Rounding Up Some Good YA Reads
As Hayley noted earlier this week, the much-heralded final volume of Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy was a disappointment. Much-heralded final volumes often disappoint, but what’s worse, they draw attention away from less-heralded novels that deserve notice. These three titles range wide in content and theme, but all are worthy additions to the literary, mystery, and…
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Pilgrim’s Progress adapted by Anna Trimiew
Pilgrim’s Progress: John Bunyan’s Classic Story Adapted for Children, by Anna Trimiew, illustrated by Drew Rose. Great Commissions Press, 2013, 109 pages, including glossary and index. Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12 Recommended for: ages 10-14 Bottom Line: This adaptation of Pilgrim’s Progress from Great Commissions Press can serve as a readable introduction to Bunyan’s…
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Truth in the Tinsel: A Family Advent Tradition
Truth in the Tinsel Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I suppose the Christmas race has officially begun now, and with that in mind, I wanted to share with you an advent devotional my kids and I will be doing this year. I know that there are many worthy Advent studies. (For instance, I…
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Librarians’ List: Favorite Picture Books of 2013
It’s time for another Librarians’ List! Since it’s picture book month, we’re indulging our list-making hobbies and bringing you yet another list of our favorites. Last week, we looked at Retro Reads, books published before 2000. Today, the list includes our favorite hot-off-the-press titles, all of which have been published this year (we’ll see how…
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Reading Rapunzel
Today I’m going to demonstrate a close reading of one version of a classic fairy tale. My favorite book to use in demonstrating the illustrative power of a picture book is the Caldecott-award winning Rapunzel by Paul O. Zelinsky. I wish I could include some images in this post to show all our dear readers…
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Sci-fi Contest Winner and Podcast: From Ender’s Game to Hunger Games
To listen to our a read along with real teens or find discussion questions about Ender’s Game, please see our Ender’s Game Read Along. Also, to read the stories in our contest, see our Short Story Finalists post. Sci-fi Contest Winner Back when I was in high school, my short story contest submissions were read…
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Character in the Midst of Diversity: 8 Titles to Note
2013 has given us lots of excellent diverse picture book titles: books about minority cultures, folktale retellings, and books by (or illustrated by) people of color. Some of them offer snapshots of a different culture without much commentary. Others show people (or animals) developing character and using hard work to fight opposition or simply to…
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Winter Book Fair: Gift Books to Support Redeemedreader
Dear Redeemedreaders, We appreciate you! If you have appreciated Redeemedreader this year, we’d love to have your support during the holiday season. We have narrowed down some of our best gift book recommendations for this time of year below. Plus, to make things a little more fun, we’ve recorded the Redeemedreader team talking about some…
Read MoreSci-fi Short Story Finalists: VOTE FOR A WINNER!
New to Redeemedreader? Sign up for our biweekly newsletter on our homepage! You can also like us on Facebook or follow along on Twitter to keep up with our book recommendations for kids and teens. To see who won the Writing Contest, CLICK HERE. INTRODUCTION Back in October, we invited teens to participate in a Sci-fi Writing Contest as part of our Ender’s…
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Librarians’ List: 25 Picture Book Retro Reads
We’ve been spending quite a bit of time this month looking at newer picture books–many of them published in 2013. But today we’re taking a look back to some favorite Retro Reads (published before 2000).* *You might think of retro reads as the books you could check out back when you used a card catalog!…
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