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Mother Daughter Book Reviews is pleased to be coordinating a Blog Tour for the lower middle grade book "Axel & Theo: My Dog is The Emperor of a Faraway Galaxy" by Amberly Kristen Clowe from June 22 to 28, 2015. This one is a great choice for reluctant readers!   About the Book     Title: Axel & Theo: My Dog is the Emperor of a Faraway Galaxy | Author: Amberly Kristen Clowe | Publication Date: November 15, 2014 | Publisher: Smooth Sailing Press | Pages: 44 | Recommended Ages: 6to 10 Summary: Theodore Howard wants a white flag. The kind of white flag that will show Riverwood Elementary’s biggest bully, Theo’s given up on ever surviving the fourth grade, and achieving his dream of becoming a real-life astronaut. But, Theo’s seemingly pathetic future gets a glimmer of hope in the form of a very talkative weenie dog named Axel. Theo learns that his best friend on four legs, is actually an alien from the planet Doglin, and just when he begi...

I recieved a complementary pdf copy of this book for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions expressed herein are entirely my own, however. I was very excited to sign up to review this book as I am always on the lookout for books written for children pertaining to Autism/Asperger's. This book was interesting and different than I expected it to be. I like the approach of learning to accept oneself rather than trying to change to fit in. "No matter what I did, I could not change what made me uncomfortable...I decided to go to the river, the place where I knew I could be happy, and learn how to be myself...Rosie, a pink hippo." That sentence is so very powerful. That lesson was, to me the most profound, and I relates to it both as someone who has struggled to "fit in" many times in my life, but also as a mom to kids on the Autism Spectrum. I felt the illustration of the river choosing it's own path was not as clear or concise as the...

I've decided to divide and conquer this week. This post will highlight some of the preschool books that we read over the past few weeks, while the next post will contain the favorites for young readers and myself. To start us off we have a family favorite that was so well loved it literally fell apart, and we finally replaced it, with the board book version. I am very pleased as it is the entire story and not a condensed version. We love Wooly! Kit said this was her favorite page, the one with all the Kitty Kisses! My personal fave is the the duck lullaby, the kids go crazy giggly when I belt out my quacky rendition. Fun times. I have to confess that I have never really been able to get into the How Do Dinosaurs series for reasons I can't exactly pinpoint. I think the artwork is great. I love that they write the names of each dino on the various pages. I think it a very clever way to help kids sort out their own feelings in a funny and non-accusing ...

The last two weeks around here have been so busy going here or there, or having extra kids, that a lot of our weekly reading time got crowded out a bit. Several books also got returned to the library before I remembered to take pictures. Oh well. My kids tend to reread so many books anyway that I'll likely get another shot at it in a few weeks or so. Here is a few I did capture however: My T Sound Box was a big hit with Kit! It was packed with cute pictures and a ton of t-words. The Tiger with the loose tooth was her favorite.  This one has beautiful illustrations, I could look at these pictures over and over with the bright colors and sweet expressions. And up until the last few pages the story was good too. But it fell flat in the very end. It honestly felt like the author ran out of room and just wrapped it up as quick as possible instead of reworking it to make Little Raccoon's character grow more smoothly. But, otherwise, it's rea...