Storytime With Venessa: Video Review of The Boxcar Children

This episode of Storytime With Venessa features a video review of The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner! Take it away, Venessa!

Additional thoughts about this book from a parent’s point of view: I really liked it. For a while I've grown weary of reading picture books. I think we've read through them several times now and, well, most of them are not written to be read aloud, and you would think they would be!

So I decided to sit with Venessa each evening to read chapter books. She’s getting older and I think we’re ready to tackle some more advanced reading for her age group. The Boxcar Children was a good book to start with. It was such a wonderful book to read aloud. No tongue tied sentences that didn't sound right and it was very easy to read with expression and give personality to the characters. Venessa and I both approve of this book very much and hope other parents will read it aloud with their own kids.

Now off reading "The Trouble With Tink" together!

P.S. Happy first day of 2nd grade, Venessa!

Storytime With Venessa: Battle Of Storytime

ME: Venessa, let’s read The Graveyard Book next.

VENESSA: No, it looks scary.

ME: No, it’s fine. Neil Gaiman is awesome. He’s the genius of Sandman, Anansi Boys, I liked American Gods and he was brilliant with Terry Pratchett in Good Omens!

VENESSA: No, it looks scary.

ME: You like Coraline and he wrote that too!

VENESSA: No, it looks scary.

ME: What are you taking about?! Look, let me read the back cover to you...

Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the dead. There are adventures in the graveyard for a boy – an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, he will be in danger from the man Jack – who has already killed Bod’s family…

Well, anyways, you’re no fun! How about we read The Boxcar Children?

VENESSA: Okay.

ME: Now, when I was little, I read The Boxcar Children, it was one of my fav…

VENESSA: Just read it already!

ME: Okay, okay…!