Free eBooks from Sylvan Dell Publishing in Honor of Read Across America Day Friday, March 2nd

Reading is one of the most important things that we teach our children. It's a skill that you will never stop doing, even in old age. You have to be able to read to even drive a car. You'd get lost without reading the street signs.

That's why Read Across America Day is so important to each and every one of our lives. My kids' school is even doing a book drive and they took in a bunch of their old books to their school. They also donated quite a few to our local food pantry for under-privileged children about 2 weeks ago.

In honor of Read Across America Day, Sylvan Dell Publishing is offering all 70 of it's children's picture book titles as free eBooks on Friday, March 2nd! Just head over to the Sylvan Dell website and choose your book! Please see the press release below for full details!

SYLVAN DELL PUBLISHING TO OFFER SEVENTY EBOOKS FREE IN HONOR OF READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY

 

Mount Pleasant, S.C. (Feb. 29, 2011)–Sylvan Dell Publishing will be participating in Read Across America Day by offering all of its award-winning eBooks FREE to read at www.sylvandellpublishing.com on March 2.  Participants will have access to Sylvan Dell’s full eBook Site License including eBooks with auto-flip, auto-read, and selectable English and Spanish text and audio. This is in addition to the free activities available every day including a “For Creative Minds” educational section, 40-70 pages of free teaching activities, three quizzes, and a related websites page for each title.

Sylvan Dell co-owner and editor Donna German states, “We are proud to offer children a simple way to participate in Read Across America Day.  By offering our full eBook Site License we also make it easy not only for children to read and explore our great books, but we make it easy for parents and teachers to use each book as stepping stone to learning with our “For Creative Minds” section and our free teaching activities.”

Sylvan Dell Publishing’s mission is to excite children’s imaginations with artistically spectacular science, math, and nature-themed stories.  Founded in November of 2004, Sylvan Dell has grown to include more than 75 authors and illustrators in the United States and Canada, and 70 titles—honored as finalists or winners of over 70 book awards.  Sylvan Dell’s Science and Math Through Literature Program integrates science, math, geography, character skills, and language learning through fun, cross-curricular activities. 

My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard Review.

This book took me awhile to read, but time is something owed to a great literary piece of art. You can't just sit and swallow something so serious, so raw and honest; you have to take the time to absorb what you are reading and as this book is the account of a man's life, you have to listen.

To compliment the book there is a list of music that the Archipelago Books had paired with it, classic rock and new wave that weaves in and out of his time as a troubled adolescent and the rock fantasies of his youth. I do recommend it, if for a quiet background sound while reading. I read the first have of the book without the music and then the rest with it and it made just enough difference in ambiance. That and a cup of coffee. The list can be downloaded from Spotify and has tunes such as:

• Space Oddity - David Bowie
• Love With Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
• Should I Stay or Should I Go - The Clash
• Mexican Radio - Wall of Voodoo
• Paranoid - Black Sabbath

Almost ten years have passed since Karl O. Knausgaard's father drank himself to death. He is now embarking on his third novel while haunted by self doubt. Knausgaard breaks his own life story down to its elementary particles, often recreating memories in real time, blending recollections of images and conversation with profound questions in a remarkable way. Knausgaard probes into his past, dissecting struggles - great and small - with great candor and vitality. Articulating universal dilemmas, this Proustian masterpiece opens a window into one of the most original minds writing today.

Some of the greatest novels ever written have been about the struggles between a son and his Father, about the troubles of growing into manhood - both in and out of the shadows of Fatherhood and then oneself being that Father; this one does justice to the theme. As Karl Knausgaard looks into his memories of his Father, counting footsteps and deciphering sounds of approach, reflecting during a time when he was the age as Karl had been; you are met with another time and landscape. He vividly takes you back into his memories, with his fears and adulation's as a young child that goes from wonder, to troubled, to hopeful, to lost, to afraid and once again reflecting. This is a 6 volume Autobiography, the beginning always begins well... at the beginning...

Throughout our childhood and teenage years we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know what is happening we are forty, fifty, sixty... Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning.

There is something odd about reading Autobiographies. It is as if you are standing outside of various windows, looking in and watching as someone grows, an observer to both the past and present. Unlike many autobiographies I have read, this is an entire epic of his life from book one to book six. He had sat down and wrote with profound skill, every great and small struggle of his entire life and this - My Struggle Book One - was just the beginning for me. It is not only a great literary read, but it also opens your mind to look back on your own life. Often I found myself looking into that window into my childhood when my Mother was the age I am now and sometimes seeing a different face than I often remembered, a face more human, more wane and worked than I remembered. Growing into adults we are capable of looking back without the veil of innocence and seeing these overly large characters of our life as smaller, more realistic versions of ourselves.

Karl Ove Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968 and made his debut with the novel Out of This World (Ute av verden). A Time for Everything (Archipelago Books), his second novel, was nominated for the Nordic Council Literary Prize. The first volume of My Struggle was winner of the Brage Award, the Book of the Year Prize in Morgenbladet, the P2 Listeners' Prize, and the Norwegian Critics' Prize, and was nominated for the Nordic Council Literary Prize.

If you decide to pick up this book, do not try and read the entire journey in one sitting. Step away, look backwards and forwards, listen to the music and reflect. It will grip you with an intensity that it's difficult to pull away from, but I found that it was worth taking the time to let things settle in my mind before moving on to another sentence, another paragraph, another chapter and now I am waiting to move onto Book Two.

To the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops. Sooner or later, one day or another, this thumping motion shuts down of its own accord, and the blood begins to flow towards the body’s lowest point, where it gathers in a small pool, visible from the outside as a dark, spongy spot on the slowly whitening skin, all the while the temperature sinking, the limbs stiffening and the bowels emptying. The changes of these first hours happen so slowly and are performed with such an inevitability that there is almost a touch of ritual about them, as if life capitulates according to set rules, a kind of gentleman’s agreement, which even death’s representatives observe, as they always wait until life has withdrawn before they start the invasion of this new landscape.

Connect: You can connect with Archipelago Books on their Facebook Page.

Purchase: You can purchase My Struggle Book One from Archipelago Books for $14.40.

Announcing the "About Time to Say I Do" Wedding Event

In celebration of my upcoming summertime wedding, I'll be sharing some great wedding finds with all of you in the "About Time to Say I Do" wedding event here at Outnumbered 3 to 1. I thought the name quite fitting, since we finally decided to take the leap after 14 years and 2 sons, so I suppose it really is about time!

To celebrate our life together, we are getting married right in our own backyard. The ceremony will take place in front of the lake while the dinner and reception will be in our backyard! We're doing everything ourselves from the food and drinks down to the decorations so I'll be sharing party supplies and great food/drink ideas as well as the more traditional wedding must have's!

Below you will find a list of our sponsors along with links to the review right underneath their company logo as the reviews are published. You can also follow my "Our Wedding Day Stuffs" board on Pinterest to see all of the great stuff that we're including in our special day!

If you are a company or PR with product(s) that would be perfect for an outdoor wedding, I would love to hear about it! Feel free to email me anytime: shimmermeblue23@yahoo.com.

We Recently Welcomed 3 New Writers to Our Team!

About a month or so ago, I announced that we were looking to add a writer or two to our team here at Outnumbered 3 to 1. We had quite a list of applicants to look through and had a hard time choosing just one! After careful consideration, Amanda, Jill, Becki, Christine, Corrie and I narrowed it down to 3 lovely ladies and asked them to join our team. Between the 3 of them, they will share DIY Trash to Treasure posts, Recipes, Crafts, a Diapers to Donuts series and reviews! We also have a baby reviewer again so be on the lookout for some baby stuff soon!

Each of the girls has written up a bio about themselves to give you a chance to get to know them a little better. I'd love for all of you to welcome them with open arms and hope you will tune in to their posts!

Meet Anne {Baby Reviews, Life with a Newborn}

Anne Younger is a wife, mother of 4 ranging in age from infant to 13 and blogger from Green Bay Wisconsin. You can find Anne blogging about her family and daily life, not to mention product reviews and giveaways at The Megalomaniac Mommy. In addition to her personal blog, Anne and her husband also run the recently launched Family Friendly Green Bay website.
Anne was a single mom from 1999 to her two oldest children Zman (13) and Drama Queen (11) until she met her future husband Alex (who also happens to be almost 7 years younger than Anne) in March of 2006, they were engaged 5 months later in August and were married the following October 2007. Together Alex & Anne have 2 children, Tatertot (4) and Baby Bean who joined the family in December 2011.
When Anne isn’t changing diapers, attending soccer or baseball games, driving the kids to and fro she enjoys crafting with the kids, reading, writing, tweeting, and socializing via the internet. In 2011 Anne completed a long term goal of being a college graduate and received her Associate Degree in Information Technology and Web Design.
The house is hardly ever clean, the dishes are rarely done, the laundry is always piled high but it’s guaranteed that everyone in the house is having fun living and loving life every day!

Meet Kristen {DIY Trash to Treasures, Crafts and Reviews}

I'm Kristen, 29, from Alexandria, Virginia.  I am a full-time Kindergarten teacher, wife to George (an architect and furniture maker) and mother to our beautiful almost 3 year old daughter, Simone.  I am constantly finding there are not enough hours in the day!  In whatever spare time I have, I enjoy taking ballet classes and reading for a few minutes to myself.  I really don't like cooking, so I am an avid crock-pot cook and I am constantly looking for the next easiest recipe to try.  I love to do arts and craft projects with Simone, but am not terribly artistic (just ask my students!).  I love letting her be creative and exploring new materials.  We are a pretty eco-friendly family and enjoy reusing materials to turn them into little treasures.

Meet Kelly {DIY Trash to Treasure, Recipes and Reviews}

Hello! My name is Kelly Hutchinson, I am 48 and I have lived in Knoxville, TN for almost 10 years with my husband, two children and 2 cats. My husband and I met while working at the same restaurant in Atlanta and have been married for 14 years. We have two great children; our daughter Caitlin is 13 and our son Henry is 10. We have two cool looking cats who are sisters. Hazel is black with a little white and her sister Meep is white with a little black. I also have a wonderful 24 year old daughter Chelsea, a graphic designer who lives in Atlanta. Chelsea was the first woman in our family to graduate from college and I became the second when I graduated from nursing school last May. My sweet son Henry has Asperger’s Syndrome which is a form of autism. When you have a child with special needs, over time you become an advocate for them and work towards educating others about the disorder.

Due to our disappointment in the education our son was receiving in public school, we decided to put my new career in nursing on hold in order to home school our son. My daughter the social butterfly thrives in public school so we decided to allow her to stay in public school. I love to find treasures in yard sales, flea markets and thrift stores and repurpose them. I also love to cook and am always scouring the web for new recipes to try out on my family! I love to read a good mystery, listening to 80’s music and sew clothing as well as home décor items. I love watching reality television shows like Top Chef, the Amazing Race and Survivor.