Family time with kids is very important and reading to your kids is not only an inexpensive (it’s free!) activity that you can do together, but it’s also great bonding and leaning time with your children. With so much of our day taken up with TV, iPods, video games and other media, it’s an important way to connect with your kids and to help them learn and grow. Our kids love to read, and it’s always fun to check out new books that we can share together. Recently we were invited to check out 2 new books by author Lori Jordan-Rice in her award winning series “Miss Trimble’s Trapdoor.” Entertaining and easy to read, these books were a fun adventure that our family shared over the Thanksgiving weekend.
“Miss Trimble’s Trapdoor” is the first book in the series and introduces the characters, especially Tyler who doesn’t have many friends and sometimes struggles in school. He one day discovers a secret trapdoor to a mysterious basement where he can travel to the past with a magical talking dog. In the second book, “Miss Trimble’s Trapdoor: The Perseverance of Christopher Columbus,” Tyler returns and finds out that even Christopher Columbus had challenges, which helps him better tackle his own life.
Written by a former elementary teacher that had become frustrated with the lack of knowledge children were able to demonstrate in the area of history, this series does a very nice job of presenting history in a fun and entertaining manner. While these are written more for older elementary kids, my 6 year old kindergartner (who doesn’t normally sit still for anything!) didn’t move a muscle and wanted to read both books in one sitting. The vivid descriptions and short chapters help make the story move quickly and my daughter and I both think that these would make an excellent movie or TV series. She even had to play “Christopher Columbus” after we read the second book. I would definitely recommend these to both parents and teachers. They are a good read aloud book to younger kids and would be a nice series for older kids to practice their reading.
For more information about the “Miss Trimble’s Trapdoor” series, please visit www.MissTrimblesTrapdoor.com. Ask for them at your local library or bookstore and you can also find them on Amazon here.
Disclosure: Complimentary copies of these two books were provided to my family for purposes of a review, however no compensation was given and the opinions above are my own and were not influenced in any way.
