In the blog-o-sphere, we are LitKid (the daughter) and AKid@Heart (the mom), a couple of book-lovers who decided to share our thoughts and recommendations about the children’s books we’ve read over a collective span of 48 years, including:

  • Our old favorites (reaching way back to the board books first read to LitKid when she was a baby and toddler)
  • LitKid’s reviews of the latest and greatest books she has inhaled. (She really does seem to inhale them – in record time and with such complete concentration that she ceases to hear anything around her. Her grandmother says this sounds a lot like a certain other girl she knew a few decades ago.)
  • AKid@Heart’s ‘nostalgia reviews’ of the books she read and loved when she actually was a kid … plus reviews of the here-and-now kids’ books she manages to read while always running way behind on her grownup bookclub books.
  • Reviews of cool independent bookstores.
  • Interviews with our favorite book people.

LitKid is now tackling all the new challenges of middle school after “graduating” in June from an excellent international magnet elementary school, where she had a chance to learn Spanish four days a week starting in kindergarten and got to take cool electives in which she learned about things such as architecture, international popular dance, short-story writing and African culture. (Elementary school was not nearly so entertaining when her mom was there way back when.)

AKid@Heart is a long-time writer and editor of just about everything but fiction – from very serious stuff about former Soviet-bloc countries to the official magazine about the making of The Lord of the Rings movies, created with New Line Cinema. LitKid has pronounced the manuscript for AKid@Heart’s just-finished-but-not-published first novel for kids to be “addicting.” The author acknowledges the bias involved, but still considers this to be the most important measure of success.

We hope you enjoy our fledgling effort and discover some new (and old) books along the way.

Happy reading.

A note from AKid@Heart, Keeper of the Blog: Unless a word is flat-out missing or garbled, I will not be editing and revising LitKid’s reviews, as I believe they should be authentic ~ served straight-up from her keen mind and colorful imagination.