Pledge to #GiveBooks this Holiday Season

Toys and candy may top most lists to Santa but a lifetime love of reading is truly a gift that will last forever. For the fifth year, Chronicle Books is asking shoppers to pledge to Give Books for the holidays and share their love of reading with family and friends.

Take the pledge by clicking the photo above or by using the hashtag #GiveBooks on your social platforms. For every pledge, Chronicle Books will donate a book to a child in need, up to 30,000 books this holiday season! Use the hashtag #GiveBooks as many times as you want— each use counts as a new book in the hands of a child, and a testimonial to the magic of reading.

This year, the Give Books campaign is giving holiday shoppers a new way to share the love of reading: every Chronicle website order will be matched with a donation to First Book. As an extra incentive, they are offering 35% off orders placed on chroniclebooks.com with code GIVEBOOKS.

Let’s give books this holiday—to our family, our friends, and those that need them most.

Winter Boredom Buster: How To Build A Hovercraft

Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz are the mad scientists behind EepyBird. You might have seen one of their viral videos, exploring the amazing things you can accomplish with household objects and a little ingenuity. Yes, they're the guys who brought the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment to households across the globe.

The Eepybird guys have come across a zillion cool science projects along their path to internet megastardom. Luckily for us, they have compiled an epic tome, How to Build a Hovercraft, which shares 25 of the very best experiments that you can try at home.


My kids get bored super quickly during the holidays, so it's nice to have something up my sleeve to keep them occupied. Especially something that will further their interest in science!



In accordance to the FTC Guidelines and the WOMMA Code of Ethics, I am disclosing that we received a copy of this book to facilitate this review. No compensation was provided. All opinions are, as usual, entirely my own. 

The Day After: We Are All Giraffes

From our friend at Chronicle Books: “Today, there are no Elephants. There are no Donkeys. We are all Giraffes!”

New York Times Bestselling illustrator Tom Lichtenheld (Duck Rabbit!, Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site) was inspired by last night’s election and the response to Hurricane Sandy to create this charming and inspirational image.

In his words, “Despite the storm, despite the money, despite the mud-slinging...this thing basically worked. So let's put the elephants and donkeys out to pasture and come up with a new mascot.” 

Whether you're sulking or gloating after last night's election results, try to shake off the old and start working together for a better future for America.