I love reading. My mom says I was reading books to myself before kindergarten. I can remember packing for vacation and my suitcase would be full of books, with a couple clothes thrown on top. My mom always had to check my suitcase before we left the house 🙂 So, it’s no wonder that our house is currently overflowing with children’s books in every room (my childhood books are in boxes in our basement that Sam labeled “Colleen’s Junk”) and I continue to welcome books – you’ll never hear me tell anyone the kids don’t need more books. Although Sam will be the first to say he’s not much of a reader, we do make it a priority to read to the kids every night before bed (and I know he secretly loves it, too!)

Eli is into the “Magic Treehouse” series and we’ve been reading a couple chapters each night. If you have a kindergartener, I highly recommend this series as a starter for getting into chapter books. The chapters are only a few pages long, so it’s easy to remember what happened if you are reading the book over the course of several days. There are also black and white photos every so often, which Eli loves to analyze and tell me what part of the story we read that the picture is showing us. We finished the first book in the series last night and Eli reminded me this morning that we are starting a new book tonight 🙂

So, all of this to say, I was giddy when Eli brought home a paper from school saying the whole school is doing a “Storybook Pumpkin Patch” for October! Books + Art = excited mommy! Each child is supposed to decorate a pumpkin to look like their favorite storybook character. It took a couple days, plus looking at 3 different favorite books, before Eli decided to do “Nibbles” from the book “Nibbles The Book Monster” by Emma Yarlett. It’s a really fun book, especially if your kids like interactive books where they can open flaps and turn pages within pages. This book was recommended to me from a friend who is an Osborne book rep, so if you want to nab Nibbles for your own library, you can purchase it here, and/or join her facebook page, here.

The story follows this little monster – Nibbles – who escapes from a cage and nibbles his way through storybooks, putting himself into that story (Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk) and the reader is trying to catch him to put him back in the cage. Great book for all ages!