Everything we borrowed from the library this weekend
Plus, my cunning plan for making sure all these books get read
Today we’re at a homeschool sports day so instead of our usual daily post I’m sharing the latest haul we brought back from the library. And it is literally a haul: everything goes in my backpack and I lug it back home on the bus. This time there was too much to fit and some of them had to be carried. This isn’t the only library we use. Really, this family has a book problem.
Lots of these are from the Usborne Young Reading series. I’ve given the stage (1, 2, or 3) to help you work out if they might be good for your own child(ren). If you’re not familiar with this series, I’ve added sample pages at the end of the post so you can gauge what might be right. My children can now both read level 3s (some with more ease than others), but they love going back to easier ones too. I think that going back to the easier books helps to build fluency and confidence.
In the past we borrowed dozens of books, and then they sat around gathering dust, unread and unloved. I have discovered that if I put the books in a zipped-up bag, and once a week-ish ask the children to select 5 that they’d like to have out for a bit, the books get a lot more love. The children are free to get things out of the bag if they want, but having a smaller number out and about seems to help them actually pick them up and read them. Should we just borrow fewer books but make more library visits? Possibly. But several of ‘our’ libraries are not on our doorstep so it’s quite a trek, and if the children want to borrow a book I want to encourage that and strike while the iron is hot.
If you’re as obsessed with children’s books as I am, you might like
’s Can We Read?, also on Substack.
Fiction
The war of the worlds (Usborne Young Reading Series 3)
War and Peace (UYR Series 3. These first two chosen by my son, purely on the basis that they have ‘war’ in the title)
Saint George and the Dragon, Geraldine McCaughrean, on the Well Trained Mind reading list. Lots of gorgeous full-page illustrations.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Michael Morpurgo, lots of pictures but also lots of words, this will be a read-aloud for us.
Mythical hero stories, not sure this looks great.
Stories of giants (Series 1)
Usborne illustrated myths from around the world (lovely for reading aloud. We have several from this series—stories from India, Grimm’s fairy tales, King Arthur, Norse Myths. We will shortly be adding Shakespeare to the collection.)
Treasure island (Series 2)
Stories of snowmen (Series 1)
Stories of dragons (Series 1)
Illustrated Stories of Dragons, longer stories, good for reading aloud. We are having quite a dragon moment in our house! My husband is watching Game of Thrones and reading every dragon book he can get his hands on. I believe he has a dragon-themed post coming along soon.
Stories of ghosts (Series 1)
The Burglar’s Breakfast (Series 1)
Stories of Haunted Houses (Series 1)
Non-fiction
Alfred the Great and the Anglo-Saxons, looks like a nice balance of legend, pictures, and information.
The Story of the Vikings, lots of pictures, should be good for broadening our Viking study beyond the myths.
The Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans, I like the look of this for giving us a chronological understanding of the period.
Alexander the Great (Usborne Young Reading Series 3)
The humans: ancient civilisations and astonishing things they taught us (I’m reading this aloud, a page a day. Full of information and great for building vocabulary. Would be good for older kids too. I shared a photo of the contents on Notes. This is what I would recommend to you if I had to choose just one.)
Engineering (DK find out)
French
Moi et toi, from Curriculum Visions (can’t find this anywhere online. It’s very, very entry-level and I’m hoping will help us make some easy progress).
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Very interesting about the Usborne books. I love them generally but I am now seeing that we have only a fraction in our libraries of what they are publishing! I’ve never seen these reader stages.
Game of Thrones--Joe and I looked forward to watching it together every week when it was rolling out! Sometimes I felt like the show as a whole was far too toxic for me but now I miss it.
Thanks so much for the shoutout, Catherine! I appreciate it.