 Hey everybody. Welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be a homeschool show and tell. The homeschool show and tell is an open collaboration hosted by Abby from rooted and rest and myself. Our goal with the homeschool show and tell was really just to show that there's not one right way to homeschool. We do that by bringing homeschoolers together from around the world to share their take on a different topic. This month's topic is homeschool librarian. So we're going to be talking all things books and I'm so excited because it's homeschoolers. You guys know we love us some books so these are going to be some great videos so make sure you check out the rest of the playlist in the description box. Now this topic was actually kind of difficult for me not because there's not a ton of books to share but because there's too many books to share. When you're talking about a decade of wonderful books that we've shared together and trying to narrow that down was impossible so I decided instead of just sharing all of our favorite books or the ones we've read lately which could also be its entire own video that I would share book series because that is the thing that we try to read the most of and we tend to gravitate to the most in our homeschool for a couple of different regions. One is because of decision fatigue like I know that's not a reason that a lot of people talk about but it's true. Emily and I are both very anxious people if you will and so trying to make a decision on what book to read next is sometimes stressful. Reading a book that we have no clue what we're getting into or you don't know you know how intense it's going to be or how you know things are going to play out is sometimes causes us anxiety so book series are great for that. Once we've read and enjoyed the first one the chances of us loving and enjoying the subsequent ones are higher and we kind of are like prepared emotionally for what those books are going to portray to us. Also because you fall in love with the characters so once you you know have fallen in love with the characters you want to know more and book series are fantastic for that and then the last thing is I find that it creates they've created a culture in our family so the more that we get to know the characters or the places or the you know whatever it is the more in depth and the more our culture grows and expands. For example one of the first books I'm going to share with you and I will reshare it but it's going to be Mercy Watson. She liked her toast with a great deal of butter. We have not read that book since Emily was maybe six because we've read it multiple times and even now at 11 almost 12 any time I say do you want toast she always answers me yes but with a great deal of butter please because it was it's part of our culture now right after reading the BFG if somebody farts in our house it's a whiz bang like there's just all of these special moments and then I feel like come from being thrown in to a book series because you get to enjoy it for a longer period of time so with that being said I narrowed it down to what I think when I counted was our top 30 book series for all ages of all times so we're going to talk about from what we've read from preschool all the way through till middle school and what we love the most. I only pulled the first book in each series because well my arms would get tired if I was holding up the entire series so we're just going to show the first book but make sure if you guys go to look at these on Amazon or your library or whatever that you're looking for a series because there's going to be multiples in every one of these that I'm showing you. Okay first up is Mercy Watson. This I believe had six books in the series. It is for probably your youngest. There's beautiful pictures, large words, there's about 10 to 12 chapters but each chapter was only a few pages. This was probably one of the very first chapter book series that we ever read. I read aloud and Emily turned around and enjoyed it herself years later multiple different times. Next up we have Princess in Black. It's a very similar level to Mercy Watson and just because she's a princess she is as Emily would call her a kick butt princess so I think boys would enjoy this too and if you can't tell I'm trying or I tried my best to put all of these books in youngest to oldest so that's kind of the order we're going in. Next we have the Kitty series. This would be a slight step up from Mercy Watson and Princess in Black but not much of one. There's still pictures. It's still very large font. It's shorter chapters. It is a few more chapters that I believe we go up to about let's see oh I'm sorry there's only six chapters so the chapters are longer and what I liked is at the end of each of these books there was always some facts about the about kitties and cats. Emily absolutely loved the series. I believe there's six or more so if your kids love them there's plenty to choose from. Next we have the Critter Club. It's no longer color pictures but there are still pictures in the book and there are approximately let's see 11 to 12 chapters and I believe this series has like 10 plus so plenty to choose from. Daisy Dreamer. This was one that Emily absolutely devoured. I could not buy these books fast enough. She lives like in this imaginary world. She has an imaginary friend and we just love them. Again no more color pictures. They're black and white but it's still pretty large font. Shorter chapters. There are about let's see 10 chapters in these books approximately 100 pages and I know there's more than 10 in that series as well. Heidi Heckelbach and I cannot remember what her brother's name is but he actually has a series too that if you have a boy would like. I believe the boy version is a little bit easier to read than the Heidi ones. I could be wrong but look for both of those depending on whether you have a girl or a boy. These are really good. Same thing. Black and white pictures still larger words shorter chapters and there's definitely I think like 15 or more in this series and in the brother series as well. I can't remember his name for the life of me. Dragon Masters. This was a series that we devoured Emily actually even now as a new one comes out forces me to buy it so we can add it to our collection and she reads it in like an hour where it used to take us a couple of days. This I would say is one step up from the ones that we were just talking about. There are still a few pictures. This is a Scholastic Branches book which I love. It means there's a few questions and answers in the back like a few activities for each book. There are I believe 18 maybe even 19 books in this series now and they're like around 100 pages 12 or 16 chapters. The chapters are very short but you have a few more words on the page now. Still ones that she loved. Next we have a Zoe in Sassafras. There are I believe six to eight books in this series. Oh man this was a series that I read aloud she reread by herself. It was phenomenal. We're still in that kind of same step up category where there's pictures on the page a few black and white. There are more words on the page. There are about let's see 100 pages around 16 chapters and then of course you guys know that Magic Treehouse is a beloved series here. I've read all of them aloud multiple times and to go along with this would be the follow-up series Merlin's Mission. As far as I'm concerned these are like tied and go together because once you've read this series you need to finish reading about their series in the Merlin's Mission. The Merlin's Mission are slightly higher in level but I mean very very slight. Here I'll show you the difference in the book. So this top one is the thickness of the Magic Treehouse with the Merlin's Mission being below it. I think the difference is about 20 extra pages maybe 30 extra pages and it's just a little bit higher in content but not much. Emily enjoyed both of them equally. I read the entire two series aloud. She went back immediately after I read them all aloud and listened to them on Audible and then read them all herself. So she's enjoyed them at least three maybe even four times. We're still in kind of that same more words on the page, black and white pictures, approximately a hundred pages. Actually this one only has 75 pages. Ten chapters somewhere in that ballpark and these are fantastic for like all kids. They have different kinds of topics. You have dinosaurs and there's actually some dinosaur facts in here. You have Medieval Times, Pirates, Ancient Egypt. Like you can find one of these for almost any topic you're going to be learning about in your home school. In fact we spent an entire year just reading these and doing our Passport to Adventures curriculum that went along with them because they were so like sneaky educational. So if you're looking for a fun adventure book for your younger kids and you want you know something that you can like really get into because there's almost 30 of these and like you know learn a little bit along the way this is a top series. Hands down one of our favorites ever. The Kingdom of Renly is I would say probably about still that same level. So at this point I think we're in like the first to second grade maybe third. This series has I think 12 to 15 books in it. It is fantastic. It's set in middle ages. We loved it. There's some sneaky learning in these as well. Greetings from Somewhere. These are great because each one their first thought these are home school kids which Emily loved reading about that but each one they're going to like a different part of the world and they're like solving things. They're having adventures. So they go to like Paris and Italy and China. So you're learning all of that as well. We still have the black and white pictures. There's still approximately 100 pages. We're at 120 now and they actually are recommending Kingdom of Renly in the book. That's how we stumbled upon them. Zoey's Zoo Rescue. Emily loved this series because she loves animals. I think there are maybe about 15 in the series. This is probably a slight step up from where we've been so far. There are occasional pictures not very many The fauna is a tiny bit smaller. I would say this is probably closer to like maybe third fourth grade. There is about 120 pages but she absolutely loved them and there's like the wolf pup and the penguin and a lion. So if there's a specific animal your kids love they could read that one because they don't have to be read in order. That's actually the order Emily read them in was from her favorite animal to her least favorite even though she still loved that one as well. 39 clues. This is a step up from what we were just talking about. The font is very small. There are I believe no pictures. I mean there's an occasional like start of the chapter picture but not very many. I think that's probably one of two pictures in the whole book. There are let's see I think 11 books in this first part of the series and then there's like a continuation series if you wanted to read those. It is it's educational. It reminds me of Magic Treehouse slightly but with a little bit more mystery. The content has aged up just a tiny bit but they're still traveling the world and learning new things like about Benjamin Franklin and Mozart and all of these famous people. So it is a really really cool series. We read this aloud. I enjoyed it and then Emily turned around and listened to it on Audible because she wanted to see if there was things that she missed after she knew them in the end. Anyway so we've read it twice technically. The Lemonade War series. This is one of her book club books she absolutely fell in love with. So again we're still at that higher level. You know there's not any pictures anymore. That's about 175 pages now. I would say we're probably at like maybe if you're going to read it aloud obviously any age but they're going to read about themselves probably around the fourth grade is where we're at now level wise. I don't remember how many are in this series. She read it for her book club fell in love with it and ended up finishing the entire series herself and like loved it made me buy all of them for her. So that is the top one. The 68 rooms. This is not a popular series and a lot of people don't talk about it but it was one of our favorites. I read this aloud when Emily was in first or second grade. She read it to herself later like probably fourth to fifth grade. It says 8 to 12 on the back. There are not any pictures. It is small font. It is approximately around the 250 pages but it is based off of a like the thorn rooms. It's a museum in Chicago that's like tiny rooms that represent all these different things and the kids actually can like shrink and go into them. I believe there's four in this series. We've read all of them. We absolutely love them. It was an amazing series for rabbit trails because you can actually like like it's an actual museum so you can look it up online. It's on our bucket list to visit this museum one day. That's a lot of fun. If you're looking for a series that has a little bit of kind of like that magic kids shrinking and being able to go places and especially still have that sneaky learning, this is a great series for that. How to train your dragon. There are approximately, let me see here, 12 books in the series. I can't even tell you how many times Emily has read them all. We read them aloud. She read them herself. She's listened to the audiobooks the entire series multiple times. She's slightly obsessed. She still wants me to read the first one again to her because she loves it that much. There are a few pictures in this book series, not a ton, but there are some little doodles like that occasionally. I would still say that this is probably around the eight to twelve, you know, if you're looking for them to read it on their own, it is around 220 pages. That's an amazing series. If your kids like dragons, they'll love it. It has a little bit of, you know, Viking education to it as well. Tuesdays at the castles was another series that I don't hear people talk about enough. They do not give it the credit that I feel like it deserves. There are one, two, three, four, five in the series. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I don't know what happened to Sunday and Monday, but anyway, that's how many there are. They remind me of a medieval Harry Potter-esque, but not as scary as Harry Potter. In fact, this is what we read before to kind of see if she was ready for Harry Potter because I was looking for books similar to that, but they were a little bit easier for younger kids to handle because Emily was a very sensitive kid and she adored this series. We read it aloud. She read it again later. I really, really enjoyed it. It was fantastic. I will say there is a little bit of, you know, like fighting and stuff. It is medieval. So I would, and I think she was eight when I read it aloud, so it's not one that's like super hard, but you would definitely want to read aloud and test it. The first one is the most mild of them and they slowly get a little bit more violent. There are about 225 pages. We've kind of gotten to the point now where there's not too many pictures, smaller font, longer chapters, but phenomenal series. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is the one Emily pulled, even though I know it's not the first one. It's her favorite. So obviously, the Narnia series is a really great book. I'm going to be honest with you, I ended up getting this on my Kindle because that's holding this tiny book and reading this tiny font made my eyes want to hurt because even with my glasses, I was like, wow, I can't read this. So I ended up getting this on my Kindle. We have the book series because Emily likes to hold and keep books that she loves. So we have the whole set. So there's that. It's a tiny print, get a larger print. Okay, The Book Wanderers. There are I think three books in this series now, there might be four. Emily absolutely loves it. They're going into books basically and it's really, really fun. There are full page pictures occasionally, maybe every other chapter. There are about 275 pages. Let's see, we read this one aloud when she was probably eight, nine. She could have handled it when she was younger. It just wasn't out yet. So we read it as soon as it came out. I think this would be a good read aloud for almost any age because, like I said, they're just going into story books. I mean, a little bit of drama, but most of the books do have a little bit of drama, but it's a fantastic series. We really, really enjoyed that one. Escape from Mr. Limantela's Library. She has read all of these multiple times. I read them aloud. She read them herself. She went back and listened to all of one audible when the prequel came out. She read that one and then re-listened all of them. She loved the games that they play, loved that it was based on books. I mean, there was really nothing about it she didn't like. There aren't, I don't think there's any pictures that I can find. It is about 200 to 300, 280 to 300 pages. In most of the back of the books, there are some chatters with the author. So there's some fun things you can go through with that. On the back of the book, they compare Mr. Limantelo to a Puzzle Master version of Willi Wonka, and I would probably completely agree with that. He, he definitely felt very eccentric. We'll go with that. Great series though. There are now, I believe the prequel makes five in the series. The Land of Stories is a fairy tale based book. The kids can fall into fairy tales. I will say when the Book Wonders came out, we had already read the entire Land of Stories series, and this reminded me of it. If I was going to read both series, I would read the Book Wonders first. I feel like it was a little bit more mild in content. Similar kind of storylines, but this one was a little bit more mild where this is not as mild. Not that it's, you know, intense, but that's the order I would have read them in if the other series had already been out. There's I think seven in this book series. It is a longer series, like these books are about 430 pages, not any pictures, smaller font, longer chapters, but fantastic and so worth it. Next up we have the Book Scavenger. I think there's three in this series. What Emily really liked is there's actually like a website you can go to and like kind of play along with the Book Scavenger so you can like hide books and let people find them like in real life. I think she's hidden four books at this point and people have found them and she's used their clues to find two or three. We don't live in a super metropolitan area so that stuff doesn't happen a lot, but she really enjoyed that that was like a extended aspect of the books because that's what they do in the book kind of. It is about 400 pages. Same thing, not a lot of pictures, smaller font. I would say at this point we are probably at the 9 to 13 if they're going to read it by themselves, possibly even 10. The Green Ember was one our entire family enjoyed. We read this entire series out loud. Kevin really, really enjoyed it. The audiobooks of it are fantastic as well. It is about 360 pages. Let's see, The Vanter Beakers. This is a series that we keep buying every time they release a new one and we continue to read them. We love them. That's amazing series. 300-ish pages. It's still about the same. I would say this could probably be read aloud as young as 7 to 8 but if they were going to read independently we're still at like that you know 9 plus stage. The Artemis Foul series, this is one that I read the first one aloud and then only finished the rest of the series off. I would actually like to go back and finish the series myself. I wasn't expecting her to like devour them quite the way she did. I thought we would end up reading them together. Surprise, surprise. This is what the inside looks like. They're approximately, let's see here, 275 pages and I think there's either 7 or 8 in that series. Harry Potter. This is one that we absolutely love. Our entire family loves it. I read the books when I was growing up. Kevin read them when we got married. I read the entire series aloud to Emily. We've listened to them on audio, on car trips. I can't tell you how many times. We wrote a study and did an entire year around them. Seriously, love the Harry Potter series. In case you're not familiar, I can't imagine anybody that wouldn't be. But in case you're not, there are around 300 pages. This is about what the inside looks like. And this is the first book. Every book I feel like gets subsequently slightly longer. And there are seven books in the series of that. Next up, we have Percy Jackson, which is another one that our entire family absolutely loves. We wrote a study on it and did an entire year of Greek mythology wrapped around it. It was a really, really great series for us. Let's see. There are about 400-ish pages in the first book. Next up, we have the Mysterious Benedict Society. I think this could probably be a little bit younger than like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson read aloud. The only reason that it's at the bottom of the stack is because it's quite large and it was going to make my stack fall over. Let's see. This book has about 500 pages. There is an occasional picture. Not very many though, but there are occasional pictures. And there are, I believe, five in the series, four or five. So we read those and then watched the TV series. Next, we have City Spies. This was another series. I read the first one aloud. Emily devoured the second and the third one before I got a chance. I am still going to read those. And she is very impatiently waiting for the rest of the series to come out. That is about the reading level. It's about 400 pages. She also loved this series so much that she went on to read all of the rest of his books. The Dead City and the Framed series. She liked them both. Neither of them quite held up to City Spies for her, but she really, really likes his style of writing. And I will say that first book was phenomenal. It would make a really, really great read aloud. And then the last one that I have is Fable Haven. This was actually one that Kevin picked out for us to read together as a family. And it was very, very good. We really enjoyed it. There are about, I would say, 375-ish pages. There's four or five in the series. We don't love it on Audible. We didn't love the narrator. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but we read them. And I think we were on the last one and we were going on a road trip. So we tried it on Audible and we didn't end up loving it. So I ended up getting the last one on my Kindle and reading it aloud in the car so that we could finish the series. But every one of those is a great series. You can't go wrong with them in case you can't tell. As Emily got older, she really gravitates towards fantasy. That is her preferred favorite genre. So there was a lot of that in there. Don't forget to check out the other videos and the playlist that I linked down below so you can get even more homeschool book ideas. And I would absolutely love it if you would leave your favorite book series in the comments. I'm always looking for more book series for us to read together as a family. It's one of our favorite pastimes.