Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone's summers have been going great so far and that you are doing something special for Independence Day.  To celebrate, I wanted to share a patriotic book/song suggestion: This Land is Your Land by Woodie Guthrie (words and music), Kathy Jakobsen (illustrations) and Pete Seeger (musical tribute).   This has always been one of my favorite patriotic songs, and I love the folk-art inspired paintings in this book version.

If you get this book, you'll see it comes with a CD that you can read/sign along with or you can watch this video to get the experience right from your computer:

Here be dragons!

If there is one thing I love (and have loved ever since I was a little kid) it is dragons.

Another thing I love?  Tacos.  Yummy, am I right?

Well, today I stumbled upon a picture book in the bookstore called Dragons Love Tacos.  I would recommend it to anyone, even adults because it was funny and the illustrations were great!

Who doesn't love tacos?

This book got me thinking about other great books- chapter books in particular- with dragons.  Here are just a few of my favorites for kids who love dragons:

•  A Friend For Dragon (and other Dragon Tales) by Dav Pilkey are silly and fun easy readers. 
•  Good Night, Good Knight (and the other Good Knight books) by Shelley Moore Thomas are also easy readers featuring three very cute dragons and one very good knight.
• Three Tales of My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett is a classic series, great for kids just starting to read longer chapter books

• Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville is a book I read when I was a kid and absolutely loved.  
• Kenny and the Dragon by Tony D'Iterlizzi is a chapter book from the RICBA list two years ago, with a surprising dragon named Grahame and excellent illustrations
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien has one of the most famous dragons in the history of dragons.  It's quite a challenging book, but try to read it before the movie comes out in December!