Finding Book Recommendations in Unexpected Places (Podcast Edition)

It took me awhile to jump on the audiobook and podcast train, but I am a devoted fan these days. Almost all of my reading happens in audio form these days, and the same is true for reading recommendations! Last year, I wrote about my favorite book podcasts: both for finding books for myself and for my little bookworms. As much as I love listening to podcasts about reading, however, it’s always a pleasant surprise to get book recommendations from one of my other podcasts. It’s like going to the park and discovering your favorite food truck is there for the afternoon at the same time. (Or it would be if I lived anywhere hip enough to have food trucks.) Here are three podcast episodes all about books that I’ve loved recently:

Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzberg and Helping Kids Work Through Mistakes

I first picked up Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzberg while shopping for a baby shower gift last year. Because I’d gone to an actual bookstore, I found myself thumbing through books I probably wouldn’t have noticed online. Beautiful Oops is a collection of mistakes turned into illustrations. A torn piece of paper, for example, becomes the toothy grin of a friendly alligator. Every time I see my children get angry about a mistake (especially in art), this book comes to mind. After a particularly frustrating discussion during an art project last week, I put together an impromptu activity around Beautiful Oops.

5 Favorite Books for Teaching Shakespeare

I mentioned last week that I’ve been reading Shakespeare with my fourth grader and kindergartener. We’ve never gone as far as to recreate a play, but that may be changing. In-depth study of drama and stage vocabulary is part of the fourth-grade curriculum in my state, so I’m toying with the idea of putting on a little show of our own. While I’ve been over here collecting costume pieces and debating which play is our best bet, I’ve also compiled a list of our favorite books we’ve used so far:

Reading Shakespeare with Kids

Over the course of my four years in high school, I read and watched Romeo and Juliet, Julius Ceasar, King Lear, and Hamlet. Not counting my world history teacher that spent a full lecture on how William Shakespeare was a fraud, that was my only exposure to the works of Shakespeare in school…including college.* One of my goals as a homeschooling parent is to introduce my children to as many beautiful passages from literature as I can. An added benefit to reading Shakespeare with my own children is that I’m learning the plays right along with them. Are you interested in incorporating Shakespeare into your classroom or home? Here’s what works for us:

Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner

Since The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner is one of my all-time favorite books, I was beyond excited to find out that she would be publishing another book in the series this year. Thick as Thieves was one of my most anticipated reads of 2017. The strange thing is, once I finally got a copy of the book from the library, it sat on my nightstand for weeks. I think I was afraid to start. What if it couldn’t stand up to the rest of the books I’ve loved for years?