Continuing on with my short reviews of the books I read in 2021! These are all still from January. I got a lot read in January both last year and this year, and I’ve found that helps me stick with a reading goal — getting ahead early so I don’t fall behind!

A friend found this book and gave it to me awhile back because she thought it looked funny and because I’ve been pregnant so much it made her think of me, of course! So I decided to read it while pregnant with Lily.

It was fine. It gave me some good refreshers on some pregnancy topics, and I appreciated the laid-back tone. Pregnancy is natural and not something to stress about! But I just didn’t find it especially helpful. Partly because there was really no new information for me, and partly because it was so mainstream in its bent — assuming that everyone is going to be laboring in a hospital and things like that. But it was still a fun read.

I’ve read this book several times, but it’s been many years. I remember loving it when I was younger, especially the characters. Since my family had the audiobook for my brother’s school, I decided to revisit it.

I loved the characters as much as I remember. They are so charming and the relationships are so delightful to read about. The anthropomorphization is so well-done — with each animal behaving just as you would think it might if it could speak and think like we do. It is also, however, very odd. I was mystified, as always, by how a small animal like a toad is able to drive a car and interact with human beings who mistake him for a human. Are these giant animals or tiny humans? And what about when the animals ride horses? I have so many questions.

There’s also a very bizarre chapter that is clearly religious in nature but doesn’t really fit with Christianity and doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the story. I’m not sure what to make of that part — but in general, it’s a lovely read. I’ll look forward to sharing this one with my girls.

I read this because it was next on the shelf and I wasn’t sure what else to read. It was my husband’s from before we got married, and he thought it had to do with Dekker’s Circle series, but hadn’t read it yet so he wasn’t really sure.

It was — okay, I guess. It kept me reading. And I guess it sort of had to do with the Circle series, in the way that Dekker makes all his books somehow vaguely part of the same universe somehow. But it was strange. A lot of things struck me as anachronistic — the way people talked didn’t fit in with the time period. The analogy at the end was decent, but didn’t really feel natural. All the vampire stuff was just a bit much for me, and the whole thing felt kind of sloppy overall.

Ultimately, when we were moving and I was getting rid of a few books, I asked my husband if he planned to ever read it, and after my description he said no, so I gave it to Goodwill.

Again, what can I say? It’s good. It’s enjoyable to read and makes me appreciate all the conveniences and luxuries of modern living, as well as all the hard work put in by those who came before us to build what we have today.

One thing that struck me reading it as a mother was that there is still a lot of contrast between the Ingalls and other families. I think we tend to think of families and family relationships back then as idealized, but many times Mary and Laura come upon behavior from other children that shocks them and they think about how they would be ashamed to act that way. Then as now, not every family had the same values and same principles!

As I mentioned before, reading these as a mother definitely puts a different emphasis on it, and the main difference reading this one now as opposed to before I had kids is that it’s quite horrifying to think about my own daughters wandering around the prairie and encountering leeches, crabs, wild animals, and goodness knows what else!

Very enjoyable, and a great continuation of the series. As I mentioned in the last post, Laura does a great job of adapting the tone of the stories to match her maturity as they move forward.

I’ll be back sometime soon with five more reviews!