I have loved Dr. Seuss books for as long as I can remember. When C.(13) was little, I began a collection of Dr. Seuss books for him. We would read them together night after night, giggling at the silliness, enthralled by the rhymes. As he got older, he passed them down to L.(5), who now enjoys the silliness and rhymes just as much.

One Dr. Seuss book that both of my kids really liked is And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. The main character has a rich imagination — something my boys can relate to! And the simple story combined with detailed and fun illustrations made this book one that was pulled from the shelf over and over.

I was recently given the opportunity to try out a new iPad app from Oceanhouse Media — an interactive version of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. If you’re curious, check out my review on 5 Minutes for Books.

And if you’re interested in possibly reviewing toddler and preschool apps for review on 5 Minutes for Books, click over to get more information from Managing Editor Jennifer Donovan at the bottom of my review!

Barbara H. hosts a weekly blog carnival called “The Week in Words,” which is, as she says on her blog, “where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week  inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us…”

It seems I’ve been fitting in lots of reading lately — and from a variety of books. Here are some things that jumped out at me this past week.

From J.I. Packer’s Knowing God, which our pastor has challenged us to read as a church during January, February, and March of this year:

Many of us [would never] naturally say that in the light of the knowledge of God which we have come to enjoy, past disappointments and present heartbreaks, as the world counts heartbreaks, don’t matter. For the plain fact is that to most of us they do matter. We live with them as our “crosses” (so we call them). Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them, which we frequently do. The attitude we show to the world is a sort of dried-up stoicism, miles removed from the “joy unspeakable and full of glory” which Peter took for granted that his readers were displaying (1 Pet. 1:8). “Poor souls,” our friends say of us, “how they’ve suffered.” And that is just what we feel about ourselves!

Oh this struck home with me. How I long for a deeper knowledge of God, so that the heartbreaks of this world do fade to nothing in light of the joy found in knowing Him, so that disappointments and bumps in the road don’t matter, because my perspective is more like His.

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I’m also reading The Next Story by Tim Challies (I’m going through it with my friend Jennifer). This past week, I read Chapter 4, where Tim talks about how very much we communicate in our culture. Between emailing, texting, and social networks, we face the very real potential for communication to be nearly constant. In light of all these words, Tim says:

The caution that marks our speech must also mark our texting, our e-mailing, our commenting, our blogging, and our tweeting. The fact that we communicate at all should cause us to stop and to consider every word. The fact that we communicate so often today and do so before so great an audience should cause us to tremble. As we communicate all day, we give ourselves unending opportunities to sin with our words.

Isn’t that the truth? “Unending opportunities to sin with our words.” It’s sobering, and makes me think I should probably be much slower to “speak” (whether it’s verbally or otherwise).

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What have you been reading this week? Did anything really stick with you?

Visit Barbara’s blog to see what words others are remembering.