What my kids what me to read

As a parent I find myself looking for books that my kids would enjoy reading, even if it isn’t something ‘typical’ for their age or interests. While my oldest has a vampire fixation right now (and I’m eagerly awaiting her to change!), my middle child is pretty open to reading anything. She is also not above recommending to ME what to read.

This is a fun change from when I read what they were reading to help them understand their assignments. I remember reading Tale of Despereaux in one night because my oldest didn’t understand what happened in the dungeon. It is also different from when they read the books that we had to in Elementary and High School (The Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird etc.) and I reread them because I remember how good they were. (Everyone still remembers what happens to Johnny right?)

So her recommendation for this week: Deep, Dark and Dangerous. A Ghost story for middle schoolers, she was totally engrossed in it a couple of weeks ago. She told me bits and pieces about it, so when she finished it the other day she started nagging me to read it. So I did. Pretty good story, kind of obvious once you get about 1/3 of the way in if you have experience with other mysteries or ghost stories, but I don’t think a 12 year old would have figured it out as soon as I did. That said, it does have a couple of twists at the end that I didn’t see coming, but that weren’t totally out in left field.

Since turnabout is fair play, her next ‘recommendation’ is a book I got her for Christmas that she originally didn’t want to read. But once she read a couple of chapters she was all over it! The book is Flight of the Phoenix, the first book in the Beastologist series. I’ll start that next week.

Now I need to find something for the Freshman that doesn’t involve vampires …