23 Things to Do Before You are 11 1/2 and Other Great Book Titles

Quarto Children's Publishing USA is the place to look if you're shopping for children's books. Chock full of interesting and amazing titles, these hardcover selections are also gorgeous to look at and fun to read. We recently ordered a large selection of books from them, and I wanted to share them with you. One of the books, 23 Things to Do Before You are 11 1/2 (funny title, right?) instantly grabbed the attention of my 8yr. old, and we have been building and contemplating projects from that book every since. See the results of our first project below. 

This is the book. Besides loving the title, we also love the content. Inside there are all kinds of projects to do. Some are easy enough for the kids to do alone, others (like the Go Kart) require adult supervision.

We decided to attempt the Super Solar Oven, one of the easier but still very cool projects included in the book. The idea of this one was to show the kids how solar heat could be used to cook an egg.

We gathered our supplies, all supplies that we already had in the house, and went outside to get things going.

Here my son is gluing foil on the sides of the big box. You can see he's already cut and lined the smaller box with black construction paper (black absorbs the heat).

And here he is putting the final touches on it. He's crumbling up the newspaper to fit around the gaps between the big and the little box.

When the solar oven was ready, we cracked the egg, and covered it with the box top we made, complete with a plastic covering. Then we went to the park to play for an hour or so, while the egg was cooking.

When we came back, the sun had completely moved, leaving our eggie in the shade!! I was going to move the whole contraption over to get the hot sun on it again, but little man checked it...

by picking up the entire egg, lolol!!!  He ended up a gooey mess. And the egg did not get cooked. We could see, however, how the sun had started to cook it when it was still hot. We will be attempting this one again, earlier in the day when the sun isn't going to move so quickly. :)

That is just one of the many great books offered by Quarto Children's Publishing, USA (note, there are tons of adult sections too on the Quarto website). There are books for teaching, exploring, crafting and just flat out entertaining.

The selection on the Quarto website is extensive. There's sure to be something (or many somethings) to catch your eye.

My 8-year old was loving, How to Build a Car, a new release book that teaches not only mechanics, but also friendship and team work.

The illustrations are fun in this one too, and I think if this were 'The Outsiders' the mice would definitely be Greasers. ;)

He's also loving this big book, A Journey Through Space. This one includes a poster too, and it tells informative facts about each planet.

I wish I would have taken a picture of the funny little spacecraft that flies around on a lot of the pages. Every time my son saw it he would break out in peals of laughter. It's just a little boy in a spaceship, but my son thought it was hilarious that he kept turningshowing up as we were turning pages.

This is a good book for quizzing too. My son retained a lot from this book, and that makes me happy.

The World Famous Cheese Shop Break-In had a touch of humor as the mice kept trying to break into a cheese shop and ending up in other stores instead. The end was a surprise twist that gave us a good chuckle.

Daddypops was definitely a determined, if not successful cheese burgler. ;)

Spot the Reindeer at Christmas is a great winding-down book for the kids. It's a snuggle-time-on-the couch kind of book, as you huddle up together and try to find the reindeer on each of the pages.

This is a generously sized book too, so it would be amazing for gift giving.

We liked all of our books, and will absolutely be shopping Quarto Publishing in the future.

You can learn about these selections, and many of the other great books too over at Quarto Publishing, by visiting their website here. You can also follow them on Facebook and/or Twitter.