From autumn
to the New Year, Hot Winter Reads offers great gift ideas for younger
readers, including picture books, chapter books, and novels for young adults
and teens.
Hot Winter Reads for the Whole Family.
What better way to spend a winter evening or a holiday car trip than reading
aloud together as a family? All that's needed is the right book--or audio
book. The choices here have classic appeal that will entertain youngsters,
intrigue older kids, and make parents smile. They're excellent gifts for the
whole clan:
"Return to the Hundred Acre Wood: New Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh" by David
Benedictus, illus. by Mark Burgess
(Dutton,
9780525421603, $19.99)
This official sequel to A. A. Milne's classic Pooh stories takes us back to
the dear old stomping ground of the Hundred Acre Wood. After a very long
wait, Christopher Robin is coming back, and all his friends are humming and
glumming and baking--and throwing him a party! Ten gentle adventures unfold,
each one just the right length for a bedtime tale: Owl writes a book,
accidently. Piglet learns to play cricket--very well! Tigger dreams of
Africa and gets quite tired out. My favorite story introduces Lottie, a
river otter with very decidedly set opinions about a great many things.
She's a firecracker, but she fits right in.
Every page is graced with a picture done in the classic style of Ernest
Shepard, and everything is just as kind and funny and drole as you
remember--but brand new!
"'I wonder why things have to change,' murmured Piglet."
"Pooh thought for a while, then said, 'It gives them a chance to get better.
Like when the bees went away and came back.'"
Sit the family down with this book and a smackerel of hunny, and you're set!
It's a warm comfort to know that off in a wood somewhere, a child and his
bear will always be at play.
-
"Return to the Hundred Acre Wood – Audiobook" read by Jim Dale
(Penguin, 9780143145073, $19.95)
The whole book on audio CD, at a great price, and read by Jim Dale, the
actor who read the fantastic Harry Potter audiobooks! He has a perfect
storyteller's voice, like a wise old oak tree that decided to bend down and
whisper secrets in your ear. He even does different voices for each of the
characters: Piglet's high squeaks and Eeyore's donkey rasp will make you
laugh out loud--and maybe bray a little.
Review by
Mark David Bradshaw, November 19, 2009
