It wasn’t a terrible month for reading, or a bad to start to a new year of books.

We’re still in this phase of life where we read and reread H’s favorite books on a loop, so even with our trips to the library, we don’t read that many new books. She could have Winnie-the-Pooh read to her every night and be completely happy, and…honestly we’re also pretty happy. Adam loves reading Pooh to her. But we did read some new stuff this month.

The Good Little Book, Home, Super Ladybug to the Rescue!, The Heart and the Bottle, and Cupcake were all excellent. The others–Puppies, Birds, Frozen comic book, Map Work, Just Pick Us, Please!—she just loved flipping through and spending time with.

This was a great batch from the library, we liked all of these except The Glassmaker’s Daughter, which had great illustrations, but H wasn’t that into the story. Under the Ocean, Where’s Rodney, Sparkle Boy (great talk on gender and gender representation), Little Fox in the Forest, Flashlight Night, Snow, and First Snow were all fantastic. 

Cupcake was a particular favorite.

We read I Have a Dream for MLK Day.

I read some good stuff on my own this month, too. I finally finished The Cursed Child, which I’d started when it was released but never finished. I don’t really know why, I just never got into it. But once I picked it up again I sailed through it. And really enjoyed it.

Another book I’ve been meaning to read forever but hadn’t yet was This One Summer by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. This was so, so excellent. It’s part of H’s Caldecott collection, but since it’s a YA book I’d been holding onto it on my own bookshelves. And it’s the only Caldecott book from maybe the last 10 or 15 years that I haven’t read, so it was time. Such a great, quiet, sad book about a summer of dysfunctional families and vacation town drama.

I also listened to two audiobooks last month. Before He Finds Her was okay, and it was set here at the Jersey Shore, which was fun. But Magpie Murders was just absolutely splendid. Delightful, witty, satirical, just super excellent all around. It’s a mystery within a mystery, and I don’t want to give anything away. I went into it knowing nothing, and I loved that I knew nothing. But it is really, really good.

And that’s everything new that we read this month. Hopefully we’ll have even more books to show for February.