World Book Day 2013

Today, March 7th 2013 is World Book Day, which is an initiative to get kids reading. Kids in participating schools will get free book tokens. What better way to get kids reading than free stuff 🙂

Giraffes Can’t Dance – one of the 2013 World Book Day books

We in Around Quarter Past Bookclub and our (count them slowly 2+2+2+2+2+2+3++1+1+4 =21) twenty one children (how did that happen!) love to read and we often recommend books to one another that our little ones have loved. Our kids range in age from 9 year old Nathan to brand new Emmet who came to our last meeting at 12 weeks old so there’s a wide variety in the recommended books.

Check out our previous blogposts here about what books our kiddies love:

Our Children’s Favourite Books

Our Children’s Favourite Books Part 2

And some other links that might be of interest to children’s book lovers:

Review of Peppa’s Big Train

The Gruffalo Official Website

Happy World Book Day

Our Childrens’ Favourite Books Part 2

Laura M & Sinéad brought their kids’ favourite books to our November meeting.

Nathan’s Favourites (Aged 9) 

Anything Roald Dahl, just finished Going Solo and is really excited to read the BFG next

Ninja Meerkats series – what boy doesn’t love Ninjas & Meerkats 🙂

Garth Nix – The Seventh Tower series is brilliant.

Leon’s Favourites (Aged 6)

Dinosaur Cove Series – great for bedtime stories.  Exciting with illustrations on every page

Crunch Munch Dinosaur Lunch – Paul Bright & Michael Terry – All three kids from 2 up to 9 enjoy this one.  This has started a catch phrase in the house Lub-oo Daddy-normous!

Harry and the Dinosaurs and the Bucketful of Stories – Ian Whybrow Adrian Reynolds

Ciarán’s Favourites (Aged 4)

What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson

Go Tell it to the Toucan – Colin West

Calm Down Boris, Sam Lloyd

Usborne Nativity touchy feely 

The Snail and the Whale – Julia Donaldson

Cathal’s Favourites (Aged 2)

Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?   Bill Martin Jr

The Gruffalo – Julia Donaldson

That’s not my Puppy

Robyn’s Favourites (Aged 2)

Mouse Mess by Linnea Riley – Beautifully illustrated and has proved to be popular with all of the kids.  Sentimental about this one because it was the first book Nathan ever read by himself 🙂

Scaredy Squirrel Series by Melanie Watt.  Love reading these, they make me laugh too 🙂  About a paranoid squirrel who is scared of everything, but it always turns out well in the end.

Sitting Ducks – Michael Bedard.  A charming little story about an alligator who works in a duck factory (hatching eggs to grow ducks to feed the alligators!).  He secretly takes an egg home and makes friends with the duck who starts a duck revolution!  Bought this for me one day in Dubray Books when we were wandering down Shop St. – really bought it for me, but the boys have loved it and now Robyn too 🙂

Felix’s Favourites (7 months)

Anything ‘That’s not my…’ books are brilliant from 3/4 months

Tails – Matthew Van Fleet. Gorgeous touchy feely book great for little ones, boys or girls, sent from family in the States for Leon.  Robyn really loves this one.

Where’s That Fish? – Dan Crisp.  A clever little book with a cut out that makes it look like it the goldfish you’re looking for on the next page but it’s always something else.  But there’s a happy ending.

September’s book club meeting

September’s meeting was a roaring success with a grand turnout of eight out of nine of us! Welcome to new member Sarah. We celebrated  the book club’s second birthday with tea, coffee, delicious home made iced banana mini-muffins from Merle, and rather large ‘bite-sized’ brownies. Unfortunately we forgot to take photos. I made everyone fill out questionnaires and have lots of ammunition now for the ‘Who-we-are’ section of the blog. Watch this space.

Sinéad had a total of four books on her shortlist for November’s book choice, and she/we chose ‘Solace’ by Belinda McKeon which she has been enthusing about for quite a while. Gorey library are looking into sourcing some copies for us so please let me know if you need a copy.

For October’s meeting we will be discussing ‘Boxer Beetle’. As we will be starting to think of what books to buy our little ones for Christmas, we are each going to bring along a few of our children’s favourite books so we can talk about them and recommend to each other. 

October’s meeting is the 4th Tuesday of October, the 23rd, as opposed to the _last_ Tuesday of the month as I know at least two of us who are away the last week of the month. It still leaves 4 weeks to read Boxer Beetle. Looking forward to getting stuck in.

Happy reading!