The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea: a book of colors by Audrey Wood: this book is a wonderful way to introduce you child to colors! As you read with your child, ask your child to tell you the colors of the sea, rock, tree, nut, parrot, butterfly, and cloud. Have your child tell you the colors of the rainbow at the end of the book! This book features a lot of repetition which is good for the brain; connections in the brain are made when activities are repeated with the child. Another good book for colors is The Flower Garden by Eve Bunting.

Eye Guess: A Foldout Guessing Game

An excellent book for preschool story time! This book is a foldout guessing game where you read a brief description of what the animal is and the children see a partial picture of the animal. After the children guess, you fold out the picture so that the children can see the entire animal. The animals are as follows: a duck, a turtle, a frog, a raccoon, a bobcat, a mouse, an owl, and a wolf. The children had correct guesses for most of the animals, except the raccoon, bobcat, and wolf.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

This book is absorbing, entertaining, confusing, bewildering, and unique. In How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, our hero travels through time and space with his virtual dog, Ed, who isn't real, doesn't eat or drink, but other than that is a completely loyal and faithful dog. He and Ed travel in TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem.

In our hero's universe, time travel exists and science fictional universes and combined real/science fictional universes exist side by side. Our hero is a time travel technician who fixes time machines and prevents time travelers from making serious mistakes, such as slipping into alternate universes where they don't exist or becoming their own uncles or ending up as their own sisters.

But some events in time just can't be changed. As our hero says, "The good news is, you don't have to worry, you can't change the past. The bad news is, you don't have to worry, now matter how hard you try, you can't change the past

Our hero takes us on a wild and crazy search for his father who has disappeared. His father had the idea for time travel, but never got the credit for it. As we travel on a journey where our hero meets his "should have been" mother in a Buddhist temple that exists out of time and space and even gets shot in the stomach by himself, we start to explore what time means, what our lives mean, what reality is, and what really matters most to us.

My Not So Perfect Life

Have you ever wished that your life was better than it really is? Looked at somebody and envied them their seemingly so easy success? Then you will identify with Katie Brenner, the heroine of this book. Katie gets her first big job in marketing in London, but her job comes with inputting the results of boring customer surveys, a long horrible commute, and a small apartment that currently is filled with organic whey boxes - her roommate's most recent entrepreneurial venture.

And of course, there's Demeter, her perfect boss. She has Katie's dream job, the good looks and style that Katie envies, the perfect husband, the perfect kids, and a house that has been profiled in a magazine.

Katie thinks that her lowest point in London has come when Demeter asks Katie to touch up the roots of her hair. But it's not - the lowest point is when Katie gets fired from her job.

She goes home to her father's home in Somerset and helps her father and stepmother set up a trendy farm camp for "glampers". She designs their web site, puts together a shower barn, helps her father pick out the yurts, and makes sure each family gets a little hamper of milk, tea, bread, and homemade organic Ansters Farm soap. She even convinces her father to take on the role of "Farmer Mick" for the children who visit the farm.

Guess who decides to come visit the farm? Her former boss, Demeter, with her family. As Katie observes Demeter outside of work, she realizes all is not as it seems. Demeter's sudden appearance along with the appearance of her crush from work, Alex, cause her to question everything she has previously believed about Demeter, her former job, and even herself.