The Book Search

 I'm playing catch up on blog posts because while we were away I was reading madly but we often had kind of sketchy internet connections AND there was more wine involved than usual (it was France, what can I say?).  Anyway, here are two new realistic fiction books you should definitely look for. The first one is by a favorite author, Gary D. Schmidt. He's written some of my perennial favorites-The Wednesday Wars, Orbiting Jupiter, Okay for Now...  there are lots more and he has such a gift with voice! His characters always ring so true and that's exactly how this new one is.  It's called The Labors of Hercules Beal and it's so great.  It's about Hercules, who at 12 is dealing with a big loss-his parents were killed in a car accident and his brother has come home to run the family business, a nursery on Cape Cod. When school starts, Hercules is given an assignment by his 6th grade social studies/language arts teacher, Lt. Colonel Hupfer.  The assignment is a Clas

 We've been traveling and in my opinion, long plane rides plus great books equal a really great trip.  These two brand new titles were great to have a long to keep the plane ride from getting boring!  The first one is called The International House of Dereliction.  It's written by Jacqueline Davies who wrote a series of books that started with The Lemonade Wars about a brother and sister who have a disagreement and decide to solve the problem by raising money through a lemonade stand.  It was a very popular series in my elementary school library, but this one goes in a really different direction.  This one is about Alice, who lives with her very loving parents.  Her mom is a professor and her dad is a building inspector and loves to fix things.  Their family history is long and well documented and Alice, who is home schooled, has strengths from both sides of the family.  They move often because they do such a good job fixing up the properties that the college gives them, that t