Thse books were sent to be by publishers. I did not receive any compensation for this post. Post contains affiiliate links.
Those Three Words: A Birth Mother’s Story of Choice, Chance, and Motherhood
As an adoptive mother, I make it a practice to read all of the non-fiction books about adoption that I can. Memoirs are my favorite genre of book anyway and adoption is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I try to read from the perspective of birth mothers, adoptees, and adoptive parents.
I was so excited to sit down and read Those Three Words by Christine Baur, and I was not disappointed. This book follows the story of Christine who becomes pregnant at the age of 18 during her freshman year of college. She desperately loves her unborn baby and has to make the most difficult decision of her life.
Christine is honest and it is heart-wrenching. Those Three Words follow Christine through the news of her unplanned pregnancy to her parting with her daughter and their eventual reunion. Every adoptive parent should read this book.
Girls Who Code: Learn to Code to Change the World
I am a little bit embarrassed to admit this since I’ve been blogging for over a decade, but I have learned a ton from reading these books.
Here is an example of the format of Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World. Knowing more about coding has helped me make adjustments to my websites and avoid frustration. Girls Who Code is written in a friendly conversational manner that is easy to understand.
Girls Who Code: The Friendship Code is a novel written about, you guessed it, girls who love to code. Think the Babysitter Club meets 2018. I love that there is a companion novel to go along with Girls Who Code Learn to  Code to Change the World. I hope they continue the series.
And the absolute icing on the cake for these series? A picture book! Apollo picked up How to Code a Sandcastle and started reading it right away. It explains coding in a way that even a child can understand. This book is full of humor and fun illustrations. I am so excited to add this to our STEM book collection. These books are full of diverse characters of color, another bonus.
Literally, the only thing I don’t like about these books is that they are called Girls Who Code instead of Kids Who Code. I totally understand that they are trying to encourage girls into STEM paths, but I can’t help but fear that this will be a turn-off to my older boys who could benefit from these. Â If you are looking to get any of your kids into codeing or they already love the idea, these books are perfect!
Confession…I didn’t read this book. But Judah, Enoch, and Jubilee all did! All three really enjoyed it and here are Jubilee’s uncensored thoughts on the book.
“I LOVED THIS BOOK! This was an amazing book. It was really interesting, and I like how it was like a backstory on the well-known store of Peter Pan. Â It was really well written and I am surprised this was the author’s first novel ( I’m disappointed too haha).
I definitely look forward to reading more books by TJ Thomas in the future, assuming he writes more. This book was pretty sad at times and it definitely makes you understand why Captian Hook became a pirate. This book was full of surprises and it was a great book. I would recommend this to anyone. Before the Hook is an amazing book and I hop plenty of people get to enjoy it as much as I did.”
Boying Up: How to be Brave, Bold, and Brilliant
You already know I am a fan of Mayim Bialik’s books Girling Up (I reviewed it here). I was so excited when I saw she was coming out with the Boying Up for, you know, boys. Bialik writes about growing up, puberty, and sex from a scientific point of view. She is, of course, a neuroscientist in real life as well as the mom to two boys. Her tone is friendly and easy to understand without talking down to kids.
How does she approach sex before marriage? She says, “There are still many people who believe that sex is something you save for marriage, but for many young people in this country there has been a real shift in the last 60 years in how we see ourselves and how we behave sexually…” She goes into religion and how many people still believe waiting to have sex is a good idea. I feel like she has a very balanced approach. Obviously, we talk to our children about sex in our home, as is our job as parents, and I don’t feel like her ideas conflict with what we teach our children.
Bialik also covers consent, which is obviously an important topic in our current culture. Bialik also talks about the importance of education and making smart career choices. These two books are both kept on our shelves for our kids to read.
I recommend them both to all parents. If you are uncomfortable with the topic, go ahead and read the book first so you can have a discussion with your child and be prepared to answer their questions. For more books on this topic check out my post, Great Books to Teach Your Kids About Sex and Reproduction.
—
What have you been reading lately? Do you have any book recommendations?
Totally off topic here, but I thought of you and your crew when I heard that IHob turned back into IHop this week. Haha
Yes…but Jubilee feels like she has lost trust in IHOP now…. lol