Thoughts on: Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard Atwater

I know I must have read this book when I was a kid, I was an avid reader! But I really didn't remember anything abou it.

We had fun learning about Mr. Popper, and "watching" (with our imaginations) his penguins dance on stage.

Let's just point it out now that the book is nothing like the new Mr. Popper's Penguins movie (which I still liked, anyway).

It was a shorter book that we read rather quickly, as we all couldn't wait to see what would happen next.

We all enjoyed this book and the kids like pretending to be penguins now, too!

Thoughts on: Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie

The next book I read aloud to my children was Peter Pan. There are several different versions of this story out there, including the Disney version, but I wanted to read this one.

It was, um, different than what I was expecting. I don't think my kids understood everything that was going on, and some of the words/content were way over their head (and more adult...) but they followed the overall story. They've never watched the Disney movie of Peter Pan before, so they were not familiar with the storyline. They did, however, become very excited at the mention of Tinkerbell. Her character, however, is quite mischevious and often unkind in this story. I just told them that she has learned how to be nice since then. :)

My kids loved all the action and adventure, and really liked the ticking crocodile! You can often find them playing crocodile around the house, although they don't tick. :)

My 6-year-old asked lots of questions during this book, and it was fun to come up with answers to try to explain all the sword fighting and killing being done in the story while keeping it kid-friendly! Whew, that was a mommy-workout for sure!

In the end, we all did enjoy reading this book together.