What books are you and your kids really enjoying right now?

Hello, hello, from here, where I am, to wherever you are.

This post feels a bit fradulent at the moment — I had to really ask myself what books we’ve enjoyed lately — but no matter what is happening in our lives or around us, we are always reading.

My 11-year-old, like millions of young readers before her, recently devoured Ann M. Martin’s Babysitters Club series in graphic novel format, illustrated by Queen Raina Telemeier, and loved Golden Girl by Reem Faruqi so much, she made me promise to read it myself (an ask I’ve been waiting for since the day she was born).

My newly-9-year-old has been outright refusing to read on her own even when everyone else in the house is quietly, happily doing just that — but I keep stocking our front-facing shelf with picture books and nonfiction that just screams to be picked up (Butt or Face? series by Kari Lavelle, I’m looking at you) graphic novels and earlier middle-grade novels, and I keep finding them scattered on the floor in that room, so I know she is covertly reading (or hey, maybe just throwing books around in a rage! who knows! if you have a spirited second child, you know!)

My work life — like, my career life, outside of this newsletter that is also very much a work life but of a different ilk, and one that thankfully never requires me to get on a plane — has been very intense lately, but I’ve said this so often in the past year that I think I have to accept that my work life is outright intense. I’ve been reading as many Cal Newport books as I can get my hands on — I understand the importance of deep work and I understand that I need to put parameters in place if I want to do it, but it’s a process. I have managed to carve out two 90-minute periods per week where no one and nothing can interrupt me — I can just read and think and dream — and it’s weird and delicious and wonderful and I want a lot more of it, I’m just still working on figuring it out. While still managing my daily workload. While still traveling a lot, on planes and in cars, and trying to meet people where they’re at. (While also living through a government shutdown while married to a federal employee, but that’s a whole other intensity in and of itself.) For the first time, I’ve seriously considered that maybe I can’t write this newsletter anymore, but as I’ve said in the past, my creative projects always tell me what they want to be, and Can we read? has remained silent on that front, so here I still am, though I am planning on taking time off at the end of this year

(Speaking of the state of this particular union — it’s been over a year since I’ve shared what’s going on behind the scenes here in Newsletter Land. Do you want to know how the sausage gets made these days?)

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Okay, here’s what my kiddos and I have been into lately:

• When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, which I loved so very much when it came out (I was 27 years old, apparently reading middle-grade novels) and love just as much now.

• Bottoms Up: A Book About Rear Ends by Marilyn Singer

• When’s My Birthday? by Julie Fogliano

• The Crossover by Kwame Alexander (audio)

• The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry (audio)

• A Year of Positive Thinking for Teens by Katie Hurley, which has been a lovely addition to our Morning Time, even though none of us are teens

As for my own reading:

Once upon a time, at the bottom of each issue of this newsletter, I would share a list of books I’d finished since the week before, but after awhile, I felt like I was showing all of you my underwear. Though I appear to tell everyone everything all the time — and there is some truth to that; I am a very open person, and I go deep with people much more quickly than your average bear — there are plenty of things I don’t share. All it takes, though, is one look at what I’m reading — what’s in my stack of library holds, which books are scattered all over my house — and you can tell exactly what’s going on with me, namely, what I’m struggling with, working through, and trying to figure out. It’s so personal that offering anyone a closer peek leaves me feeling totally exposed.

That said, here’s what I’m willing to tell you I’m reading / have read lately that I’ve truly loved:

• We Should All Be Birds: A Memoir by Brian Buckbee

• Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson

• Alive Day by Karie Fugett, which was a very tough read for me — a surprise to no one who knows me well (in fact, one of my friends said, “WHY EXACTLY did you think this was a good choice?” 😂)

• The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County by Claire Swinarski (audio)

• Everything We Could Do by David McGlynn

In the interest of full disclosure, David is one of my best friends, but this is my newsletter and I can review whatever I want 💃 so just let me say that this unassuming-looking book packs a powerful and heart-wrenching punch.

Set in a NICU — alert! alert! all my fellow NICU parents! — this is a raw, fascinating, and honest story about the ways families endure all the things we never see coming, including the things we think can’t live through. There are some challenging characters here — second alert! this would be an amazing pick for a book club! — embedded in a story that’s genuinely difficult to put down. This is one that will stick with you. Highly recommend.

Lastly, I bought myself Meera Lee Patel’s latest beautiful, heartfelt, and helpful journal, because, well, all of her journals are beautiful, heartfelt, and helpful, but I especially need one about letting go.

Go get this one — you won’t regret it.

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Your turn! What are you reading with the children in your life?

(Board books, picture books, graphic novels, middle-grade titles, nonfiction, audiobooks, seek-and-finds — we’ve got all ages and no judgment here.)