Check out http://www.amazon.ca/Missing-Moonstone-Wollstonecraft-Detective-Agency/dp/038575440X   and imagine Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer as a young girl on what would be her 200th birthday! Wollstonecraft Detective Agency: The Case of the Missing Moonstone by Jordan Stratford is a novel that pairs Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) as young girls.  Along with a young Charles Dickens, they solve mysteries from criminals too...

Spring may be eluding us for a bit (snow in April?!), but I can feel the shift in the air. I'm itching to plant some seeds and watch for the first green shoots pushing up to start my garden. I want to get on my bike and explore the world from outside my car again. And I want to...

About the Book... If your kid is as obsessed with fairy tales as my two are, then they should love The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer.  We read this book for the first meeting of the Rapid Readers group for my younger daughter and her friends (Grades 6 & 7) in September.  What We Did... I set the scene with fairy...

When I think back to my adolescence, my clearest memories are around books I read and how they helped me through certain challenges in my life.  When faced with wearing a back brace at 11, Deenie by Judy Blume prepared me for the doctor appointments, the looks from other kids (and adults), and the loneliness of being the only person in...

 There seems to be a time during the tween and teenage years where kids obsess on reading about war, whether historical or futuristic.  In Grade 6, the Book Club immediately gravitated to Making Bombs for Hitler by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.  In Grade 8, it was Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein.  Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Divergent are all popular novels (and movies) about dystopian...

With longer summer days comes lazy summer nights 1 - whether it's sitting out by a campfire singing songs or cuddling under a blanket with a flashlight and the book you just can't put down, it's all good! We seem to have an endless number of kids staying at our cottage this summer, so I am always hearing about the...

Nothing says summer better to me than having loads of time to sit back and read under a tree or umbrella! My Summer Reading List is filled with books I have to read for various book clubs, but also my own guilty pleasures.  Really, anything your child reads will help spur their love of reading, whether it's an Archie Comic...

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting Jennifer Robson, author of Somewhere in France and (now I know) my neighbour.  I heard about her book a few months ago and, as so often happens, it started to pop up in different areas of my life - I saw the book at Costco, spied it on the Globe and Mail's Bestsellers...

The spring thaw began today and already I want to put away the boots and pull out my flip-flops!  Unfortunately, I'm sure there are more chilly days in store, so I'm keeping a few good books on the nightstand to curl up with. I am dreadfully behind on posting the Bookworm Bookclub's latest books and activities, but we have read...

If anyone had told me that my family would read this many books on a week's holiday, I never would have believed them.  I think all my worry about raising reluctant readers (including my husband) is officially over.  Having a full week with no plans brought out the inner reader in all of us to the point that I...