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Tales From the Treehouse: The Ultimate Horse Treasury

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My daughters are both horse girls. They have grown up riding in the summers at Sari Therapeutic Riding camp. My youngest girl Ainsley, with special needs, has been riding weekly at Sari from the time she was six years old. They love everything about riding and horses and horse trivia. Lucky for me, they both also love reading. So, when this book the Ultimate Horse Treasury arrived for review from DK Canada, I knew we would have a chance to all sit down together and read. I didn’t know the book would be this lovely, with so many magnificent pictures, and so much amazing trivia. As I stated in this vlog review, everyone can learn something about horses just by picking up this book.

DKCanada makes educational books that enhance your child’s education or leisure time. This summer they are encouraging children to read with their Summer Reading Adventure program. Buy 2 DK Canada readers and get the third one free. Stay tuned for our DK Canada readers reviews coming up featuring my other daughter, who reads at a younger level than Payton. She is tackling several awesome readers and staying current, while avoiding summer slide by practicing her reading with DK Canada.

The Ultimate Horse Treasury is by John Woodward, DK Canada, $19.99 US, $21.99 Canada. 160 pages.

This one gets a $$$$$ out of $$$$$ again. The DK Canada books are stunning quality and very educational.

We received a copy of the book for review purposes. This in no way impact our honest opinion.

Royal Building Products: Ideal Deck

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This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Royal Building Products for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

My backyard is my haven. Truly, it’s the space we play and garden and read and entertain.

We always had a deck from the time we moved in to our home 12-13 years ago. In fact we have been tempted and we often look to other new homes with a desire and an eye towards moving. But my yard is a huge part of the heart of my home and I don’t want to compromise the space for a smaller one. I like my deck as it is, but still it could be even nicer with a few enhancements. For instance, we need some shade over the deck itself. We have a lovely big treee shading the grassy area, but the deck is wide open. I’d love one of those massive Barbecue entertainment centres and I’d love some nicer patio furniture. But more than that the need for shaded awning.

I love wood. My husband is a carpenter, but I know from experience also that wood often doesn’t withstand extreme weather and time. Royal Buil;ding Products makes decking materials from a composite product that stands the weather and can hold up over time. There is no painting, staining, sealing or cracking with Royal Deck. It is simple and easy to clean with a hose. Whisk away debris and your deck will look pristine always. Royal Deck makes your backyard a carefree haven for reading and entertaining. 

Royal Building Products makes beautiful decks reality with simple affordable high quality decking materials. Royal offers carefree maintenance. They offer matching fascia materials as well. 

For more information visit Royal Building Materials web site. 

Visit Sponsor's Site

Tales From the Treehouse – DKCanada and How People Lived: Snapshots of Life From Prehistory to the Present

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DK Canada’s How People Lived is a great book for school aged children who love culture and anthropology. Payton, 11, loves things like social sciences so I knew this book would be a huge hit here at out house. There is a glossary in the back and this book covers many cultures, ethnicities and eras from cave dwellers to the current times.

You can follow DKCanada on twitter for more information about their amazing book selection. How People Lived got a $$$$$ out of $$$$$ from Payton. I agree because it’s crammed full of facts, history and important information. I wouldn’t recommend for anyone under age 5 and really I’d say it’s ideally suited to ages 6 and up to 13.

Blurb from back of the book –
“See how ancient Egyptian farmers train baboons to collect fruit from trees. Feast your eyes on the spectacular fireworks and dragon dances in medieval China. Watch a viking raiding party preparing for a strike on enemy territory in search of gold and silver.”

DK Canada is a hardcover $20.99 in Canada, 80 pages.
I received a copy of this book for purposes of review. My opinion is 100 % my own.

Too Hurt to Stay Review

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I started reading Too Hurt To Stay and then my mother passed away unexpectedly and my hobbies all fell by the wayside for a time. Grief and funerals took the place of reading for fun. The topic matter of Too Hurt To Stay intrigued me, but at the same time I was a bit apprehensive that picking up a heavy book right after such a trauma might plunge me into a deeper sadness. Eventually my heart felt ready to tackle Casey Watson’s world. In all honestly this book, a memoir, is not as devastatingly sad as I anticipated. It is quite simply an honest story from a foster carer’s perspective about one little boy who came into care and was her charge for a time. Too Hurt to Stay is about an 8-year-old boy declared born evil even before he hits Casey’s home, a place they also learn is his last chance at foster care.

Casey is a specialist foster care provider in the United Kingdom. Casey Watson is a pseudonym and has written many books in a similar vein on children in care. I look forward to reading more because her writing style is straightforward and easy to read and her topic is enlightening. Casey is married with children and has three grandchildren. She lives with her husband Mike. The couple care for the highest needs children with no place else to go.

Spencer comes to Casey’s home with a huge bag of tricks and the couple is warned in advance, but has some difficulty believing a boy of 8 could be a match for their skills. But as time wears on and the honeymoon ends Spencer reveals every last one of his behaviours, which all resist modification techniques. Casey never gives up on Spencer despite the fact that he is a pretty excellent confabulator who seems to lack a conscience and acts, at times, feral. Spencer’s visits to his biological family are taxing on everyone and they don’t go well at all. Casey suspects Spencer’s Mom is an alcoholic and she has too many children to care for. But strangely Spencer’s file states he asked to be put in care on his own. That seems at odds with what Casey sees and hears and so she does a bit of investigating and learns there’s a bot more to his situation that everyone thought.

The epilogue here is a lovely wrap-up. Too Hurt to Stay gets a $$$$ out of $$$$$. It’s a good read, with a solid story. I would recommend it for any of my fellow adoptive parents or foster care providers. It is always helpful to gain real situational stories about the behaviours of hurt children. This is a hard topic matter, but a worthwhile read. Too Hurt to Stay has many lessons to teach other foster care providers.

Too Hurt to Stay is by Casey Watson, Harper Element, 2012, paperback, $14.99, 294 pages.

Tales From the Treehouse – Zoe’s Room #giveaway

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Zoe’s Room is a sweet story about sharing and sisters. We loved it here and are happy to share our giveaway with you also. This one was so good it was a natural catalyst to getting our Tales From the Treehouse series kicked off for the season again. Zoe is a little girl, a wee bit of a princess, with a bit of a knack for turning her room upside down after lights out time at night. She adores creative play and her imagination is magnificent. Please click through the video review above to see what my kiddo thought. Ainsley enjoyed this one very much and took it to school to share with her entire class.

It gets $$$$$ out of $$$$$.

ZOE’S ROOM (NO SISTERS ALLOWED)
By Bethanie Deeney Murguia
In Stores Now
Picture book for about ages 3 to 5. (I overestimated the age for this in our vlog review, but I think it can go a lot older than the suggested age of 5. My 9 year old liked it here.) 
Three winners will get a copy of Zoe’s Room: US ONLY!
·         A copy of Zoe’s Room (No Sisters Allowed)
From the Press release:
About the book
Zoe rules as Queen of the Universe — or at least, her room! — in this sweet, funny companion to Zoe Gets Ready.
Zoe is the Queen of the whole Universe … but her favorite place in the Universe is her own room, where she hosts tea parties, builds empires out of blocks, and gazes out upon the stars.
Then her parents announce that her little sister Addie is moving in to Zoe’s room. Little sisters aren’t good at tea parties (too rude), block-building (too clumsy), and starwatching (just plain too young!). So the Queen’s new roommate is a royal pain . . . until Zoe discovers that even her smallest subjects can be useful in a storm!
For ages 3-5 years.
About the author
Bethanie Deeney Murguia earned an MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Bethanie lives with her family and her fifty pound lap dog, Disco, in Sausalito, CA. She is the creator of Zoe Gets Ready and Buglette, the Messy Sleeper.

To Win a copy leave a simple comment here and tell me where you are from (US ONLY) and who this is for? I will draw with random.org on June 28th. Three winners. US only. 

Just What Kind of Mother Are You?

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great_beach_reads

This showed up two days before I left for family vacation in the Dominican Republic and it was the absolute perfect fit for those airport down hours and the lounge chairs at the beach. Just What Kind of Mother Are You? is a captivating page-turner that you need to get right now, or at very least add to your must haves for summer cottage season. Without giving any spoilers away at all, Paula Daly has taken every mom’s nightmare of losing a child, shaken the plot up every so slightly, tossed in a hefty dose of shocking plot twists (I never saw them coming.) and a hint of psychological thriller. All of that combines to create a dynamite fictional adventure that starts when an overburdened and exhausted working Mom loses her friend’s child while she is supposed to be watching her. Ratchet up the guilt meter, because what could be worse than an already drained mama feeling like she was the cause of everyone’s distress?

Just What Kind of Mother Are You? was the perfect beach read for me this week. I couldn’t put it down and got sunburnt hands but only on the sides (reader’s sunburn) from holding the book and being totally immersed this week. In fact I feel like this one lends itself to potentially being a runaway 2013 hit and a clear bestseller this summer. The topic matter is universally appealing to pretty much every working mother in every first world country. The writing is solid and the plot twists come at breakneck speed.

Lisa Kallisto is a working mother of three, managing married life just barely, and parenting her kids, most days just adequately enough, while running an animal shelter and struggling to carve out adult friendships as well. She is married to a man who adores her, a man who drives a taxi for a living. She grew up, the narrator tells us, in her father’s second family. Her childhood comes to a fast end when her dad’s first wife arrives in her neighbourhood one day asking to see his “bastard.” Her visit culminates in a suicide attempt in front of the child. She tells little Lisa to make sure she tells her father about the visit and then slits her wrists in front of her, having sent the other wife out to fetch some sugar for tea.

Kate Riverty is Lisa’s neighbour. She appears to have it all under control, the Mom with the best kids, the PTA fundraising queen, the most accomplished wife who works hard to keep her family immaculate and, yet there is just the slightest hint, she is a bit too perfect. Lisa works far to hard to aspire to the ideals that Moms like Kate set and then one night when Kate’s daughter is supposed to be sleeping over at Lisa’s home, she drops the ball and Kate’s daughter Lucinda disappears. In their small town  pedophile has been lurking and one young girl has already turned up raped and disoriented. Kate, Lisa and their rest of the town worry Lucinda is the next victim.

Just What Kind of Mother Are You? has it all. The plot is fast, the characters are well rounded and this concept is not one I have seen perverted well in fiction form until now. So what complaints do I have, if any? This is a nearly perfect thriller that captivated me from start to finish. Just What Kind of Mother Are You? doesn’t have the kind of lyrical writing that you will recall for weeks and months or rhapsodize over at book club. There are few poetic flourishes and that’s more than okay, because that style of writing would be out of place here. Just What Kind of Mother Are You? is a story well told, executed with great timing.

Paula Daly is a mother and physiotherapist. This is her first novel. Let’s just say I hope she is not a one hit wonder, because this is a great read.

Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly, Fiction, published by DoubleDay Canada, is $22.95 in paperback, 314 pages. This gets my full $$$$$ out of $$$$$. Loved it.

The Poisoned Pawn Review

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Peggy Blair’s first novel The Beggar’s Opera knocked my socks off. In fact, after a lengthy period of duty reads I remember stating publicly on twitter that her novel gave me back my will to read again. So, when I noted with pleasure that she had breathed life back into several of her colourful characters from that first book and dropped them squarely into another thriller, well I was extremely anxious to get my hands on it.

Happy to note Peggy Blair is no one hit wonder. Lucky for me, because I absolutely adore her ragtag circus group of misfit main characters who unravel homicides against the decaying and magnificent backdrop of historical Cuba. The Poisoned Pawn is a more than worthy sequel to the book I called one of my top five reads of 2012.

The Poisoned Pawn is Peggy Blair’s second novel featuring Inspector Ricardo Ramirez. Ramirez is hands down one of my favourite literary characters of the last decade. He speaks to me and, is rich in his motivations and psychological drive. I believe every step he takes and every inner thought process the author details coming from him. He is three dimensional, flawed and incredibly human. Rich characters are a specialty for Blair and atmosphere is her canvas, which she paints stunningly

This sequel starts once again with a bang, a woman has died on a plane ride back to Cuba. Her illness manifests the moment she leaves Cuba and by landing she has expired mysteriously. It’s the holidays and the body is revealed to be that of Hillary Ellis, wife to Mike Ellis, the detective accused of killing a Cuban boy in The Beggar’s Opera. The Poisoned Pawn picks up essentially where The Beggar’s Opera left off and moves interestingly into Ottawa revealing a new character, Detective Pike, a novelty because of his aboriginal status. Pike is, we soon learn, the only aboriginal detective in Canada. Soon the plot twists into the devastating theme of residential schools and crimes that took place against aboriginal children. Meanwhile women are dying of some mysterious poisoning in Cuba.

Ramirez struggles again in this novel with ghosts, literally haunted by his victims and tortured by the reality of corruption in Cuba. Blair weaves the tiniest hints of magic realism throughout The Poisoned Pawn in a way that adds to character and plot and builds intrigue. The Poisoned Pawn is a very worthy sequel to a magnificent debut. It secures Peggy Blair’s spot in the league of top notch Canadian authors. I look forward to following her career for many more years.

Peggy Blair was a lawyer for 30 years specializing in aboriginal affairs. She lives in Ottawa. This is her second novel. The Beggar’s Opera won the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize Reader’s Choice Contest and was shortlisted for the Crime Writer’s Association Debut Daggar Award.

The Poisoned Pawn, by Peggy Blair, published by Penguin Books, 2103, $22.00, softcover Toronto, 318 pages. This one gets $$$$ out of $$$$$.

Bookkeeping For Canadians for Dummies

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This time of year Canadians and Americans both suffer the same terrible stressful fate. Tax season. It is a blight on all activity and can be daunting rounding up all those receipts and T4s. This year, at thriftymommastips.com I am up to my eyeballs trying to sort through what gets claimed, what doesn’t get claimed and how to estimate and accurately record blogging income. That could be a whole other book, I think. No matter how much time you have to prepare, no matter what career you are in – many of us are never really ready for tax season.
When I spied Bookkeeping for Canadians for Dummies up for review recently, well I thought maybe, just maybe it would help lend insight into the tricky business of taxes. So, I sought it out and jumped into the scintillating text. Just kidding. This is not Fifty Shades for tax season.
The book starts with a laugh which pretty much summed up my approach to taxes. The first cartoon by Fifth Wave says: “I’m mathematically dyslexic. But it’s not that unusual. 100 out of every 15 people are.” 
I enjoy how well organized this For Dummies series of books are constructed. Every topic is neatly indexed and contained in a chapter with the occasional funny cartoon interspersed. The index and table of contents are great tools to guide your reading and research. If that doesn’t do it for you there is also a glossary and the handy icons help simplify tips, warnings and examples.  I can easily seek out the specific item I need guidance on and quickly flip to that page or chapter. That’s crucial for keeping tax season simple. Also the icons help me to skip over parts that aren’t relevant to my situation. 
I am clearly no tax expert and this book didn’t magically turn me into one. I found it very difficult to get through some of the specifics. I am probably now even more convinced that I need help and I am more motivated to ask for a professional to guide my taxes. But at the same time, I know more than I did when I started this book. Bookkeeping for Dummies for Canadians is not a book you read at bedtime or  from cover to cover, but it is a handy reference tool. I often come back to the accounts receivable and accounts payable terms for instance when I am doing my own business affairs here. When I have a reference point I can remember which is which and how to organize. That’s where this book comes in handy. It’s almost like a dictionary for translating bookkeeping terms. 
In the end I am still a tax dummy after reading this book, but I understand a few more of the terms now that I did before. I also have a great guide to help me look up and translate what the tax person is saying. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a small mental block for tax season. I am at least smart enough to know that I need help. That’s half the battle. Good luck with your taxes this year. If you need just a little help, then this would be a great reference tool for you. If you want to understand more about your taxes by next year, then buy this now and get studying. 
Bookkeeping for Canadians For Dummies, second edition is by Lita Epstein and Cecile Laurin, John Wiley and Sons, Canada, Toronto, 2013. $29.99 368 pages.
This one gets $$$$ out of $$$$$. It is still quite complex.
I received a copy of this book for review purposes. My opinion is all my own.

Shadow Girl: Young Adult Book Review #adoption

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One of my greatest literary indulgences these days is YA literature. I am increasingly blown away by the quality literature coming from authors working in this genre. Shadow Girl is one new paperback novel I couldn’t wait to get my hands on because of the adoption, foster care and poverty themes that run throughout. The promotional blurb alone led me to believe it would captivate both myself and my daughter, Payton. Together, we review appropriate young adult books here because she is as voracious a reader as I am.

Paula:

Shadow Girl is a beautiful story, sad and gentle, with some small alarming moments that provide a genuine insight into how far too many young people and children live in North American society. It is a substantial social issues and coming of age story that revolves around how to negotiate that territory when you are basically alone in the world left to fend for yourself. Jules is 11 and her father is an alcoholic. We are told early on that her mother left the duo and no reason is provided for that, but this lack of background on Mom is not a detractor to the plot.

Jules father is emotionally abusive to her when he is drunk and overwhelmed. His character, to me, was accurate, more concerned about his next drink and his next girlfriend or party. Unfortunately Jules is left many nights all by herself at home and she develops quite a tough shell. She spends many afternoons hanging out at the local shopping mall where she gets to know a salesperson who will change her life in more ways than one.

After a lengthy bender, Jules father discovers that she has been apprehended by Children’s Aid. This begins a different section of Jules’ life. She is devastated to be taken from her father, despite the fact that he hasn’t been a parent to her in any respect for many years.

I enjoyed the author’s skill in showing details through the narrator’s eyes. Morrison never over explains or tells the reader what to think. For instance she describes the face of the father’s new girlfriend as puffy and red in a way subtle enough to inform everyone she too is likely an alcoholic or addict.

I could have handled more from this story and felt it ended a bit too neatly and a bit too quick. I am not a fan of literary and television accounts of foster care and fully understand there are all sorts of people who take care of kids in all kinds of cities throughout North America, but many depictions of foster care are inaccurate, in my experience. Obviously, an antagonist and conflict were necessary to drive the plot, but I think the author might have used a more creative tool than the insensitive foster parent cliche.

While I really enjoyed the naive narrator in Shadow Girl and have no problem recommending this for any child over the age of nine, I had minor issues with it as an adult. I found Jules to be a very gentle version, almost a muted down version, of most children I know who have come through the child welfare system. She remains naive and sweet and never really loses it. She escapes her foster care situation every chance she gets and she escapes her father’s home as well, but I expected more from a child raised by an alcoholic and shuffled through homes at a crucial age in her development. It seemed to me the real life Jules would have been acting out one heck of a lot more than this character did.

Patricia Morrison is a Canadian who lived in Toronto for many years but now lives in British Columbia with her family. She worked for the Ministry of Children and Families for many years in child welfare. This is her first novel.

My rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$. ( This is the kind of book that could easily be built into school curriculum. It is gentle and provides a great insight into poverty for young adults.)

Payton: (in her own words)

Shadow Girl is an emotional book, filled with happiness, sadness and anger, even frustration. It is set in 1963. I think this is probably similar to what one of my friends experienced when she was living with her birth family, before she was apprehended and placed in foster care in Ontario. The main character Jules is the same age as me. She has many of the same moods as I do and I completely understand her emotions. I feel the same way sometimes. When I read these books I like to put myself in the character’s shoes, just as I would if I were acting in a play. I like doing this because it helps me to feel what they are feeling. At times this was difficult with Jules because her life is sad, but I liked her imaginative spirit and how well she used it to express herself in the book. She made a lot of forts to keep herself feeling safe and she imagined all sorts of things like being a princess, a brave knight, a warrior and a superhero.
Jules is very creative.

I wish that every child who went into foster care could move quicker to adoption but still had rights to see their birth family when able to do so. More people should read books like this so they understand children who are in the child welfare system. I will probably lend Shadow Girl to many of my friends.

I had trouble putting this book down during free time at school and when I was reading on the school bus. The main character is very compelling. I liked that she was my age. It made me sad to read about her relationship with her Dad. I would read more by this author because she created a great character in Jules. She was strong and creative and she escaped her foster home often because she said it was a house full of strangers. I was hoping for a happy ending for Jules and her Dad.

Shadow Girl is by Patricia Morrison, Tundra Books, $12.99, paperback, 2013, 217 pages.

Payton’s rating was $$$$ 1/2 out of $$$$$. (Loved it.)

What on Earth is a Wishjack or Shampoon?

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The Kid Dictionary will help you – uncool parent – transform your vocabulary into kid currency. Stuff of legend that makes children and adults everywhere laugh. So, after you finish your wardrodeo this morning with squirmy toddler, read my book review to find out if you have a Kidgilante, a Scamplifier or a Hairricane.

I love dictionaries. I am a purist at heart though, so I often find it jarring when people make words up, or turn a verb into a noun, or vice versa. For a couple of years I freelanced as a proofreader/editor to make more money when I was on contract at a newspaper in southern Ontario still waiting on an actual staff position with benefits. I was a book reviewer back then too. It was fun work that appealed to my sense of grammatical order and rules. Then one day someone sent me an ad to proofread that stated something like: Grow your money. Now this was 10 years ago and frankly the phrase was fingernails on chalkboard for me. Apparently it was visionary because now this type of usage is everywhere and it is okay. In recent years, I have overcome my purist perfectionist tendencies – unless we are talking about spelling. I mean, really, spell check people. No excuses. Some of you grammatical purists may find this humorous, quirky, fun dictionary of kid things, events and ideas a little unusual and maybe even jarring. But it is comedy, pure and simple. The Kid Dictionary is also an entertaining little trivia type book that has won a place on my tween daughter’s overflowing book shelf and makes her laugh endlessly.

The Kid Dictionary is filled with words that you may never have heard of such as: Wishjack: defined as the act of highjacking your sibling’s birthday cake so you can blow out the candles and make your own wish. It is also remarkably clever – Churchuckle is the thing kids do when they laugh maniacally at an inappropriate time when they are supposed to be silent (as in at church.) It is laugh out loud funny.

Creator Eric Ruhaltor works in television and studied economics at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. His biography states that his education taught him he had no interest in economic theories and principles and so, he became a writer. He works in television in New York City and lives in New Jersey with his wife, three children and assorted animals.

The Kid Dictionary gets a $$$$ out of $$$$$ for making me and my children laugh.

In answer to the original question above: Shampoon is the thing kids do when they step out of the shower with shampoo still obviously in their hair. A Kidgilante is the kid that reports you from the backseat of the car every time you run a red light or commit some legal infraction. A scamplifier is a little kid that yells everything. A Hairricane is an event we have here every day! Otherwise known as that mess of bed-head tangles and the ensuing screams of horror and temper tantrums that result when Mom or Dad tries to brush hair.

The Kid Dictionary, by Eric Ruhalter is published by Sourcebooks, New York and is $9.99 US, 215 pages long, available in stores and at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

I received a copy of this book to facilitate review. My opinion is all my own and 100% honest.