How I Became a Pirate

Ahoy, maties!  Captain Braid-Beard needs an extra digger to help him bury his chest of treasure, and Jeremy Jacob is the man, or rather boy.  Follow Jeremy Jacob as he embarks on his precarious pirate adventure.

Parents, How I Became a Pirate (c. 2003) is a book where our local author Melinda Long was fortunate enough to score the perfect artist David Shannon to illustrate her story.  Shannon's illustrations make this story!  You're kids will love this pirate adventure as much as ours  And they may pick up some pirate lingo ("shiver me timbers", "landlubber", "scurvy dog", and "batten down the hatch") along the way.  We highly recommend this thrilling summer read!

Rain

We're so happy that it rained non-stop for the past two days!  We haven't had a decent puddle jumping, no lightning rain all summer.  Lately we've had 90 degree weather and dry, dry, dry. Finally, it's beginning to feel like fall might actually be around the corner.  So we did a little rain dance yesterday morning and pulled out our long sleeved shirts with great delight!

Our very, very favorite book to read when it rains is The Rain Came Down by David Shannon.  It's such a fun book to read aloud that I don't even mind reading it over and over and over.  First of all, the kids get quite a kick out of me making the animal sounds instead of just reading them.  Before you think this is another farm book (it's not), what we have in this story is a comedy of errors, all to be "blamed" on the rain.  Think of falling dominoes . . . one mishap leads to the next.  With all best rains, there's evidence of a rainbow at the end.  Rush to your library and read this to your children, even if it's not raining!


 In addition, our very, very favorite poem to say when it rains:

Rain

by Robert Louis Stevenson

The rain is raining all around,

  It falls on field and tree,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

  And on the ships at sea.