What My Family Is Reading This Summer

Before I get into a new release that has been one of my favorite reads this year, let me share what my three boys are reading this summer. We haven’t been doing much work during the break, but my boys do have to read at least a little bit every day- they accept this in varying degrees, but it does help to find books they love.

My oldest is my bookworm. In the past two weeks, he’s read over 40 hours(keeping track on a library reading log for prizes). I almost started to think that was too much reading(as if that could be a thing), but I’d much rather him spend our not-at-the-pool hours reading than playing video games or watching endless youtube videos, which is what the other two default to if I don’t step in and put a limit on it.

He’s at this kind of odd age(going into 6th grade) where he’s able to read books at a high school level, but might not always be ready for the material itself. (A mom’s way of saying that books that talk about sex are not on my list of what I want him to read… and truthfully, not what he wants to be reading, either). But he also doesn’t want to read what he’d call books for babies. These middle years are going to kill me, y’all.

He just finished book 4 of The Five Kingdoms series by Brandon Mull. He says that if your child liked Rick Riordan’s books (Percy Jackson series, among others), they’ll like this series, though it’s not mythology, just has that same sort of feel to it. There’s actually a cool trailer for this series, so I’ll include that here, in case you have tween boys (or girls, but it’s just nice to see a boy main character) who are looking for something to read.

My going-into-4th-grader is currently reading his way through Roald Dahl’s books, currently on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with The BFG up next. He likes the imaginative storylines and (truthfully) the short chapters. Charlie is only 150-some-odd pages, but has 30 chapters. This breaks the reading down into reasonable sized chunks.

My going-into-2nd-grader is reading his way through the Harry Potter series, currently on book 4. Usually, I’m a “book before movie” person but he’s already seen the movies and I have to say that I think it’s actually helping his reading experience because, while the books are giving him so much more detail and he’s learning things he didn’t know from the movie, since he already knows the basic storyline, it’s helping with his comprehension.

Now, as for me, I was sent a review copy of In Twenty Years by Allison Winn Scotch. I’d never read anything by her before but now will be going back and reading others by her. This has been one of my favorite reads of the year. Twenty years ago, six college friends thought they’d be friends forever. And then, well, life happened and there were fractures in the group. Now, they’re reunited at one’s request and we get to see just how different each is from where they thought they’d be. It’s about friendship and how life can take you down a path you didn’t expect.

It just came out today and I highly recommend it for your summer reading.

What are you reading this summer?