Children's Book Review: Go to Sleep, Little Farm By Mary Lyn Ray

GO TO SLEEP, LITTLE FARM

By: Mary Lyn Ray

Illustrator: Christopher Silas Neal

Published: September 2, 2014

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

I was looking for a book to read at my bedtime story time at the library. This was a new release and I figured most of the kids hadn't read it or heard of it. I'm a sucker for farm books since I grew up on a farm with horses, sheep, cattle and chickens. I loved reading farm books to our kids and especially books perfect for bedtime that got them in the mood for sleeping.  If our kids were still little, I would definitely be reading this one to them.

A young girl is getting ready for bed while critters and animals outside are getting ready for bed. As she gets ready for bed, we learn where the animals, such as a bee, a beaver, a bear and foxes, all find room to sleep. The tale is told in rhyme and moves us around the farm as all the animals and the farmer are turning in for the night.

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The pages in the hardcover are heavy paper and not easily torn by little fingers. The illustrations are muted in color and remind you that night in settling in around the farm. A child will love to be tucked into bed with this final story each night as they go off to dreamland thinking of all the other animals being tucked in as well.

Mary Lyn Ray

Mary Lyn Ray is a conservationist and author of several picture books for children. Ray’s texts are often praised for their lyricism and emotional depth, and in her works she frequently focuses on humankind’s relationship with nature. Among her critically acclaimed titles are PUMPKINS, SHAKER BOY, and WELCOME, BROWN BIRD. For more on Mary Lyn Ray, check out her website, http://www.marylynray.com/.

To purchase a copy of this book, click the photo below:

I will be linking up with Booking Mama and other bloggers for the Saturday Kid Konnection Linky. To see other great children's and YA book reviews, click HERE.

Congrats to Author, Lloyd Lofthouse

A month ago I reviewed the book, CRAZY IS NORMAL, It is a memoir that offers a look at a year in the life of Lloyd Lofthouse, a high school English teacher. He kept a daily journal during the year of 1994, including his frustrations with students lack of motivation and his anger over the lack of funding for schools. The educational and student issues he shared are still prevalent today and his insight into the future of education is interesting. To see my review, click HERE.

CRAZY IS NORMAL 

has received honorable mention 

at the Southern California Book Festival. 

I wanted to take this opportunity 

to share my congratulations to Mr Lofthouse.

I encourage you to check out his blog where he talks about education, HERE. You can read a post about his thoughts on substitute teachers that was related to my review and my work as a Sub. For that specific post, click HERE.

To purchase a copy of CRAZY IS NORMAL, click the photo below. The Kindle version is just $.99 at this time.

Book Review: Larger Than Life By Jodi Picoult

LARGER THAN LIFE
Novella

By: Jodi Picoult

Published: August 4, 2014

Publisher: Ballantine Books

eBook

Fiction

The new trend in book publishing is for authors to come out with a novella or short story that gives the reader a bit more information and often times, the backstory behind the main characters in the novel. This short story is written to grab the readers interest before their big book comes out and of course, make you want to read the rest of the story. Heather Gudenkauf did this with her short story, LITTLE LIES before LITTLE MERCIES was published. See my review for them, HERE.

Jodi Picoult's fans have been waiting for her newest book LEAVING TIME and I have certainly been one of them.  As a book reviewer, I tend to not always get to read the books that I want to read because I have a long list of review books to get to. But there are just some authors that I make room for in my reading and Picoult is one of them.  When I saw she also had a novella, I knew I wanted to read that as well. I kind of like the idea of a shorter story that draws you into the characters.  These short stories are usually only available as an eBook and are usually very low-cost or free.

LARGER THAN LIFE takes us back to an earlier time in the life of Alice. We learn a bit about her childhood and life with her single mother.  Alice is turned on to science one day when she comes home to a newly decorated room, equipped with a microscope. After that day, Alice never looked back and eventually becomes a Harvard graduate and an elephant researcher in Africa.

Even though this novella is less than a hundred pages, Picoult has a way of writing that makes even the shortest stories worth reading. We become attached to Alice and her elephant calf, Lesego. We understand her frustrations with her mom while she was growing up and her loneliness for companionship as an adult. Reading this novella gives us the history of Alice's relationships to take us right into LEAVING TIME where we move forward several years to Alice's daughter, Jenna. Jenna is a teenager and looking for her missing mother.

I'm anxious to crack open LEAVING TIME after reading this and I know you will be too. LARGER THAN LIFE is only available as an eBook and as of right now is just $1.99 on Kindle.

To purchase a copy of LARGER THAN LIFE, click the photo below:

Sunday Snippets 11.2.14

On Sundays I like to share snippets from our life here in small town Iowa.

The last few weeks have been really busy for us. I thought life might be slowing down a bit since some of the kids activities are done. But, this week still kept me moving. I am still subbing nearly every day and I had my second cold of the season so I hope that I am covered now for the whole winter. 

During the month of November, I hope to take some time to reflect on all my blessings. The biggest blessings in my life are my husband and children. But, there are so many other blessings I am grateful for. I hope you can spend some time reflecting on those blessings this month.

Enjoy some of the snippets from our week!

I am super excited about my new camera. The perks of subbing nearly everyday include earning the money sooner that I planned to purchase this Canon EOS Rebel T5. I don't have all the buttons and whistles figured out yet, but I am loving the results of the photos I have taken with it already.

All the photos below are from my new Canon. 

Patrick's final performance on the field this year. Marching band has been so much fun for him as well as all of us. I will miss the performances, but am excited because I have several years of marching band ahead of me with Bennett and Reagan coming up. 

It was really foggy last Friday night, but the band still rocked the stadium!

At one of their competitions this season, 

the drumline earned Best Percussion. That was pretty exciting!

Saturday was my husband's birthday! After Reagan's basketball practice, we headed out for breakfast and a little Frisbee Golf. It was a beautiful morning!

Even though my game didn't go so well and I eventually gave up, I had fun watching the competition....

...and enjoying the final days of fall's beauty all around us.

That evening we had family over to celebrate Pat's birthday 

and enjoy his favorite food, Spanish Rice, using his mom's recipe. 

Last Sunday was our annual Fall Leaf Raking Day.

We have two large Blaze Maples in our backyard that drop lots of leaves.

Stormy was excited to be able to join us outside.

The kids were great helpers getting all the leaves raked into a pile.

Stormy loves to climb our trees and we found her running up and around them all afternoon.

The good thing is she always comes back down! 

Reagan took over my job of driving the tractor this year.

She was pretty excited and enjoyed her "important" job.

The best part of raking the leaves is jumping in the pile.

And, of course, the required pictures for mom!

My favorite photo of the whole day! 

Thanks for sharing in our joyful moments of the past couple weeks. 

Book Review: Finding Daddy Warbucks By David Hwa

FINDING DADDY WARBUCKS

By: David Hwa

Published: May 13, 2014

Publisher: Wellworth LLC

Fiction

I'm participating in the book tour for FINDING DADDY WARBUCKS through PUMP UP YOUR BOOK. For other stops on the tour click HERE.

Haley, a 10-year-old, decides that nearly a year after her father died in an accident, it is time to find her family a new dad. She takes it upon herself to make this happen after seeing an ad in a newspaper for a "matchmaker". Haley lives in Washington DC and finds out that their family may have to move to Kansas. All she knows about Kansas is from TV and movies and it looks pretty scary. She must do whatever she can to stop her family from having to move. But, when Haley's mom doesn't fall for the prince Haley finds, her plan may have drastic repercussions.

This is a short, sweet story that shows a child's determination to get her family back to "normal". Sadly, her normal may not be attainable.  Haley ends up skipping out of school and traveling through the city alone on a bus, navigating streets, office buildings, and bus stops. I found this a little difficult to grasp. As the mom of a nearly 10-year-old, I don't think my daughter would be able to concoct this type of elaborate plan along with navigating the city by herself. I think if Hayley would have been twelve or thirteen, it would have been a bit more believable. Her voice and actions in the story didn't match up with her age for me.

But, this story is fiction and that means it doesn't necessarily have to meet up with reality. The princely character of Sir John and his romance with Jess, Haley's mom, will remind you of fairy tales. There are diversions, mishaps, and complications that hamper Haley's master plan. You definitely have hope for a happy outcome and I was satisfied with the ending.

Overall, if you are looking for a quick read that will put you in a good mood, FINDING DADDY WARBUCKS will accomplish that.  This book could be enjoyed by YA fans as well as those who like adult or women's fiction. Haley's story will teach us to believe in our dreams, but that our dreams may not always happen exactly the way we planned.

David Hwa

David Hwa makes his literary debut with Finding Daddy Warbucks (2014) a tale of a little girl’s journey through loss, love and redemption. 

David grew up in Kansas. He graduated with a music degree from the University of Colorado and went on to obtain a Master of Business Administration from Denver University, a law degree from Pepperdine University School of Law, and a Master of Laws from Georgetown University Law Center.

He practiced securities law for many years in Los Angeles, California with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. He later moved to Washington, DC where continued his securities practice with the Commission and later in private practice with the law firm of Bingham McCutchen LLP. Following the financial crisis of 2008, David moved back to Colorado and opened his own securities law practice.

David is single and lives in Aurora, Colorado with his two leopard geckos Gordon and Carlos. He spends his days writing, skiing, and occasionally dispensing legal advice, sometimes while on the ski slopes.

To purchase a copy of FINDING DADDY WARBUCKS, click the photo below. It is currently just $1.00 the eBook version.

Thanks to Pump Up Your Book for sending me an eBook copy of this book for review. This review is my honest opinion. I was not compensated in any way for this review. If you choose to purchase a copy of this book through the above link, I may receive a small commission without you having to pay a cent more for your purchase. Thanks for supporting SincerelyStacie.com reviews. 

Fulcrum Gallery Print Review

Have you ever heard of FULCRUM GALLERY?

This website has hundreds of prints in every category imaginable.

If you are looking for a print with flowers, word art, movies/entertainment, food, animals, sports, scenic, religious, and so much more, you can find exactly what you want on FULCRUM GALLERY. 

I had been wanting a print for a corner wall of our basement and wanted something in the book category.  I love how you can enter in search categories on their website and then narrow that down by color, shape and size.

I wanted a print that had reds or browns in it so I was able to narrow down my search using those colors.  You can also search by style category like modern, classic, contemporary, traditional as well as black and white, minimalist, realism and pop art just to name a few.

If you are looking for a print for a specific room, you can search that way as well. 

If you need new art for your office, click HERE for some great choices.  I almost changed my book idea to get the Dreaming Tree Red print:

If you have a specific artist you are looking for, like Van Gogh, Picasso, O'Keefe, Lichtenstein, or Adams, you can find their works on this site too. 

While searching for bookish prints, I found these prints in my search. 

I liked them all, but then I saw this one...

I loved it, but wasn't the look I was going for in our basement.

After spending a few hours going through various search queries and narrowing down my categories, I finally found the one that I wanted.

Life lessons on books = Perfect print for me.

I chose to have it framed in just a regular black frame, but there are lots of options I could have chosen for various prices. I felt this option with the print was very reasonable at about $75. You can choose from various frame styles and colors as well as having your print on canvas. 

I paired it with some shelves that we already had and some bookish items.

I love my new corner of the basement. 

I had a great experience with FULCRUM GALLERY. 

The print came quite quickly and was well-protected in the packaging.

If you are looking to change up your home decor, I highly recommend you check FULCRUM GALLERY.  There truly is art for every style, room, color, and decor that you are looking for. 

Thanks to Fulcrum Gallery for asking me to review their product. I was given a set amount and then could put that toward a print of my choosing. I wasn't compensated in any other way for this review and this review is my honest opinion.