port Angeles with some girlfriends, staying up all night reading Breaking Dawn and tooling around Forks with the other tween wannabe mom-type people, visiting the various spots where Bella and Edward formed their bond of passionate and forbidden vampiric high school love. We picked a hotel in Port Angeles because it had a bookstore nearby that was willing to stay open until midnight on August 1st.

I wouldn’t call the Twilight books great literature but they are incredibly gripping page-turners and something about them makes me squeal like a wee girl, all the while rolling my eyes and saying, “I’m way too old for this.” And then I do things like book hotel rooms and beg bookstore owners to stay open until midnight.

Anyhoo, I recently read Stephenie Meyer’s first attempt at Adult Fiction, The Host and I was pleasantly surprised. While the teen series was fast moving and an engrossing narrative, it felt like purely a brain vacation. Packed with adjectives about the magnetically attractive hunkishness of Edward’s each and every bodily feature, from his chiseled passionately pulsing pectorals to the oh-so-steamy third-from-the-center eyelash over his liquid-gold left eye, I would classify the series as fun fluff.

The Host had a different feel. Although romance was a big factor and the book had its fair share of hot moments, it focused on deeper themes. War, intolerance, human cruelty, and alien medical procedures are just a few. The book made me think and feel and consider how I treat people. It was also really inventive and kept me guessing what would come next.

Stephenie Meyer kicked it up a notch as a writer and storyteller in the Host, which made the Twilight series seem like a warm-up exercise. I’m excited to see what she does next… that is after she’s finished writing a gazillion sequels.

The Vaccine Book by Robert W. Sears, M.D., F.A.A.P.

Dr Sears III or IV or something (I’m pretty sure it’s not the original Dr Sears.) has written a guide to Vaccines that is thorough, informative and not fear based. When it came to vaccinating my kids, I was terrified to proceed because of all the scary literature out there about possible side effects.

Friends called to warn me about the great harm I was doing my children by vaccinating them and how if I chose to do so, I could be responsible for their health problems later in life, including but not limited to autism and eventually painful death. I was freaked out. If I didn’t vaccinate, I could be ushering polio back into the world. If I did vaccinate, I could be saving the world, while sacrificing my child’s safety.

Every pediatrician I talked to said I MUST VACCINATE while every book and website I read said to vaccinate was practically child abuse.

In the end I decided to go with the collective wisdom of the medical community as delivered to me by my trusted advisor, a pediatrician I adored. She explained that the possible effects of the diseases far outweighed the possible side effects of the vaccinations and assured me that none of the clinic’s vaccines included mercury. I chose to believe her since I was too overwhelmed to sift through all the conflicting information myself.

What I like about Dr Sears’ book is that it explains that the decision to vaccinate is not an all or nothing choice. He goes through each vaccine individually, explaining how it’s made, what it contains, what it prevents, how serious and common the disease is and what side effects can be realistically expected as a result of the vaccine.

I really feel much more informed and am on my way to developing a detailed vaccination plan for my kids, a plan which may involve delaying or skipping certain vaccines or asking for specific brands to control the ingredients been injected into my kids’ bodies.

This book is definitely worth a perusal by any parent who has questions or concerns about vaccine safety. Although it seems obvious that Dr Sears supports the use of vaccines, I think he does a fairly good job of laying out the information impartially.

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The internet’s been down all day here so Tip Tuesday is gonna be mostly on Wednesday this week but I know you can roll “wid” it because y’all are cool like that.

When Laylee was first born, I read to her obsessively. I had all kinds of reading goals, plans and agendas and I loved the way we bonded over our favorite books. Now that Magoo has joined the posse, I find myself armed with books as a weapon to encourage naps, bedtime and something like quiet behavior in church.

He doesn’t seem to have an attention span worth mentioning and since most of our books don’t growl or explode, they’re of very little interest to him.

Laylee still loves stories but she wants to pick her own now and they’re often either so long or so annoying that I try not to suggest story time unless I’m trying to bribe her into narcolepsy.

I’ve felt guilty about our mounting family illiteracy but not as guilty as I’ve felt about my many other areas of personal parental inadequacy so I’ve let it slide. Sometime between 6 months and 10 years ago, Sourcebooks sent me a review copy of Reading with Babies, Toddlers and Twos: A Guide to Reading, Choosing and Loving Books Together.

I finally pulled it out last month and found it was really a quick read and much to my surprise, it did not make me feel a bit guilty, only encouraged to do better. It’s full of great tips, quotes and stories about reading but the best part is that it’s crammed with lists of books for nearly every early age, stage and personality type.

I enjoyed the book and the renewed excitement my kids and I have found for reading so much that I decided to send it on to my sister-in-law as a baby present… But I couldn’t part with all those fabu lists so now I have to go and spend actual money on the darn thing.

My 3 favorite tips from the book are:

-Relax and let your kids enjoy their books, even if it means letting them love Curious George to a pitiful paper monkey death.

-Have your kids grab a couple of books on your way out the door so they have something to occupy them in the car. This will build their bond with books and may give you a couple of seconds’ peace as you drive or a helpful diversion in a checkout line.

-Take small chunks of time throughout the day to sit down and read with your kids, not just one big fat story marathon and not just at bedtime.

What tips do you have to encourage reading for children of all ages?

What books should no children’s library be without?

We took my review copy of Poetry Speaks to Children on vacation with us this July to try it out with the kids. It’s a hard cover picture book of poetry compiled by Elise Paschen with poems written by just about every famous poet around and a few I’d never heard of.

It comes with a CD containing readings of nearly all the poems, many of them read by the authors themselves. The track numbers are clearly listed on each page so it’s easy to follow along as you read, even if you’re too little to read words yet.

Dan and I loved the book and most of the readings. Some of the recordings are not super high quality and some of the authors are not excellent readers. Still it was fascinating to hear the voice inflections of the people who originally penned the words, a novelty that was lost on my 2 and 4-year-old but which I think older kids and adults would really appreciate.

My kids enjoyed it more when I read the book to them myself. The gorgeous illustrations really captured their imaginations (Well, Laylee’s imagination. This was still a bit of a stretch for Magoo.) and overall the experience was a success.

I think it would make a great gift for an elementary school aged child, one they might not appreciate at first but their parents would love you for and it would become a favorite as they learned to dive in and love the world of poetry.