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Showing posts from December, 2021

New titles from CYBILS reading

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Reading for the first round of the CYBILS award is one of my favorite things to do.  Imagine, binging on your favorite kind of literature and I do mean binging.  We've read and evaluated over 100 middle grade chapter books since October.  Some days, I feel a bit overstuffed (I'm not going to lie, not all of them are wonderful) but there are some that are SO good...   My latest favorite is called the Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy by Anne Ursu.  Anne Ursu is a terrific author and I’ve loved some of her other books, like The Real Boy and The Lost Girl . She writes such interesting characters and this one is no exception.  It’s about Marya, who lives with her family in a different time and place.  It feels kind of like a fairy tale time where there are sorcerers that protect the villagers from evil.  Marya feels unvalued and put upon.  Her older brother, Lucas, has been been groomed from the time he was small to a sorcerer.  A sorcerer is a position of honor and power and on