Book after Book

By @liveotherwise : One week into our 100 book challenge , and to be honest, it's not looking too promising. I'm keeping up my end of the bargain, in terms of the number of books I've read myself, but the children are lagging behind in their reading, and haven't got anywhere with their reviewing. Part way through the week we had the first mutiny as Big struggled with the idea of having to read and review, and I wondered if I was asking too much of her. But she pulled herself together and has made notes, so if we can only find a little time to sit together, we can write up the two books she's read so far, and we won't be looking quite so out of touch. Small has read 2 books too. And the baby is very happy to be being read to - it's possibly her favourite activity. Other than eating chocolate! (She's a girl after my own heart.) And I'm finding unexpected benefits. I'm finding a whole world of book blogs out there that I didn't know existed. And...

By @liveotherwise : So January the 1st is racing towards us, and we're getting ready for our book reading and reviewing challenge . I hadn't realised how much preparation we would need to do, and I've been thrilled with the response from publishers and others on Twitter. Parcels of books have started to filter through the Christmas backlog, and that's led to its own set of problems, as Small just can't wait to get his hands on them! He's been preparing by devouring his Christmas novel, which he's polished off in 4 days. He's going to have to read a little faster than that though, if he's going to hit his target of 10 books in a month. Has to be said though, that Alien Storm by A G Taylor is not a small book for a 7 year old. Big is fairly confident with the reading, but a little nervous about the reviews. We started a book review website back in the summer, but never got as far as actually publishing it *blush*. That has to change, and its our New Y...

Jax is a UK-based home-educating mother of three and - to use her own words - has been "blogging, ranting, wibbling and waffling" at Making it up since 2003. I came across her blog a few weeks ago. You know how it is with the world wide web: you jump from link to link and from page to page and half of the time you don't actually find anything that can hold your interest for more than a few moments. That's not the case with Making it up ! What grabbed my full attention was a post announcing her and her children's intention to read 100 books in a month to help raise money for charity. Yes, that's right: one hundred books in one month . I just had to contact this woman to know more and she kindly agreed to write a piece for the readers of Book After Book , explaining how this wonderful but intimidating idea was born! *** Recently, I took part in a Simplify Your Christmas carnival hosted by Who’s the Mummy . The item I chose to highlight was the Oxfam Unwrapped ...