 Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallach Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is a homeschool show and tell. The homeschool show and tell series is hosted by Abby from Rooted and Rest and Myself. And it is an open collaboration where we invite homeschoolers from around the world to come together once a month to share about a topic that relates to homeschooling. And this month's topic is books. So we are all going to be sharing about either the current books we're reading or our all-time favorite books that we've read. So I know we're all gonna wanna watch that because a well homeschooler doesn't wanna see about books. So I will be leaving the link to the playlist where you can see all of the videos in the description box down below. So make sure you click on that so that you can watch everybody's video that's participating in this collaboration. Now before I show you my or our favorite books, I just kinda wanna tell you that the majority of the books that I'm gonna be showing you happen to be series. And that's not because we think there's anything wrong with books that aren't part of a series. It just happens to be that we tend to fall in love with the characters. So a series lets you love those characters just a little bit more. And that just means that they had a, I guess a higher place in our heart. They held a special place in our hearts. We got to love them a little more and we got to kinda hang around with them longer. So the majority of the books I'm gonna show you are either series or happen to be from the same author because when we find something we love, we stick with it. So the first four books that I'm going to show you are probably no surprise because they're gonna be series that we loved so much, we actually turned them into curriculums. And so that is the Magic Treehouse series. The sequel to the Magic Treehouse, the Merlin Mission series, the Bear Grill Adventures series, and my personal favorite, the Harry Potter book series. And now like I said, we loved those four series so much that we have turned each of them into a curriculum based around the books because they were hands down some of our favorites. Okay, I'm also going to go ahead and show you now Emily's top picks and they all happen to be book series. These are books that she has read. Now some of these started out with me reading them aloud. In fact, all of these started out with me reading them aloud, but she has gone back to reread them. So she's read all of these and these rank as her top favorite series. So the first series is Dragon Masters and she has read all 17 and recommends them. The second series is Zoe and Sassafras. Now you guys, this series I personally enjoy so much that when we get new ones in even though she can read them independently now no problem, I read them aloud and then she reads them independently because I don't want to miss the story. So we have read all eight which is all that's currently out in the series. And as more comes out, we will definitely be reading them. And then the last series that she wanted me to show you guys is the Unicorn Princesses which again, as a series I read aloud first and now she reads them and there are 10 books in that series. All right, on to the read alouds. Now these are in no particular order other than the fact that it's the way they're piled into my lap. So the first series I have is the 68 Rooms. Now this series is probably one of my favorite read alouds that we ever did. It has a lot of really awesome rabbit trails kind of hidden in there. The kids are going into the Thorn Rooms which is an actual place at a museum in Chicago. So you can look that up online. If you're in the area, you could go on a field trip there. Some of the things in the museum are historically accurate. So it's just a really, really awesome. If you want some rabbit trails and you still also want some magic, these books are great for that. They kind of remind me of a very amped up older version of the Magic Treehouse because it's two friends who go on these adventures. And it still has, like I said, that historical, where you can learn while you're reading them. And there are four books in that series. We also loved, love, love, love, the Tuesday at the Castle series by Jessica DeGeorge. I will say though, I have questions, I have so many questions about this because there are five books in the series and the books are titled Tuesday through Saturday. So the questions I have is, is there ever going to be more? Is there ever gonna be a Monday and a Sunday? And why did they start on a Tuesday? Anyway, either way, these books are fantastic. They worked really well for us personally when we really wanted more of that Harry Potter feel but we weren't quite ready to go into some of the darker books. These still have some of that magic. They have the Griffin, they're, you know, set in the whole medieval castle type time. So they still have a very Harry Potter-like feel but they're not quite as dark. So if that's where you are, this is a perfect series for that. Next, we have The Land of Stories. Now these are kind of fairy-tale based and we have read all six in the series. Let's see if I can get these on camera. The Green Ember series. This was actually one of the series that Kevin picked for us to read aloud because he had seen them at the last convention we went to which would I think have been year before last and he saw, you know, The Big Stans and Matt S.D. Smith and so if we bought the books and he said, I really like to read those aloud and we did and we loved them. And so we've actually almost read all of them now but we've read through these four and we are working our way through the spin-off books still because there are some on individual characters and then there's like prequels. So we're working our way through those still at bedtime but as it stands right now, we have read through the four in the original series and we loved them all. And like I said, that was Kevin's favorite read aloud series so far when we all picked our read alouds. The last read aloud series I have for you guys is our most recent read aloud and that is Pages and Co. The Book Wanderers. Now this is a series with three books on it. We just finished the third book. I don't know if there will be more or not but these books were fantastic. Like I cannot say enough good things about them. They literally are wandering through books, through stories Alison Wonderland and Anna Green-Gables. They're just really, really good. Like they're fantastic, they're kind of wholesome. There's a little bit of magic but not a whole lot. There's not a lot of dark moments. They were really, really great books. In fact, after we finished reading them, Emily wanted more so we have also now on the audio because I read them aloud and now she's listening to them for a second time on audio. The next two that I have to show you are authors. So we have yet to read anything by Kate Dicamillo that we haven't loved. We love everything by her. Starting with when we were first introduced to Mercy Watson when Emily was in kindergarten and we've had kind of a love affair with her ever since. We have read Tell of Despero because of Winn-Dixie, the miraculous journey of Edward Tulane and we are just finishing up Flora and Ulysses so that we can watch the movie on Disney Plus and Emily actually has a book club with this coming up in a week or two with Mary Hannah Wilson, one of my girls and I'm excited for that because Emily has actually met Mary in person so she's going to be able to take a book club with her on out school and other kids about that book and then we're gonna watch the movie. It's just kind of kind of be like a big to-do. And I love when we can do that. The next author and the last books that I have to show you are rolled dolls and I know that some people love him and some people will hate him. We love them. We kind of have that quirky sense in our family. We think they're really funny. I mean, there may be a word every now and then when I'm reading a lot, I have to change. But other than that, we talk about the dark moments. We talk about the Matilda that bad things happen but it turns out good and that kind of stuff. So we have read all of the books in the 15 books set because like I said, we love them so much. And I'm going to do a really bad drum roll now, you guys. I'm gonna tell you hands down, all three of us when we voted and this has literally been our hands down, family favorite read aloud over and over and over again, roll dolls, the BFG. This has been our favorite read aloud since for probably two or three years now. We've read it multiple times. We've watched, well, we watched the movie. I'm not gonna say we all love the movie. Some of us have different feelings about the whole book and movie thing. But I think the main reason we love this is it was the first book that we all read aloud together as a family. So the memories that we made were fantastic. I also made very, very funny voices for each and every one of the giants in the book. And I'm sure that that really helped Kevin and Emily to love it even more because they laughed their behinds off while we read it. But it's just, I don't know, it was just our favorite book, maybe we're weird because I know it's not everybody's cup of tea but it was our hands down family favorite if we were all to vote. Now there's some that Emily liked more, like for instance, the unicorn princesses is probably her very, very top one, not necessarily mine and Kevin's. Kevin's very top would have been the green ember, not necessarily, well, great. It's not mine and Emily's top favorite. My top favorite probably would have been pages and co-book wanderers. But if we were all to sit down and vote unanimously, kind of like all the way around, it is every single time, roll dolls, the BFG. Now I would absolutely love it if you would leave your favorites in the comments down below because I'm always looking to add more books to our homeschool library and to our to be red list. So please tell me what you're currently reading and what your all time favorites were and you get bonus points if it's a book series because you know we love our book series. And then don't forget to click on that playlist link in the description so that you can see everybody that is participating in all of their favorite books.