I'm thinking ahead to summer, beginning to make reading plans and daydreaming about warmer days.
Homeschool lessons are tucked away in the summer, but I do make plans for increased reading and casual study.
Last summer we read these wonderful books (and a few others - all but one are from our local library):
First, per the suggestion of a friend, we fell in love with The Squire and the Scroll: A Tale of the Rewards of a Pure Heart
If you have a child that's afraid of the dark or afraid at night, I encourage you to check out John Trent's book There's a Duck in My Closet!
The first of the d'Aulaire's books that we read was Leif the Lucky
Next, we went on to read Columbus
Near the end of last summer, we finished Abraham Lincoln
We have really enjoyed these books; they are full of colorful illustrations and engaging stories, and the authors use rich, compelling language, which is a rarity in many children's books today.
As I begin making reading plans for this summer, I have to ask you - what books have you and your children enjoyed? What do you suggest I add to our "must-read" list?
Warmly,
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*also shared at Simple Lives Thursday
The book list looks intriguing! I also love how you included a book about Abraham Lincoln. Recently I’ve seen him defamed in order to promote the confederacy and states rights to such a degree that his wisdom and extraordinary love and compassion for people have been disregarded by Christians.
Those look like good choices. We have Squire and the Scroll, but my little guy is only 3 and I didn’t know if he’d be too young for it yet. How old was your son when you read it to him?
He was five-and-a-half last summer when we first read it
We love the D’aulaire books at our house as well! I wish our library carreid more of them. A couple other favorites around here include Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling, Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and Burgess’ Old Mother West Wind Series. We can’t seem to get enough books around here and I love getting recommendations from like-minded mammas so thanks for a great post!
Thanks for the great suggestions, Katie! I’ll look into them!
My children have loved the “Harry the Dog” books as well as Amelia Bedelia. “The Biggest Bear” is also a great book for boys. Anything by Lois Lenski has been well received. Recently I checked out Burgess “Bird Book for Children” and those under seven liked learning from it. We also love the James Herriott books for children. They are usually available at local library. My library also has some recently written books about various artist of the past. I’ve noticed that even my older children have picked those up and read them. They have beautiful pictures. They are written by various author’s but have the look of a “set”. I’m sorry that I don’t have one right here to let you know more about that set.
How could I have forgotten about the Harry the Dog books?! We love those! Thanks for the great suggestions, Susan!
Thank you for this. I am always eager to learn which books are favorites, especially for little boys. My son is 4 and doesn’t like me to read anything but Peter Pan and a few other pirate books. These sound like great adventure books that he might like. I am ordering a few today.
I smiled while reading your entire post. You are thinking what I have also been pondering lately.
All the books you mentioned, we have read and thoroughly enjoyed. We have children high school through preschool and they all enjoy time together when I read to them.
In your search, I would like to recommend “Read For The Heart” from Sarah Clarkson.
It has wonderful recommendations on books-broken down by topic or genre and has a little
insight on the story, author, etc. Wholesome and top-quality books recommended.
Thanks for such a wonderful and inspiring blog!
May the Lord bless you as you plan your summer reading!
So funny. I was just thinking today that I needed to plan some good books and things for the summer. Thanks for sharing the books. I will check out some of them.
Thank you for adding more fun reading books to my list that I hadn’t previously heard of! I have girls but they love all books. “Honey for a Child’s Heart” is also a great list of books with primarily Christian authors.
We have enjoyed three of the ones you mentioned as well. I just got done reading “The family nobody wanted” by Helen Doss aloud to my kids. We enjoyed it emensely. It is a chapter book and a true story about a couple that adopted 12 children (in the course of 9 years).
Some books for younger kids that I have loved include: “Roxaboxen”, “The Lupine Lady” and I second the recommendation for the James Herriot kids books (we also enjoyed reading his full length books outloud together though I edited the language a bit).
We have read so many good books it is hard to remember all the names!
Have you heard of the books by the Millers? One is called Missionaries but we liked the one that’s something about family stories best. All of my girls (4 girls) loved the stories and I DID TOO!!!!
I’m going to look into the books you recommended at our library. It’s huge and should have some if not all of them.
Smiles, Cass
I’ll look into those books! Thank you!