My daughter enjoys being transported to another place and another time through reading. Circle C Adventures sent us a softcover chapter book called Tales from the Circle C Ranch, by Susan K. Marlow, to jump start her summer reading, and she was immediately thrilled. She loves stories about girls around her own age and adores horses. She couldn’t wait to dive into the story! We also got an ebook copy of Andrea Carter’s Tales from the Circle C Ranch Learning Lapbook.
My daughter read Tales from the Circle C Ranch primarily right before bedtime. She is an avid reader, especially at night, and this one provided her with fun stories to help her wind down at the end of the day. At around 150 pages, it is just the right size for a tween or young teen.
The book is about Andrea Carter, a girl that lives on a ranch and has several siblings. There are horses, which my daughter loves to read about. She also liked that Andrea, who went by Andi, also knew how to speak in Spanish. My daughter often wishes she knew another language, so that part of the character’s story really appealed to her.
There are two main parts to the book, The Early Years and The In-Between Years. There are several chapters in each part, divided up into little stories about Andrea Carter’s life. Some are happy, some are sad, and some are full of surprises.
My daughter’s favorite was the very last story, “Adios, Jeffrey Sullivan”. Andi’s older sister, Melinda, becomes friends with a girl named Libby. My daughter liked this one, because Andi was the one that brought the two girls together as friends.
Another part of the book she liked was “Virginia’s Riding Lesson,” because Andi was trying to teach a girl from her school,Virginia, how to ride a horse. Everything was going really well, but they came across a lot of other horses and Virginia’s horse got nipped. That horse started going a different direction, leaving Virginia in a bit of a crazy situation! Without giving too much away about how it all happened, everyone ended up safe and happy.
Learning Lapbook
The lapbook that can be purchased to accompany this book is available pre-printed or as a PDF file. We received the digital copy. My daughter honestly breezed through the book so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to get the lapbook printed out for her to work on. We did review it together on-screen, though, because she found the content very interesting.
The way the lapbook is designed, there are pieces to the lapbook for each chapter in the book. There are also lapbook components that are more general, such as the elements of a story and some cute coloring pages to include.
This 39 page book includes instructions on how to create the lapbook. It also says how to put it together with each of the components.
It’s full of history about the time period. There are many full-color pages, as well as some black and white learning & lesson pages that teach more in depth about things in the book. For example, there was a lesson and lapbook piece about apothecary shops and some of the strange lotions and potions you might have found there.
We liked reading about the history of fireworks, too. Grace couldn’t believe that the practice dates all the way back to the 7th century in China!
We liked learning all of these little tidbits about topics introduced or mentioned in the book. There were even lapbook pieces about blizzards, the history of photography, and different types of saddles.
For More..
There are many other Andrea Carter books and lapbooks. If you want to see if you think your child would like this book, you can download and read the first story from Tales from the Circle C Ranch.
My daughter already has the rest of the books available on her Christmas wishlist so she can read more about this character and her family. She’s often told me she wants to live on a ranch with horses when she grows up, so she was swept away by the Circle C Ranch.
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Susan Marlow says
Thanks, Jenn, for your lovely review of Tales and for sharing the picture of your enthusiastic reader. 🙂 I’m so glad you and she enjoyed the book. 🙂
Have a great summer!
Susan