Happy Blog Birthday to me!

Charlotte's Library is now five years old. I have posted 1725 times; I wish I knew how many books I reviewed, but that would take too much counting. My most searched for book review is Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (although about a third of the searchers think she's a Mrs., which possibly says something about our society's expectations for women, or not)--3822 searches. Second is The Green Book, aka Shine, by Jill Paton Walsh, which makes me happy, because it is the most perfect book going to introduce young kids to science fiction (2267 pages).

The blogisphere (sp? it looks weird) sure has changed from where it was when my blog began--there are so many, many more YA bloggers; when I started, it was possible to visit them all in a day! But the core group of children's book bloggers that were there when I began is, for the most part, still going strong, and I feel very lucky to have strengthened my friendships with these lovely comrades in book love.

I'm pretty happy about where my blog at the moment--I'm reading and reviewing books I love, and the number of visitors keeps going up (which I care about, because I want all the effort I put into this to be useful to people--it makes me awfully happy, for instance, when I look at my stats and see that someone has found one of my list, and opened 15 or so of the reviews), and I get just the right number of review copies in the mail--not so many as to overwhelm, but enough to feel validated (thanks publishers!).

I had one of my most thrilling book blogging moments just last month, when Ursula Le Guin linked to my review of Lavinia on her webpage (UKL read my review!!! And thought it worthy of linkage!!!! Swoon!!!)

I just wish I had more time to write more reviews--I only review about a third of what I read, and that gets a bit stressful. I also wish I made fewer typos. But since I have never been able to schedule posts, and often hit publish at the last possible minute before the kids have to be gotten up and taken to school (like now- argh it is 6:55 and we have to leave in 20 minutes and no one else is up), it is kind of inevitable. Sorry.

Thank you all who visit here--and thank you, other bloggers, for making it fun!