The Book Search

 Summer vacation is awesome!  We're back from our travels (western Canada and western NC) where we got a big dose of mountains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, family, and fun.  I love traveling but it's great to be home too!  Here are a couple of books I've gotten to read over the last few weeks. The first one is a Rick Riordan book, in the same vein as the Lightning Thief-but this one is based on Ghanian folklore and it was terrific.  It's called Serwa Boateng's Guide to Vampire Hunting by Roseanne A. Brown.  It's about Serwa who has been training to be a vampire fighter since she was tiny.  She's been homeschooled so that she can train intensely and her parents are two of the biggest, baddest vampire hunters ever.  So it's kind of a surprise when a obayifo (a witch) attacks her parents and destroys her family home seeking a magic drum.  Serwa's parents decide the best course of action is to send Serwa away to keep her safe.  Serwa is not o...

 It's so lovely to have time to read.  I talked to a lovely woman today at the doctor's office who was telling me she loved to read to and there are so many good ones to recommend!  Here are some of my newest favorites! The first one is called The Verdigris Pawn by Alysa Wishingrad.   It's Wishingrad's debut novel, so I hope there are more to come!  It's a fairy tale (squee!!!) about Beau, who is the son of the ruler, called Himself.  Beau's mom died when he was very young and his dad has set him up with a series of tutors.  Himself sets some very high standards for academic performance and behavior that Beau finds hard to meet.  Beau has been playing a strategy game called Fist that involves trying to unseat the king.  Himself seems to be worried that Beau (or maybe someone else) is trying to unseat him through magic and charms.  The Fist set belonged to his mother, so Beau feels connected to it in surprising ways.  When Himself tu...

I am not usually attracted to science fiction.  I blame a steady diet of fairy tales and magically related books in my youth, but one really great thing about CYBILS is that it sends you places you didn't even know you wanted to go, reading books you didn't even know you should look for.  So here are two of my new favorites (go ahead, call me fickle). The first one is called Cog and it's written by Greg Van Eekhout.  It's about COG, which is short for cognitive development.  Cog is a robot with artificial intelligence, so he's meant to learn things and he looks exactly like a 12 year old boy.  He lives with his inventor, Gina and she's trying to teach him lots of things, like shopping and smiling.  Gina tells him that he learns from his mistakes.  So one day Cog decides to make a mistake to learn something new.  He goes outside by himself.  He sees a dog in the street and car coming straight for the dog.  He calculates the speed at whi...