March Reading Madness and More!

Did you know that March is National Reading Month? It all started to coincide with Dr. Seuss's birthday on March 2nd. Now March has become a favorite month for reading challenges and read-a-thons of all kinds, for adults and kids alike.

You can create your own March reading challenge simply by setting a number of books you'd like to read in the month and assembling your TBR (to be read) pile. If you need some suggestions on children's books to try, a good place to look is BookAdventure.com. 

Click on the Find a Book button and you can enter in the parameters of what sort of book you want to find, including grade level and a wide range of subjects. It will then do a search for you, and you can export your list to an Excel sheet. Ok that might sound a little obsessive, but if you have them all on one sheet, then you set up a system of gold star stickers, rewards, or what-have-you as the kids (ok, or the adults, lol) finish each book on the list.

Another fun aspect of Book Adventure is that readers have submitted multiple choice quizzes that you can take after you're finished reading the book to test your reading comprehension. For example, here's a Sample Quiz about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. So you get the idea.

Reading is supposed to be FUN, and with Common Core coming in and tossing out some of the great classics of literature in favor of teaching kids to read things like product inserts, manuals, and EPA reports, it's never been more important (in my opinion--G. speaking here!) to foster the love of independent reading. National Reading Month is a perfect opportunity to create empowering reading habits.

And speaking of empowering...

The Lammily Doll is all the buzz this week. Have you heard about this? Pretty neat. Right now, she's a crowd-funding project with the doll's designer raising the funds to order the first batch of these dolls from a manufacturer. The great thing about Lammily is that she is designed as a type of Barbie doll - but with realistic proportions of the average American female. This would be a great gift for a school-age girl to help foster a healthy body image. Lammily's my kind of girl! Check it out.