The Book Search

THESE were really fun!  I've been getting bogged down in some of the realistic fiction.  I've been reading some pretty sad books so THESE were a breath of fresh air. The first one is called "The Odds of Getting Even" by Sheila Turnage.  This one is the third one in a series and I'm a big fan.  The main character is Miss Moses LoBeau.  She's named Moses because as a baby, she was found floating a road sign in a river after a hurricane.  She was found by a man she calls the Colonel because he had amnesia and was wearing an Army shirt when he found her.  They live with Miss Lana and run a cafe in a small town in eastern NC.  Mo's best friend is Dale (named after Dale Earnhardt of NASCAR fame) and together they run the Desperado Detective agency.  In this third installment, Dale's dad has been accused of various crimes and is ready to stand trial, when he breaks out of jail.  The rest of the book is trying to figure out where he is and it'...

Here are some more of the books that have been nominated for the Sunshine State Young Reader award. "Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen" by Donna Gephart is about 12 year old Olivia who lives with her brother, Charlie, her mom and her mom's new boyfriend.  Olivia loves trivia and her little brother and her mom, but not so much on the boyfriend.  Her dad left them (and the whole story comes out about halfway into the book) and Olivia misses him a lot.  Olivia is also a big trivia buff and really wants to be on Jepoardy!  I found this book difficult to get into.  I came to like the characters more as I read and I'm glad I finished it but it didn't grab me immediately.  Here's a book trailer about it. Another one that is nominated for the Sunshine State Young Readers is Blast Off by Nate Ball.  It's part of a series of books called "An Alien in my Pocket".  It's an easy chapter book about a boy named Zack who wakes up and finds that a space ship...

I love reading chapter books from the book fair.  I've gotten to the point where I really don't want to buy books because I live in a fairly small house without tons of storage so I just don't have room for stacks and stacks of books.  The other part is, why do I want to pay $25 for a hardcover book that I might only read one time?  So I love that I can haul these books home and then tell the kids which ones are worth owning (in my opinion!). My favorite one from the book fair is called "The Fourteenth Goldfish" by Jennifer Holm. (I bought three copies for the media center and nagged several people into buying it too!) I already adore Jennifer Holm who writes with an amazing mix of humor and deep feelings.  I completely loved her chapter book called "Turtle in Paradise" about a girl who moves to Key West in the 1930s and her graphic novels that she writes with her brother Matt,  "Baby Mouse" and "Squish" are also wonderful.  Her lat...