Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

My friend Britt picked The Nocturnals:  The Mysterious Abductions for book club forever ago; it’s been sitting on my shelf since then, until it occurred to me a month or so ago that it would make an excellent read-aloud for my three older kiddos.  We have, accordingly, been reading it together in the evenings, once my youngest is in bed, and last night I rashly told the kids we could probably finish it, thinking we had 20-25 pages left.

We had 40.

We did finish it–triumphantly!–but yowsers, my voice was tired by the end.  (They’re varying degrees of excited for the next one, by the way, with my soon-to-be-10-year-old the most so.)  Mysterious Abductions is a quirky series opener, all things considered; a fox, a pangolin, and a sugar glider form a ‘Nocturnal Brigade’ and investigate the disappearance of a seemingly random assortment of animals of the night.  Add some intense coyotes and snarky bats to the mix–not to mention a sweet-natured wombat–and you’ve got quite the cast of characters (especially since the sugar glider is head-over-flaps for the fox).  My favorite part of reading it to the kiddos was the fun we had googling pictures of animals that we’d never seen before, but it also kept us engaged; my second girlie in particular was ALWAYS dejected when we stopped reading for the night.  Overall, although it’s maybe a little less my thing, it was a great read-aloud; animal-loving elementary schoolers should most definitely give it a try.