Reading Magic

Reading Magic: how your child can learn to read before school - and other read aloud miracles by Australian children's author, Mem Fox, outlines the importance of reading to your children from a very young age and how this can help your child enjoy reading. The copy of the book that I read was published in 2005 and added two additional chapters to the first edition.

As the author discusses the advantages of reading aloud to children she provides lots of examples of how many parents doing this have found it successful. Mem Fox stresses that both parents should be involved with reading to children, not just Mum. She provides lots of practical advice on how to make reading an entertaining experience for all the family.

Young children often like listening to and 'reading' one book over and over again. Keeping a collection of children's favourite books in the house encourages most children to pick up their favourite book to 'read' or ask an adult to read to them. 

Introducing reading to children from an early age means that by the time they start school they are used to books and other printed material, they are familiar and confident with language and have begun to develop good general knowledge. 

Mem Fox also stresses the important of singing to children and teaching them rhymes as a means of helping them gain confidence in acquiring language skills. Rereading books is a major way that many children learn to read before going to school. Mem Fox also includes chapters on various teaching processes used to teach children to read.

Fire with Fire

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, at least that is what Ryan and Elsie Delaney believe as they take over the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Laboratory with the intention of regularly destroying police laboratory samples until their daughter, aged five when she disappeared two years earlier, is found. They have also taken three hostages.

Fire with fire by Australian author, Candice Fox, is set in Los Angeles. While the LAPD and the SWAT teams are in place, police officer Charlie Hoskins and recently fired police recruit, Lynette Lamb, set out to discover what happened to Tilly Delaney. 

For five years Hoskins was under-cover with a ruthless bikie gang. Police recently raided the gang making many arrests however the three leaders are still at large and are after Hoskins. Forensic evidence relating to the gang that Hoskins collected is stored at the laboratory under siege. Lamb is furious at having been fired on her first day in the police force and wants to prove that she is more than capable of being a good police officer. Hoskins and Lamb make up a strange but determined team.

This is an action packed novel from start to finish with complex characters that we learn more about as the story progresses. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I suspect that this is not the end of the investigations of Hoskins and Lamb.