Camp Hillside Series -- Middle Grades Novel Series About Going to Summer Camp

 

Disclosure: I was sent copies of these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Do your kids go to summer camp? How long do they go for? Summer camp is like a rite of passage. Although Hazel never went to overnight camp, she is now ready to go to boarding school. It has been an exciting July in our house. But back to summer camp. Kids often feel homesick but once they relax, they make new friends and have exciting adventures. Today I get to share a middle grades series with you about a girl's adventure at summer camp for the first and second time. The books are from the Camp Hillside Series by Steph Katzovi. There are two books in the series (so far): Hurricamp! and Miscommunicamp!. They are recommended for ages 7 to 12.

Demon in the Woods -- New Graphic Novel from the Shadow and Bone Series

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Have you discovered the Shadow and Bone Series? There are a series of books as well as a television series on Netflix. We discovered this amazing series when they released the television series. We got to review the first book in the series. After reading the first book, Hazel could not wait to get her hands on the next book and really all the books in the three series of Grishaverse. At the time they were hard to come by because of the television series. The second season was released recently. Today I get to share the newest book with you. It is a graphic novel and it gives a bit of the background story of the Darkling. It is Demon in the Wood by Leigh Bardugo and illustrated by Dani Pendergast. 

Changes at Crafty Moms Share

With my new business of selling Thirty-One Gifts as an Independent Consultant I have not had as much time and energy to put into Crafty Moms Share. Over the summer I thought and prayed and discussed what to do. Hazel really wants me to keep it going. I considered stopping it. When I started this blog in 2011 I was sharing things I was doing with Hazel and she was only 2.5 years-old. Now she is 10.5 and does a lot on her own. We stopped Sharing Saturday because of the low participation and Crafty Weekends is also dwindling. I love having others share their crafts and ideas but link parties seem to be a bit of a thing of the past.  Then I also feel pressure to work on book reviews and I realized I have been getting too many books to review and many do not motivate me to review them, so we decided to cut back on book reviews as well as how many we accept. We also discussed what we would do with Crafty Moms Share. One of our most popular series ever has been Fairy Tales in Different Cultures. While we looked at a few fairy tales we really focused on Cinderella. She was Hazel's favorite princess at the time and there are so many different versions easily available and most are in picture books which were perfect for Hazel at the time. Now she has a few different favorite princesses. Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) and the Frog Princess (Tiana) are among the top ones. So we are going to restart this series and look at some of the other fairy tales a bit more. I even gave our button a new look for it. What do you think?