The Book Search

 I've been trying desperately to get caught up on some of my reading.  It sounds ridiculous to feel pressured to read but there it is.  I've been having trouble sleeping so it's a good time to dig around in Netgalley and see what is on the to-do list!  Here are two amazing ones! The first one is called Those Kids of Fawn Creek by Erin Entrada Kelly.  Erin has written some AWESOME books-I'm not the only one who thinks so, her book "Hello Universe" won a Newbery award and before that "Blackbird Fly" won a CYBILS award.  I think this new one is going to be a big hit too.   It's about a small community in Louisiana where people don't come and go very often.  The kids there have known each other their entire lives and will likely be friends forever.  That constancy can be a comfort but it can also be difficult if you are a kid who doesn't feel like he or she belongs.  Greyson is one of the main characters.  He is relentlessly bullied by ...

I'm a big fan of Linda Sue Park, so when I saw she had a new book, I couldn't wait to read it!  You might have read some of her other middle grade fiction, like "Long Walk to Water" or the Newbery award winning "The Single Shard".  Her latest one is called "Prairie Lotus" and it's a terrific combination of historical fiction and modern activism.  Hanna is 14 and she and her dad are traveling to an expansion town in South Dakota in hopes of settling there.  They are leaving California, where although the family had a successful business there, it cost them Hanna's mother.  Hanna's mom was injured during a riot and massacre of Chinese people and never fully recovered.  Hanna and her dad are trying to build a new life.  Hanna is hoping to go to school to get a diploma, something her mother wanted badly for her.  Hanna is also a talented dressmaker and she would like to pursue that as a career.  The new town has an ally-a friend of her dad...

One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is the characters in the books I'm choosing for my school library.  I'm still surprised by how few books there are where the main character is a person of color.  This is certainly changing, but one place it seems like it's going slower than in other characters is in the fantasy realm.  There still are very few options for multicultural heroes in fantasy books, so I was really happy to read these two books, which both have non-white main characters. The first one is called "Jinxed" by Amy McCullough.  It's about Lacey Chu, who lives in a time where everyone has a baku instead of a phone.  A baku is a companion robot that looks and behaves like an animal but it also has communication and computer capabilities.  So instead of making a call or a text or an internet search, you ask your baku.  The baku have different levels, the entry level ones are inexpensive and has fewer features.  The high...

I've been reading a lot of picture books lately so it felt good to read some books that are definitely meant for bigger kids from Netgalley.  Bigger themes, bigger ideas, I do love picture books, but it's good to read lots of different things, right? The first one is a dystopian future novel called "The List" by Patricia Forde.  It has a completely horrifying premise-in the future, a group of people survive an apocalyptic event and the leader decides the big thing that needs to change is language.  People use words carelessly or ineffectively and so the words must be eliminated.  The wordsmith, Benjamin has an apprentice, a girl named Letta who helps him craft the lists of words that people ARE allowed to use.  But one day Benjamin goes out on a word finding mission and doesn't come back.  Letta is frightened by his disappearance, but more alarmed by a handsome young man who turns up on her doorstep.  The young man is clearly fleeing from the local m...

I really love reading dystopian future books. I loved the Hunger Games and Divergent, which were both made into movies. But I find that I don't really like the movies as much as I like the books. The pictures in my head are scary enough... I don't need ones on a big screen to scare me more! I just finished one that I had never heard of, but was available for the Kindle from my local public library (always a good thing, free books). It was called SYLO by D. J. MacHale. It's the story of a boy named Tucker who lives on an island off the coast of Maine. He and his parents moved there 5 years ago from the mainland because his dad was downsized from a corporate job. Tucker believes that you shouldn't really work too hard because in his experience, hard word doesn't really pay off. He also feels like he doesn't really fit in because most of the families on the island have been there for generations and he moved there only 5 years ago. A series of really stra...