Tadpoles and Dinosaurs

This wonderful book, Tadpole Rex, by Kurt Cyrus, will charm you and your children. The first and second graders loved the illustrations and the rhyming text with lots of great sound-words. The book made a fantastic read-aloud.

Tadpole Rex lives in a prehistoric swamp and begins his life in the puddle made by a gigantic dinosaur footprint. You will learn about his growth to become a frog and the dangers he encounters. The author's note explains his metamorphosis and points out that frogs were on the earth before the dinosaurs and many different frogs still live in our world. What a fun way to learn about the life cyle of a frog.

Our local public library also has this great science kit that has actual specimens of 5 stages of the frog life cycle encased in resin blocks. The students loved examining each real example of the life cycle stages from all sides.

Look for more great books written and/or illustrated by Kurt Cyrus.

Alex Rider

Did you ever want to be a secret agent?

Alex Rider, in Skeleton Key [by Anthony Horowitz], would just like to be a normal 14-year-old. He wants to go to school, have a family, and a girl friend, just like all the other kids. The British Secret Intelligence Service finds assignments for him that start out “simple” but end up with Alex having to save the world (and himself).

Alex is assigned to go undercover in the United States with two US agents. These two agents, posing as his parents, are supposed to do the spying, and he’s supposed to enjoy an island vacation on Skeleton Key, near Cuba. Of course, plans are changed, and Alex is kidnapped, and …

Get ready to read this book straight through. You won’t want to put it down until the end! And then you’ll want to read another in the series!

This is the third book in the series but it’s okay to read the books out of order, I did! Thanks to a student at school for recommending the series. I’ll be ordering them for our school library.

If you like Artemis Fowl, you’ll enjoy Alex Rider. No fairies or goblins, but the human bad guys can be just as menacing, and Alex gets to use lots of special gadgets, like a cell phone that shoots out a drugged needle and a Gameboy that really is a Geiger counter.

Hats, scarves, and gloves, oh my!

I've been finishing up lots of knitted items for my shop. Here's a few of them.

Knitting for babies

Babies are arriving and the knitting is almost done! The sweater to match these booties only needs a collar, so you should get to see it soon.

Roman Mysteries: Thieves of Ostia

Caroline Lawrence has written a series of historical mysteries set in Ancient Rome. The first in the series, The Thieves of Ostia, introduces the four main characters in her series. Flavia Gemina is the daughter of a Roman sea captain who sees herself as a detective. She rescues Nubia, a young African girl, from a life of slavery, and brings her to live with her as a companion. Her neighbor Jonathan rescues Flavia, and later they all rescue Lupus, a young, mute beggar from the same pack of wild dogs.

The reader will be immersed in the details of life in the Roman port of Ostia, in the year 79 AD, while they follow the 4 children on their search for the killer or killers of the neighborhood dogs. Who is beheading the dogs, and why?

Caroline continues the adventures of the four children in other ancient settings, including Pompeii, Greece, and Africa. The author plans 17 books in the series. Some of the books have also been filmed as a British TV series.

Variegated yarn surprises

I love knitting with variegated yarns. The changes in the colors create pretty patterns and pools of color making the most mundane stitch patterns interesting. My current knitting project has given me an unexpected surprise. The large skein of Bernat Chunky apparently does not have consistent segments of color…resulting in an unmatched pair of fingerless gloves! I’m on the third glove now, and I’m hoping I won’t have to knit FOUR gloves to have two that look like a pair!

UPDATE: I did knit 4, here's the two that "match".

Millions

What would you do if a bag of money fell out of the sky?

Frank Boyce's first novel, Millions, is a story of two boys, Anthony and Damien, who have recently lost their mother, and move to a new house with their father. Damien, the younger brother, is obsessed with saints and can recall their statistics as many recall sports stars' stats. When a bag of money, a LOT of money, appears to fall from the sky [it is tossed off a train by theives] Damien believes it was sent from God. The boys do not tell their father about the money [a quarter million pounds] and try to give it away or spend some of it without anyone finding out. Of course their lives become very complicated by the responsibility of the money, and the fact that England is converting to Euros in 17 days -- the pounds sterling will be soon worthless.

The reader of the audio book is British and the accent provides authenticity to the reading, however the references to British toys and terminology might prove challenging for American readers/listeners. Due to some of the content, I would recommend the book for readers aged 10 and up. The book has been made into a movie. Complete reviews of both book and movie are available on CommonSenseMedia.