Another year has come and passed, and 2017 is officially here!  New Year’s is an exciting time for everyone, and the month of January wreaks of bettering yourself and new beginnings.  Regardless of your age, it has become a tradition to set New Year’s resolutions, with good intentions of keeping them.  Have you sat down with your kids and helped them set a New Year’s resolution and a game plan to keep it?

We are huge supporters of children reading, the effects and positive results that books have on kids are endless.  And, it’s important now to instill in today’s youth that knowledge truly is power.  We would like to challenge you to make a New Year’s resolution with your little ones to read more books in 2017.  Whether it’s one book a day, a week, or even a month – get your children reading!

If you are having a tough time finding educational books that your kids are interested in, we highly recommend checking out National Geographic Kids.  The Nat Geo Kids book collection is massive, covers nearly every topic you could possibly think of, and makes learning fun!  My nephew is obsessed with National Ge
ographic Kids books, and I get just as excited about them as he does.

National Geographic Kids is constantly rolling out new releases, it’s almost impossible to keep up with them all.  Some of my recent favorites are ‘Tales From The Arabian Nights,’ ‘How Things Work:
Unplugged, Unraveled, and Revealed,’ and ‘Ultimate Ocean-Pedia.’

If you have a curious kid on your hands who loves tinkering around and could possibly be tomorrow’s greatest inventor, then ‘How Things Work: Unplugged, Unraveled, and Revealed’ is the perfect book for your family.  T. J. Resler does an amazing job explaining basically how things work for inquisitive minds.  Not only does the book dissect and delve inside of everything items like a microwave or pencil eraser, but it also includes biographies of real-life scientists and inventors, diagrams and colorful illustrations, plus some fun trivia games.

My nephew Jayden is absolutely obsessed with animals and nature, and like most kids, he is extra interested in marine life and what lives in the ocean.  There’s an entirely new world out there living under the sea that we don’t get to see in our everyday lives.  ‘Ultimate Ocean-Pedia’ does a beautiful job of introducing our kids to all things ocean related – from coral reefs, to rare fish, to plants that are actually living breathing creatures!  The photos in ‘Ultimate Ocean-Pedia’ are so bright and mesmerizing, I can’t get enough of them!  National Geographic also does an amazing job translating to little ones the importance of taking care of our environment, and how crucial the ocean’s ecosystem is.

‘Tales From The Arabian Nights’ is by far my favorite National Geographic Kids book to date, and the little ones in my family insist that we read it every night.  I’m all for educational books, but every once in a while we need a little bit of magical fiction in our lives.  Donna Jo Napoli manages to recreate the classic and majestic Arabian folk tales with a child appropriate twist.  Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves are just a few of the stories that she retells so beautifully.

In all honesty, I read National Geographic Kids: Tales From The Arabian Nights from cover to cover all by myself one day and was totally immersed in the beautiful stories and could not put it down.  It’s important to encourage our kids to read educational books, but a mixture of fiction is healthy and this book will surely spark your little one’s imaginations and have them dreaming of magical far away lands all night long.

It’s a new year, and that means it is a perfect time to begin incorporating more books in to your families’ days.  And, National Geographic Kids is the perfect place to start!  Head over to the National Geographic Kids website to check out the books I mentioned and many more!

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Disclosure: I am part of the National Geographic Kids Insider program. I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.