Just made J: Jeremy's Decision

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with J the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Usually, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. This week I'm still recovering from my library avalanche, so I'm grabbing a favorite picture book instead.

Jeremy's Decision is one of the books I got through Brighter Vision, a children's book club type company which would send us a box each month with a book, workbook, a craft, some stickers, and a music CD or cassette, based around some theme. Unfortunately my eldest never had any interest in doing the workbooks, but I loved them, so we kept it up. It turned out that they only have one set of everything, so I discontinued when my second grew up to where the first started, because who needs two sets of the same book, and the X only ever did a few pages of the workbook. Anyway, it was a fun little box, and it's a pity that it looks like the company has disappeared. We still have some of the workbooks, and I use them for N's homework sometimes. Copying letters is much more fun when you RIP the page out of the book before or after you do it.

So, one month was music, and this was the book. We enjoyed it, and I kept it during several weedings of our picture books. Jeremy's dad is a orchestra conductor, and when the family goes to watch him perform, everyone asks Jeremy if he's going to grow up to do the same thing. Finally Jeremy speaks up with his real ambition (paleontology). What I really like is that the young kids go to the concert and enjoy it. (Jeremy reads his dinosaur book through the music, and keeps setting the dinos to the music -- the sad part is the mass extinction.) I like that his sister ends up being the conductor, even though no one ever bugged her with the question. The illustrator is Michael Martchenko, who is better known for his work with Robert Munsch. And the author is Ardyth Brott, who a little googling tells me is married to a conductor, so maybe this book is based on her family. So a cute little book, with good memories of my kids being young.

PS. I skipped for two weeks, drowning in reading and bad internet, but the I book should have been Irreligion, by John Allen Paulos, and the H book was Chad Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I hope to review those soon.