Diary of a Real Payne Book 1: True Story Review, Barbour Publishing -TOS Crew #hsreviews

We are a house of readers and love to read!  If you go through my blog you’ll see most of the reviews are for homeschool materials or books.  Well, this review is both!  We, with the Crew Review Team, were sent a book from Barbour Publishing to review.  This book was Diary of a Real Payne book 1: True Story by Annie Tipton.

This book is hilarious!  It’s a great chapter book geared towards independent readers ages 8-12.  Now, my oldest 2 are both 8 but they’re not really strong readers and I have several under that age that like to read also so we made this into a read aloud where my two 2nd graders and I took turns reading it to the younger kids.  Understandably, the kids liked it better when mommy read, but they listened when the older siblings read too.  It is my opinion that as a read aloud it can entertain all ages, but comprehension is lost at anyone under age 5.

This book is a steal really.  It  is available currently for $4.49 regularly $5.99.  The book is 192 pages long.  It has a larger print though we would classify it as medium around here.  My learners of course prefer the larger print but medium works well for my medium readers!

In March of 2014 they will be releasing book 2.  My kids are already wondering what happens to EJ Payne and what more she will have to share in her diary!  The next installation will be entitled Church Camp Chaos.  My kids have never been to church camp and are very curious about this one.

The book is definitely written in the voice of a child and it appeals to my children because of this.  They love the illustrations(and wish there were more of course) especially the pages that have lines and look like they came straight out of the diary pages.  Just as a little teaser, my kids are already asking if we can have some fun things for our Christmas dinner this year like ham loaf.  They have no idea what that is but because they read about it in the book they are ready to give it a try!  I think we’ll have it some night for supper and reserve Christmas for Christmas.  I had to explain to them that we already do a non traditional meal at Christmas so they are already like EJ in that sense(we do a Mexican themed dinner with my family).  They loved the idea that they were like the girl in the book and immediately set about to think of more ways that they could say they were like her.

We had a laugh about her calling the town she lives in small as well.  It is over 1000 people bigger than both of the towns we’ve lived near in their lives.  We’re small town people and my kids compared her population sign to the one we drive by and said she’s from a “big city” well at least until we actually went to “the city” and then they said she lives in a “middle city”!  I love the way their minds think at times.  It’s so fun and definitely not like the adult mind.

Now there are so many other parts from the book that we loved and the kids say I need to tell you, but that would ruin the book for you.  You really need to just get a copy and read it for yourself.  Maybe then you’ll figure out what part in the Christmas pageant EJ gets and why it isn’t her dream role and so much more!  Enjoy the book.  We did!

Make sure to hop on over to the Crew Review Main Blog post and see what everyone else has to say about this great book.  I love how we all can read the same thing and offer up so many different opinions of how well it works for us and our family.