The bright illustrations and simple story follows a young boy and his family getting ready for and celebrating Passover. There is also a longer, more detailed, section at the back of the book for adults that explains what Passover is.
My youngest son loved this book. We found several books about Passover at the library and this is one of his favorites. We don’t celebrate Passover, but after reading this book he had a much better understanding of it. This book follows a family from preparing for Passover by getting everything out of the closet, to using a feather to sweep out the bits of leavened bread, to all of the food and cooking, to the stories and questions to the children looking for the afikommen. I love the illustrations in this book, too.
Bethany House Publishers recently sent me some books to review here on MommaReads. I was super excited to read them because I was hoping they would be a good stepping stone into “the birds and the bees” talk that is inevitable. What I really like about Jim Burns’ series in that there are different books for different ages. I have God Made Your Body for ages 3-5 and How God Makes Babies for ages 6-9. The first one talks about how everyone is made differently…different hair color, eye color, etc. It also talks about how boys have penises and girls have vaginas and introduces the concept of an egg and sperm and uses the term “making love”. The main message of this book is that each person is unique and special.
The second book talks about everything the first book talks about including safe touching and who should/shouldn’t be allowed to touch our “private parts”. As far as how babies are made, this book discusses how a husband and wife (note: not a man and a woman) make a baby is that the husband puts his penis inside the wife’s vagina. The book also goes on to say that “that might sound icky to you, but that’s okay” and goes on to assure kids that it’s a beautiful thing for married grown-ups.
This book also talks about how babies come out of a mom’s vagina and that babies are a lot of work. It also includes some pictures of cell’s dividing in the early stages of pregnancy and also a sonogram picture.
Both books are very well written.
Have we shared them with our kids yet? No, we haven’t made that leap yet, but I am glad to know that I will have a little help when we are ready.
Hannah is so excited to meet her new baby sister. She has picked out a name for her, made a pillow for her with the baby’s name on it and even decided that her new little baby sister is going to have red hair. Imagine her surprise when she finds out that her new baby sister is actually a new baby brother. All it takes is a trip to the hospital and holding that sweet baby in her arms to help Hannah realize that baby brothers are pretty neat, too.
If you have a young football fan in your house, then this book might be right up your alley. Written by three members of the famous football family, the Mannings, this book depicts a typical weekend at their house when the boys were growing up. No matter where they were or what they were doing, they always found time for a friendly game of family football.
Such a beautiful book that celebrates the relationships that children have with all of their relatives…from their great-grandparents to their moms to their pets and everyone in between.
Henrietta’s two older sisters do such a good job of convincing her that she is a chicken that Henrietta decides she really IS a chicken and goes to find a chicken farm to live on. Her sisters get in trouble when Mom and Dad find out what happened and the older sisters are put in charge of getting Henrietta back home. It turns out that being a chicken is a lot of fun and one of the older sisters decides she wants to be a chicken, too. A cute story that shows how teasing a sibling can get WAY out of hand.
*There are a couple of instances of name calling (dumbhead) that can easily be skipped or changed into another word as you are reading it to your child.
I found this book at the library and chose it because of the family theme going on here at MommaReads. I didn’t really know what it was about, but was incredibly delighted to find out it’s about Emily Dickinson and her nephew who takes one of her poems to school one day and ends up getting in a fight with one of his classmates about it. There are so many great messages in this book: like solving problems with words and how telling the truth is important, no matter how difficult it might be.
A young boy visits his grandmother and learns about the history of his family going back 300 years. This book did a great job of showing how things were different in each generation in a way that children could understand. There is also a section in the back that gives more detailed information, but still written in a way that children can relate to.
Sarah and Grandpa work together to plant and care for their garden. One day, later in the summer, Grandma invites Sarah over for lunch made out of their garden.
