The Book Search

I'm finishing up a rotten cold (which gave me laryngitis so bad I missed 3 days of school!).  I feel well enough to read, YAY!  So I was digging around on my Kindle for something new and look what I found!  New middle grade fiction!  So here's what I was reading this weekend. The first one I actually read over the summer and somehow got shoved to the back of the pile of books on my iPad.  It's was really a fun read.  It's called Sidetracked by Diana Harmon Asher.  It's about Joseph, who lives with his mom and dad and his grandfather and struggles with ADHD.  It makes it difficult for him to focus on anything for any length of time, which people at school find very exasperating.  Joseph is small and skinny which he finds exasperating and keeps hoping to find something he's good at.  Two different things happen fairly close together.  One is, a new and very athletic girl shows up at school.  The second is that Joseph's special ...

I don't know how I fell down this rabbit hole, but I've been reading middle grade fiction and every one of them were mysteries that had some kind of code or puzzle.  A happy coincidence apparently, because they were all good. The first one is called "Winterhouse" by Ben Guterson.  It's about a girl named Elizabeth who comes home and finds that her guardians (her parents were killed when she was 4), her aunt and uncle have left to go on vacation.  They've left her a train ticket and $3 and directions how to get to where she's going while they are on vacation.  All of this seems a little suspicious to Elizabeth-her aunt and uncle haven't wanted to spend an extra penny in the entire time she's lived with them and now suddenly, they want to go on vacation and send her to a hotel?  She can only imagine what kind of a terrible place it's going to be.  But when she gets there, she's pleasantly surprised, no, stunned, to find that Winterhouse is ...

Here's what I found in some new non-fiction this week. The first one is a biography called "Martin Luther King: The Peaceful Warrior" by Ed Clayton.  It was originally published in 1964.  The story is well written and doesn't seem to be anachronistic.  It gives a nice overview of Dr. King's life and some of the people who influenced him.  The artwork is warm and interesting.  I was a little fuzzy on what had been updated, since I hadn't read the initial work but overall it was a nice biography of Dr. King.  I read this one as an e-book from Netgalley so it will be interesting to see this as an actual book-to see the placement of the artwork and and how that all fits together.  I liked the fact that the book is written by people who actually knew Dr. King and how they interpreted the events of his life.   The second one is also a biography.  It's about Andrew Carnegie.  It's called "The Man Who Loved Libraries" by Andrew Lars...

After having plunged into the dark heart of middle grade fantasy fiction for the past few months, I'm coming out on the other side, ready to read some new things!  I happened to get a hold of some realistic fiction for upper middle grade or YA, bigger than what I've been reading and what a treat.  Here are two I read this week. The first one is a graphic novel called "Illegal" by Eion Colfer and Andrew Donkin.  I find graphic novels are not usually my first choice.  I read really fast and I love creating my own mental images.  I find the graphic novels require me to slow down, read the text and interpret the pictures because they are usually a big part of the story.  This one was worth slowing down for.  It's about a boy named Ebo.  It's told in two different parts and it flashes between the two parts of the story.  The story begins with Ebo finding that his brother, Kwame, has left the family home (which is pretty short on family-their par...