 Hi you guys my name is Brittany and welcome back to my youtube channel. You guys in today's video I am going to be giving you my read aloud book review for the 2021 2022 school year and these right here are all the read aloud chapter books we've read this school year. So I cannot wait to share with you guys all the books we've read and my final review and hopefully this video can kind of give you guys some inspiration on some read aloud picks for you in the upcoming school year. So you guys let's go ahead and get right on into this thing. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel again my name is Brittany. I am a homeschooling mom to three girls ages 10 4 and 2 and I am finishing up my second year of homeschooling. So you guys if any of you have seen like my original read aloud choices for the year you will have noticed that half of these books were not even mentioned in that video. So one thing and one takeaway that I'm learning is that when it comes to read aloud and reading time and my household I am still going to kind of be like loosey goosey. I really want our read aloud time to be special and I want it to be like inspiring and I really want it to be fun. So if we gravitate towards a certain book over another that's just kind of like how I'm going to just continue to do it. So yeah let me stop rambling and let's go ahead and talk about the books. So our first book for our school year was the trumpet of the swan and I feel like this was the perfect start to our homeschooling year. You guys this book right here goes over Louise's journey as a trumpeter swan who is born without a trumpet or without a voice. I love following Louise's journey how first of all he has to learn how to play the trumpet in order for him to win over his affection or the love of his life who is Serena. One thing I definitely will say the main model of this read aloud is perseverance. I love how Louise he was perseverant even though he didn't have a voice he always found a way and I really enjoyed this read aloud. I thought this was a great kickstarter all to our homeschooling year and I definitely would recommend this one to any of you guys. I don't want to give out too many spoilers but this definitely was a great adventure lighthearted and fun story on Louise's journey. So trumpet of the swan definitely three stars in our homeschool. So our next read aloud that we went on into for the fall was Pax and again you guys Pax was a great read aloud. This actually is in my daughter's top three read aloud for the school year. We actually listened to this one on scribe and it was so much fun like hearing the different voices of the different people without Pax or within the story of Pax. So this story right here follows along Peter and Pax's adventure. So Peter finds Pax as a little kid or a little fox and he takes care of him until his father goes off to war and Pax becomes like a bigger fox and his dad tells him it's time for him to or it's time for Peter to release Pax out into the wild. So that's all and where I'm going to stop when it comes to this story but one thing I definitely will say is I love how Sarri Pinnerpacker she wrote this story and how each of the chapters alternated from Pax's perspective to Peter's perspective and then in the end their stories came together and I really loved it. It was very captivating. This is one of those stories that has you like on the edge and like I said before we listened to this one on scribe and it was so much fun like hearing all the different characters and the voices and different things like that. Like I'm not creative when it comes to like reading out loud like I don't have like all the voices and stuff so it was fun hearing it from that perspective. So Pax was definitely in my daughter's top three read alouds for our school year. So for Christmas time you guys we went ahead and we read the best slash worst Christmas pageant ever. This actually was a recommendation from Tori from the Oglesby Ohan. I believe she read this one with her kiddo's last Christmas so I put it on my list for our upcoming school year so I'm so happy we read this book. This book actually follows along a group of kids called The Hurtments who are just like the baddest kids in the town. I mean you guys they swear they steal some of the kids even smoke like this is like a typical like 90s or 80s type of read aloud when you read this one. It is so funny. One thing I definitely will say this story you are able to pull a lot of morals from this story. One of the big morals that I feel like my daughter was able to take away from this one is not to judge a book by its cover. One thing I definitely love is that in the end the Hurtments they truly understand what the true Christmas story is about throughout going on their pageant process even though their pageant that they do isn't directly a depiction of the birth of Jesus. I love their depiction and in the end you guys it turns out to be the best pageant ever for that church so this was a great funny lighthearted great Christmas read aloud. I definitely recommend it to anyone to read so Tori she has some really good recommendations so this one was a good one. So for the fall time you guys we actually read Little House on the Prairie and I will say that even though this wasn't like my favorite read aloud that we've read this school year um this read aloud bought about some great conversations in my home school. We went on some serious rabbit trails from this book in my home school so uh for that I definitely would say I'm still glad we read this book Little House on the Prairie. Little House on the Prairie this goes on Ma and Pa and Mary and Laurel's journey as they go into prairie land or Indian territory and they begin to settle there. One thing I would definitely say about this book is that just being ready to have conversations with your kiddos because the way that Ma and Pa their I guess behavior and their language towards the indigenous people it was not good at all. You will be having some deep conversations with your kiddos. This book definitely was a great introduction into American history for my daughter. We haven't started American history however while we were reading this book we were going down so many rabbit trails reading so many different books looking in our encyclopedia talking about indigenous people because um she just wanted to know more so for that I'm so happy that I didn't just throw out the read aloud and say oh we're not gonna read this I'm so happy we stuck on to it and if anything this book right here has gotten my daughter excited about a start in American history so even though it wasn't my favorite read aloud of the school year it definitely bought about like some great conversations a great starter into our kickstart of American history so I'm so happy for that that we did continue and we read Little House on the Prairie. So you guys I didn't want to stop the series because my daughter she still loves Little House on the series or the Little House series we have read Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy last year Farmer Boy was her absolute favorite so far so we just went along with the series and we read one on the banks not one we read on the banks of Plum Creek for our spring read aloud as we were coming back from our Black History Month so Brielle really enjoyed on the banks of Plum Creek I really enjoyed on the banks of Plum Creek I'm so happy I listened to a lot of you guys's comments on my video that I initially made in my like one of my homeschool updates about on uh or Little House on the Prairie you guys were telling me like this keep on reading keep on reading it gets better and it definitely does get better because on the banks of Plum Creek was definitely a good one I definitely love seeing their experience as they got to a new settlement a new prairie just all the struggles that they went through spring fall summer I mean this book right here you guys they went through the thick of it in this book and I love seeing them persevere my daughter enjoyed this book so much that she did a water art color depicting some of the prairie scenes that we were reading about another thing too is we had to write a book report for her English curriculum and she chose this book right here to do her book report and she did an excellent job on that so this read aloud was like a opportunity for us to like kind of get some other things in our homeschool and I'm so happy we chose this one again this was a great one and I'm happy that we didn't stop the series so on the banks of Plum Creek this one was a great one in our homeschool this year so after we ran on the banks of Plum Creek you guys we picked up Charlotte's Web another book from E.B. White and this is a classic I'm so happy that I like have this opportunity to read all these classics with my daughter and she enjoyed it and it's just so funny like how we read the book and then we watched like the live action Charlotte's Web movie and my daughter just always says like mommy like the books always win and I know Charlotte's Web may not be for all but this definitely was a fun lighthearted one and I'm so happy to like read this one again with my two toddlers when they get a little bit older because I definitely think that these classics right here I mean they're classics for a reason and we had so much fun listening about Charlotte and Wilbur and everything so yeah even though it was kind of sad at the end it still was a great wow so after we read Charlotte's Web you guys we read 100 dresses and 100 dresses is about a girl named Wanda who wears the same blue dress to school every single day and she is confronted by some other girls in the classroom and they ask her you know like Wanda do you have any other dresses and she actually says well I have 100 dresses and I love this story for character purposes I mean you can really go on some deep dives with your kiddos about bullying about mistreating others because of differences you can really get into some good murals and good character building studies with this book 100 dresses this one was cute because this was just a great lighthearted read I mean we read this one in like a week it has pictures in it and this definitely if you are starting off your read aloud journey I would definitely say start off like with Charlotte's Web 100 dresses the trumpet of the swan like these are like some great like starter read alouds in your household because they're lighthearted you can pull out murals from them and I definitely know enjoyed this one as well we listened to this one again on scribe and again I love like how scribe had like the different voices for the different people and it really dragged Brielle into this story it was so crazy we were supposed to be starting science and Brielle was like mommy can I just listen to one more chapter can I just listen to one more chapter and I believe we got this one done really really fast I forgot I know it was like a week but I'm not exactly too short but I know we read this on really really fast so yeah we enjoyed 100 dresses so you guys we actually did an amazing Africa heritage back from Amber O'Neill Johnston that was like our history slash geography study that we did for our homeschooling year so we was able to read a lot of books about Africa so I'm going to share with you guys some of the read alouds that we read that went along with that amazing Africa pack the first read aloud that we read that went along with that pack was Anna Habiscus and you guys this was such a great cute lighthearted story about Anna Habiscus her big family the compound that they lived in um and just how Anna she lives in Africa and she never seen snow and it's just so cute how she's finally able to see snow and I really really love this story it was a great lighthearted depiction of Anna of her culture of where she lived what she ate what she did and this was definitely a great fun read my daughter really enjoyed this one when we read it along with our amazing Africa pack another chapter book that we read with the amazing Africa pack was number one car spider and number one car spider it definitely was a cute funny read aloud you guys this one had us laughing the whole time we were reading it number one again he lives in a big compound with all of his families and his aunts and his uncles and his grandma and everyone like has like a funny name like his best friend's name is Coca Cola and and it's so cute like all the different funny names that all of his family has and again this goes along with his journey how he lives in his village what they do and uh one of the chapters in this book it talks about how their cart breaks down uh that they take all like their goods their mangoes their uh everything that they're going to sell in the market uh their cart broke down so it just shows how uh number one finds an innovative way to fix their cart in order for them to still be able to go to market and sell all of their goods so they can use the money to get like pencils and school supplies and other things like that that they need that they you know don't grow on their compound so these two books was like really really great funny lighthearted stories about these children that lived in Africa their way of life and um my daughter really loved it another book that we read that wasn't a part of the africa uh amazing africa pack but a book that i selected for us to read was a long walk to water and you guys this right here was briel's top favorite of our overall homeschool year this book right here it follows along nylah nylah's and salva's journey uh in africa it talks about the hardships of war um this book again it does kind of like how the packs book does uh where each chapter we were either following along nylah or salva's journey uh in africa nylah was having a hard time uh just finding fresh and clean water for her family it talks about the mild journeys that she had to go on twice a day just to get fresh water for her and her family and salva's journey it talks about the the impacts of war this book right here is a historical fiction it's based on true events um but they did say that in the book that they put their own uh twist on some of the events so i definitely will say briel loved the determination that they had to make things better to do things better and to want better in their life and i think that that's one thing she definitely took away from it is that whatever you want in life it doesn't matter what cards you're dealt with you definitely just have to be determined and fight for whatever you want in life and not only fight for yourself but fight to make a difference not in others lives around us um one thing i definitely will say is that this show briel the hardships that other people have and the other people face and um how just the simple act of having clean water impacted nila's life um how war impacted salva's life and this definitely was a good powerful read aloud i definitely will recommend you to read this with your upper elementary possibly middle school um for the content of this again um it goes into some hard truths i felt like briel was ready to hear them and she definitely took away a lot from a long walk toward her uh so i'm so happy i read this one and i'm so happy like she really really enjoyed this one so the read aloud that we're doing right now you guys and i know we're not gonna finish it because we only have like one more week left of school our end date is actually may 20th so you guys like just pray for us like we're at the finish line we're getting kind of tired but i know like we can you know we can we can make it so right now i figured to go ahead and pick out a fun read aloud for us to read so we are reading fast pitch we have only read the first two chapters of this one and this one is a really really cute story uh so far we are uh reading about shinice who is on she is the captain of the first all black softball team in her community and it's just showing how she is going to lead her team to victory so far in the first couple of chapters they're not doing too well uh it kind of left us on a cliffhanger so my daughter is so excited to see like what is going to happen how shinice is going to pull through how their softball team is going to pull through so um this is definitely a fun one for the summer i know a lot of you guys are like in softball season so my daughter she is really enjoying this um i don't know who knows briel might want to do softball after reading this story so um we are definitely enjoying this one and this is going to kick start our you know summer read aloud so you guys those are like all of our read alouds that we have read this year i'm not going to lie i think i did a pretty good job for our read alouds because my daughter said you know she said mommy a long walk to water was my favorite but i really enjoyed all of the read alouds this year so hopefully i did a good job for uh next school year and we will kind of like enjoy our read aloud so um yeah you guys thank you so much for watching today's video i hope you leave inspired finding some good reads for your family so i look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye