We have always used our local library but at our old house going to the library meant a car trip. Since we moved a trip to our library is now just a 10 minute walk. So as I am sure you can imagine the fact that our local library is now just a short walk away means we are using it a LOT more than we did before. We often just pop in to see if we can pick up the odd book which means we always tend to have quite a wide selection of library books out at any given time. So I thought I would just give a quick look at some of the library books we currently have, why we have them (for some it is a very specific reason) and what we think of them.

I will start with my son (he has just turned 11 so would be year 6 at school) he is currently going through a massive David Williams phase. MASSIVE. As soon as he finds a new one he just devours it and then he goes back and re-reads sections from the old ones (so at the moment he has read all 4 of these but he is re-reading and quoting sections to us). He loves the humor and I must admit when he is reading one of them he always has questions about vocab or situations so I actually feel like they are great for widening his knowledge (never thought I would say that but he really does ask lots of questions based on the books and we have had some really interesting discussions just from these books).

My daughter, I have to state that she reads 3 or 4 books at the same time. I honestly don’t know how she does that, but she does and she never gets the different books mixed up. Okay so she likes books with a bit of a historical background and at the moment she is very much in the World War theme (I say World War as she is interested in books from both the first and the second World Wars). She is slowly working her way through the Flambard series (not pictured here) and has read the first 2 but we are having to wait for the third. She liked the the first 2 books in the series and enjoyed the characters but I am not sure it griped her like some of the other books have. She has also just finished Hero, which she really enjoyed and I am hoping my son might give it a try (she actually suggested I should read it so it must be good). Waiting for Anya by Michael Morpurgo is a book that was recommended and we are MASSIVE fans of his books so I think my daughter will really enjoy it but she has not started it yet.

The Nancy Drew book, this is the first Nancy Drew book she has ever read (she is almost finished) and we selected it because the Detective Anthology that we are using mentions Nancy Drew quite a bit and she has never read one before so we thought it might be good just to cover one so she gets the main concept behind these books. It has been what I would term an easy and quick read for her but she has also really enjoyed it. Anne of the Island is a book that she has already read but she enjoyed the whole Anne of Green Gables series so she got it out to re-read. (When she finds books that she REALLY enjoys she often takes them out again and just re-reads certain sections again).

Now the Wuthering Heights and Sherlock Holmes books were selected because we are working through a Heritage English unit which introduces key authors and key books. We have just finished the sessions on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and since our library had some Sherlock Holmes books we thought it would be good to read one just to get a better idea of the characters and how the stories normally develop. (Confession – I have never read a Sherlock Holmes book before so I am also going to read these). Then as part of this English Heritage Unit she had to select an author to research and she selected Emily Bronte, hence Wuthering Heights is now on the reading list.

Okay and the Divergent series. I am actually pre-reading these. I wanted to find a series that we could use as an example of Dystopian Fiction. This series was recommended to us by a friend and I have to admit I have finished the first book (there are 4 books in the series) and so far I am really loving it. My plan is to first read the whole series myself and then potentially, if the other books are as good as the first one we will keep them and read them when we cover Dystopian Fiction. We may only cover it sometime after Easter but it just so happens these were in on the shelf at our library so I grabbed them and started them now.

I hope that might give someone one or two ideas for potential books.