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description=Are you always looking for new books for your children? Do you need help finding childrens books that you want to add to your home library? Learn from my attempts to build a library of worthwhile books for my daughter and let’s help each other make our kids’ libraries rock.;
keywords=childrens books, kids books, what should I read, young adult fiction, childrens fiction, library, building a library,;

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Text of the page (random words):
was inspired by a book called star wars head to head the 30 wildest matchups you ve never seen by pablo hidalgo and i m not sure if i want to throw the book in the garbage or give it a teen movie style slow clap to acknowledge it as a subversive masterpiece my daughter is in first grade and her class has a daily homework reading program called book in a bag every day she comes home with a new book in a bag that she s supposed to read with us that night after she reads it on her own we have to decide if the book was easy just right or hard for her to read and fill out an attached form it s a good concept though the books my daughter brings home sometimes can leave a lot of be desired occasionally she ll bring home a familiar gem the princess and the pizza but often she s bringing home phonics focused easy readers that are way too easy for her or she s bringing home media tie in books my little pony star wars etc that just seem designed to lure kids away from legitimate works of literature or at least that s how it feels sometimes said the grumpy dad with his own kid lit blog but i totally understand why my daughter s teacher includes those titles in the book in a bag program yes they might not be well written but the kids love them they gravitate towards those books and since those titles appeal to their basest lizard brain impulses they feel a sense of ownership when they pick them out and get excited about reading them i get it most of them suck but i get it they re dessert reading and every kid is entitled to dessert occasionally right just not all the time dessert all the time just leads to sloth rot and general queasiness so if my kid comes home with a star wars book from school it s no big deal provided that she realizes that we re reading shel silverstein or maurice sendak at bedtime to balance out her diet i refuse to acknowledge the validity of this duel that being said we actually had a very fun time going through star wars head to head the 30 wildest matchups you ve never seen last night granted it s not the easiest book for a kid to read on their own each page is set up as stats page for various characters and vehicles so there s a lot of small type metadata for kids to sort through did you know that darth vader s height weight is 2 02 meters 136 kilograms i do now however the concept of the book is extremely easy to grasp on each two page spread two characters or vehicles are featured and the book essentially asks the question between these two contestants who would win in a fight yoda vs vader obi wan vs boba fett luke vs anakin jawa vs ewok star destroyer vs trade federation battleship and as much as i hate to admit this that simple concept inspired a night of very entertaining very detailed theoretical debate between my daughter and i a result that i wasn t expecting at all ok billy dee williams should be legitimately upset about this maybe i m just used to the normal kid s book media tie in methodology where the book just clumsily retells a story that was previously told better in another medium but at its core star wars head to head has an infinitely more engaging mission it s a book designed to be a discussion starter yes it s filled with clumsy instruction manual esque prose and photoshopped artwork but every two page spread is actually asking its reader a question which one would you pick and that one simple question turns those readers into active participants with the book read the rest of the post 8 comments photographic proof that detroit is the home of ilvermorny j k rowling s north american wizard school updated by tom b i ve got big news for harry potter fans some of you may have read my earlier post why detroit is the perfect home for ilvermorny which collected my arguments for why i thought that the motor city would make an ideal location for j k rowling s recently announced north american wizarding school well my daughter and i were so eager to get our theory confirmed that we took a drive down to detroit to see if we could find any evidence of ilvermorny and guess what we found it you could see ilvermorny all over the motown and we had a terrific time checking out the classrooms the library the great hall what a school i posted the first batch of our ilvermorny pictures on my instagram account and i ve collected some of the best ones below i have even more to share so keep checking back to see more snapshots from our amazing school visit you can read more of my ilvermorny theories and tweets if you follow the ilvermorny hashtag on twitter and fellow detroiters if you have additional photographic evidence that ilvermorny is in fact in our beloved city please share links to the pictures in the comments below i know the official announcement of ilvermorny s location hasn t been made yet but i am really proud to see so much evidence of the noble wizarding tradition in my hometown i think detroit would be and is a great home for ilvermorny we have photographic proof that detroit is the home of ilvermorny jk rowling s recently announced north american wizard school we visited the campus of ilvermorny today and it was amazing here s the main building cleverly disguised from muggles and we have a lot more to share harrypotter ilvermorny detroit detroitisilvermorny harrypotter jkrowling pottermore a photo posted by tom b buildingalibrary on feb 5 2016 at 6 00pm pst our next stop on detroit s ilvermorny campus was the east hall this is where the first years take their history of magic and transfiguration classes detroitisilvermorny ilvermorny harrypotter jkrowling detroit detroitisilvermorny pottermore a photo posted by tom b buildingalibrary on feb 5 2016 at 6 04pm pst this is the potions classroom the ilvermorny professors are much nicer than snape or slughorn harrypotter detroitisilvermorny ilvermorny detroit jkrowling pottermore a photo posted by tom b buildingalibrary on feb 5 2016 at 6 06pm pst took a break in between classes to catch up on our fantastic beasts and where to find them ilvermorny s detroit campus has a fantastic library fantasticbeastsandwheretofindthem ilvermorny detroitisilvermorny jkrowling detroit harrypotter a photo posted by tom b buildingalibrary on feb 5 2016 at 6 09pm pst one reason why we re glad ilvermorny is in detroit it has a remarkable series of herbology greenhouses neville longbottom would be in heaven ilvermorny detroit detroitisilvermorny harrypotter jkrowling pottermore a photo posted by tom b buildingalibrary on feb 5 2016 at 6 12pm pst read the rest of the post 5 comments why detroit is the perfect home for ilvermorny j k rowling s north american wizarding school by tom b it looks like detroit architecture to me last week pottermore the official website for all things harry potter announced the existence of four previously unmentioned international wizarding schools we learned about the brazilian school of castelobruxo africa s esteemed uagadou school and japan s magical academy mahoutokoro all with new descriptions penned by j k rowling herself we also learned the name of the long awaited north american wizarding school ilvermorny though pottermore hasn t released rowling s description of the school or the school s location yet all we got was a name and an illustration of the school shrouded in clouds hovering above the great lakes region and as an impatient fanboy that got me excited because i m from the great lakes region specifically i m from detroit one of the most notorious and misunderstood cities in north america and i personally think that detroit would make a tremendous home for ilvermorny i really do i think that wizarding academy has been here all along j k rowling might prove me wrong in a few days but in the meantime i took to twitter today to make my case for why detroit would be the idea home for ilvermorny and i think i have a few decent points if you agree chime into the discussion and show me your reasoning if you disagree philistine tell me why ilvermorny exists anywhere else why ilvermorny should be in detroit it appears to be a ruin to muggles but people in the know can see what it really is tom b buildalibrary february 1 2016 why ilvermorny should be in detroit guess who died in detroit harry houdini vengeful wizards didn t like a non maj trying to debunk them tom b buildalibrary february 1 2016 why ilvermorny should be in detroit have you ever been inside the detroit institute of arts those paintings talk man tom b buildalibrary february 1 2016 why ilvermorny should be in detroit famous case of a detroit teacher breaking up a classroom fight with a broom it was a nimbus 2000 tom b buildalibrary february 1 2016 why ilvermorny should be in detroit detroit education could really really use a win jk_rowling just sayin tom b buildalibrary february 1 2016 why ilvermorny should be in detroit detroit makes magical things we re makers tinkerers we re experts at making the abstract real tom b buildalibrary february 1 2016 why ilvermorny should be in detroit because my daughter is 9 now and with that easy commute i could see her all the time tom b buildalibrary february 1 2016 read the rest of the post 1 comment crash adams is the strong kidlit heroine that your daughters and sons have been waiting for by tom b crash adams is 10 and i m pretty sure she could kick my butt i have a nine year old daughter so every time i go into a bookstore i am on the lookout for strong female protagonists i spend an inordinate amount of time flipping through books that have been recommended by friends quickly trying to evaluate their female characters hoping that they re active interesting and actually contribute something to the story basically i m trying to get a sense of whether or not the female lead will cause my daughter to pump her fist and scream heck yeah or quietly shut the book and forlornly say but she didn t do anything crash adams made my daughter pump her fist the adventures of crash adams one ear returns is the first in a new independently published middle grade reader series by mike adamick i m a big fan of adamick s he has a tremendous blog and he s written a number of incredibly fun nonfiction books titles like dad s book of awesome projects dad s book of awesome recipes and dad s book of awesome science projects adamick s nonfiction works celebrate the wonders of kids getting their hands dirty and actually making something doing something building things from scratch and his first foray into fiction carries those themes over nicely the story of one ear returns is simple and short but the character is anything but crash adams is a dirt covered self reliant ten year old girl whose family moved out to a small farm in marin county california a few years earlier crash roams the wilderness surrounding her farm with her faithful dog zorro who is preternaturally skilled at understanding commands and learns as much as she can from experiencing nature firsthand if your kids enjoyed rey in star wars the force awakens they ll find a kindred spirit in crash she s the kind of singularly capable adventurous kid that we don t see in many works for middle graders in juvenile novels you get a lot of precocious children you get curious and precocious kids like they re going out of style but crash isn t precocious she s clever and quick and hardened by experience even though she s only ten she feels like a throwback like the lead character from a laura ingalls wilder book who was dropped off in modern day california and was told that she could ditch the gingham and put on a pair of jeans read the rest of the post 0 comments my father never returned library books a father s day reading remembrance by tom b scene of the crime with father s day hitting this sunday it inevitably got me thinking about my dad specifically about my dad and reading my dad died when i was ten a huge portion of my memories of my father involve watching him read my dad read all the time he would take piles of books out from the library and sit on our couch all day and night and he would read and read and read he would chain smoke benson hedges 100s while he read and he would never ever return those books to the library never we had mountains of past due library books in every room in our house topped with sliding whitecaps made from all of the overdue penalty slips that arrived in our mailbox every day begging us to return all of the publically owned books we were hoarding those slips were largely ignored my dad loved our local library and so did we and the librarians loved my dad he was well read charming had an adorably thick scottish brogue and always treated the librarians with respect which is ironic given how little respect he paid the library s return policy this was our preferred branch for borrowing books i have vivid memories of driving carloads and carloads of long hoarded books down to detroit s main library branch after if i m remembering correctly some kind of legal action was finally threatened fortunately a friend who worked in the library system fixed the problem for us but only after we did our best to return as many of the ill gotten books as we could i remember us meeting him after hours at a side door of the main branch and just throwing what looked like hundreds of books onto carts so he could log them back into the system and prevent the library police from taking my dad away to the overdue debtor s prison at least that was how it felt at the time in retrospect i am struck by three main thoughts about our long period of familial library larceny 1 that was just crazy behavior crazy seriously who does that 2 i can t help but wonder if that whole mess was even a partial inspiration behind my own desire to create such a large bought and paid for look i even have the receipts home library for my daughter and 3 i wonder if that s why i never had any books that belonged to my father because even though you could easily describe my father as a voriacious reader after he died which wasn t that long after our great midnight library return adventure we barely had any of his books left in the house i m a person who owns a lot of books if you went through my bookshelves at home you d find an odd mix of titles but you d also find copies of every book that ever really meant something to me so with that in mind it feels very odd to me that my dad who also apparently treasured books didn t do the same thing now my father grew up really poor in scotland and we were pretty broke when i was a kid so maybe book ownership was just an extravagance that he simply didn t have maybe he relied on public libraries completely to supply himself with books which makes for a nomadic reading existence because eventually you have to give those books back no matter how hard we fought to prove that rule wrong but it always felt unusual to me that my father the big reader left such a non existent book footprint in our home there was no robbie burns memorial library left on our bookshelves after...