Category: General

I started this blog almost four years ago as I was finishing first grade. I am finishing fifth grade now. I am feeling a bit stuck but I am not ready to quit my blog.

In the nearly four years, I have almost 1000 posts, including over 600 book reviews by me and over 150 author/illustrator interviews.

Even before COVID, I was noticing it was getting harder for me to do reviews. I was also seeing a decline in readership. Four years ago, I was one of a few kid reviewers. Now there are quite a few. I want to figure out what make me unique in the mix.

Between all my platforms, I have around 2000 followers so hoping a large number would be willing to complete a survey for me. I am looking for open and honest input. I want to make my blog more beneficial to you.

Click for the survey

Thank you for your input!

Meet Rebel, my new book reading and review partner. She is the litter mate of my brother’s kitten. They are rescue kittens just like our one year old cats.

Mom isn’t sure how we went from no cats to four in 7 months.

I just read “The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise” by Dan Gemeinhart and loved how she met Ivan. I have been jealous of Lil Bro and his kitten so my parents said if I had a Coyote Sunrise moment with a kitten, they would let us add one final kitten.

One of our older cats is loving having kittens around. The other is not so happy. Funny thing is the not happy cat was supposed to be our only cat. When the shelter called to arrange her adoption, they convinced Dad to adopt her foster sister. They are both tabbies and look a lot a like, but aren’t blood related.

Now I need to learn to take care of my kitten.

Mom has been really busy and I’ve been really busy, but I want to tell you about something. That something is……… MARDENS SURPLUS AND SALVAGE BARGAIN HUNTERS PARADISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mardens is the best store in Maine- no the USA- no no! Earth!! That place is great! Here’s a few things I’ve bought there;

SALINA YOONS FABRIC!!!!! (SHE HAD MADE IT YEARS AGO!!!)

Cozy pink knit hat with flannel faux fur on the inside ( if the hat wasn’t lost in my bedroom, I’d be wearing it right now)

MY PET PENGUIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!🐧 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🥌🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧(find the hockey puck)

A Mulan toy!

Annoying lil brother got a Fur Real puppy for, like, 15$! (Still won’t beat my 7$ Fur Real dragon!)

When you visit Maine go to Mardens first!

The deal is that they get stuff from

Train wrecks

Stores going out of business

Truck wrecks

Small fires

Broken boxes with the toy perfectly fine!

I could talk a whole day about MARDENS SURPLUS AND SALVAGE BARGAIN HUNTERS PARADISE if you wanna know more type in what above in THIS

This post is dedicated to books I didn’t like.

Like Enginerds by Jarrett Lerner… I tried it twice but didn’t like it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not excited about #2 ( partially because the should start behaving because there’s a girl.) i have also recommended Enginerds to soo many people and they all have loved it. (PS Jarrett already knows about this and he still likes me 😘)

The point is even if I don’t love a book, I won’t ignore it. I will try to find the person who will love it.

I know it is okay to not like a book. All books are not for all kids. We each need to find our book. There may be books I LOVE that you don’t and vice versa. Guess what we can still be friends!

It is also important that we let kids know it is okay to not like or love a book. It should be more important to help them find THEIR book. This is why I think all books should be considered. It is why you see big publishing houses, little ones and self published on my blog. If I didn’t keep that variety I would miss out on so many good books!

So, breadcrumbs are books who lead me to other books. Breadcrumbing is when like one author tells me about one book, then that author tells me about another and so on and so on. An example of breadcrumbing is like Salina Yoon told me about Marcie Colleen. Kara Lareau told me about Debbie Florence. Without breadcrumbing I wouldn’t have Jarrett Learner and without Jarrett, oh, life would miserable and 90% of the books I read would not be anywhere near to finding me.

Breadcrumbing has really led me to a bunch of books and authors and librarians and publishing house, and that’s why you see such s wide variety of books on my blog. I know what your thinking why does she call it Breadcrumbing?? Well I don’t know the answer to that because I don’t remember but I know that it’s like Hansel and Gretel following breadcrumbs.

So readers, follow the breadcrumbs!

This post is about how I got into fairy tales.

So I never really liked fairytales because most had a helpless, screaming, crying, shouting for a big strong man, Princess! Can you believe it? Girls, we are better than that! My favorite princess is a good one, Merida, cause she doesn’t need anyone, anything (except her bow and arrows) to save her mom who turned into a bear because a cake Merida brung to her ( its not entirely her fault).

Okay back to the other stuff, so I started liking fairytales this year when OwlCrate delivered Grump by Liesl Shurtliff in my trusty Box ‘O Books. Grump is about Grumpy!!! He’s my favorite dwarf from the seven dwarves. It’s about how he explored the upworld and became friends with the evil queen and then starts to hate her and helping Snow White. That led me to Rump, and Red, then Liesl Shurtliff led me to Bridget Hodder who wrote Rat Prince.

This is kinda an example of not giving up, I mean, I read a genre I wasn’t sure I’d like but I still read it.

I am not someone who likes to be scared. I really, really dislike Coraline so I haven’t been too interested in spooky books. This year that changed.

This year, I got an OwlCrate that was spooky book themed. The book I got was NightBook, a book about a boy who gets kidnapped by a witch and has to make and read spooky stories. I got really into it and the spooky stories were great! That made me want to read more spooky stories and led me to Lilac Skully 👻🎃👻🎃👻

But I’m still not watching Coraline! Person plus buttons equal something I’ll never like nor even watch