What’s The Eight-Year-Old reading this week?

By Shala Howell, February 26, 2016

Our mostly-weekly survey of the tidbits that cross The Eight-Year-Old’s desk. This week, The Eight-Year-Old mixes things up with a magazine recommendation.

A sampling of this week’s books:

Ranger in Time: Danger in Ancient Rome by Kate Messner
National Wildlife Federation’s Ranger Rick Magazine
The Life of Luke Skywalker by Ryder Windham

The Eight-Year-Old’s Scholastic book order came in last week and everyone at Caterpickles Central was suitably excited: The Eight-Year-Old because she finally had enough reading material to last Two Whole Days (!), and Mommyo, because there was no question which books would make Friday Reads this week.

Although we don’t order every time, The Eight-Year-Old pours over every issue of the Scholastic book catalog in hopes that this month will be the month that we do. Truthfully, we order more often than we probably should. In part because oh my goodness it’s hard to keep The Eight-Year-Old in books, but also because it’s a great opportunity to give The Eight-Year-Old a lesson in sticking to a budget without actually lecturing her about it. On the months we do order, I give The Eight-Year-Old a $15 budget and tell her she can order whatever she wants, as long as $15 will cover it. Whittling down her wish list of 30 or more books to the top 2-3 can be a challenge, but so far, The Eight-Year-Old’s been up to it.

This last time around, the force was strong in The Eight-Year-Old, so it came as no surprise that the first book she pulled out of her backpack on book delivery day was a fictional biography of Luke Skywalker. The second book to emerge, Ranger in Time, was a bit of a surprise. I had no idea The Eight-Year-Old liked stories about time traveling dogs.

There was another surprise lurking for The Eight-Year-Old on Scholastic Book Delivery Day, although Scholastic had nothing to do with it. The March issue of Ranger Rick arrived, and The Eight-Year-Old devoured it from cover to cover. The panda issue, The Eight-Year-Old informed me over dinner last night, is their best issue yet.