The Book Search

Our kids started back to school this week.  The teachers started back the week before so it's been a pretty busy couple of weeks.  A lot of people don't really understand why teachers are so exhausted the first few weeks (months) of school so let me try to illuminate you. Imagine that you've just spent the last two months do whatever you like.  For many teachers, this involves another job (like working summer camp, tutoring, or painting houses).  Then you come back to your real job and for the last two months, people have been thinking about ways to make your job more efficient.  In the first week of school, they spend time explaining to you how to do that.  Then you have to completely unpack and re-arrange all of your work materials because in the two months you've been gone, they've come in and cleaned the floors (you may also have had to move your things from one room to another room, possibly on the other side of the campus).  There may also be n...

Today was my first day back to school.  I always forget how much stamina it takes to get through a day at school, so this afternoon, I was totally ready for a nap.  Thank goodness my friend, Pam called and teased me into going to the beach.  It was far more refreshing than a nap and I'll probably sleep a lot better! I've been reading a LOT this summer (and when I count how many books I've read, I'm really surprised!  72!  Holy cow!  Did I do anything else?).  I found a couple that I think will be awesome for the start of the year. For the littlest kids, I just read one called "F is for Feelings" by Goldie Millar.  It's an ABC book about a variety of feelings, both positive and negative.  What's really great about this one, is that the sentences are short and both name the feeling and give a situation or describe the feeling.  On top of that, there is beautiful artwork that shows not only the facial expression, but the body language a...

I've been trying to figure out how to get to advanced readers copies so I can read the latest and greatest books so I can then recommend them to my students.  Through a group I follow on Goodreads, an completely awesome book recommending site, I found Netgalley.  Netgalley provides advanced readers copies online (like through a Kindle) so you can read books ahead of time.  Some of them are REALLY badly formatted, but in the case of this last book I read, the formatting didn't distract from the complete awesomeness of the book! This one was called "Ava and Pip" by Carol Weston.  Ava and Pip are sisters and they are word nerds.  Their names and their parents names are palindromes, they like to play a homonym game, and Ava would like to be a writer.  Pip has some un-named issue that makes her smaller and shyer than Ava so Ava tries to help.  When a new girl decides to have a party the same time as Pip's thirteenth birthday party, Pip is very hurt. ...

I just finished reading a not very new book called "The Akhentaten Adventure" which is part of the Children of the Lamp series by P. J. Kerr.  I liked the story a lot, which is about twins, John and Phillipa who discover that they are genies, or djinn.  Djinn have a different kind of magical power (one that is depleting to their bodies, so they are instructed to use their powers carefully) and in this book, they spend a lot of time learning about their powers as well as the history of the djinn, both from a historical and a literature perspective.  It got me me thinking about magic as a genre of fiction and why it's so common. There have been a lot of books about magic in the last few years, most notably Harry Potter, but there have been others like Charlie Bone and Percy Jackson.  The overarching theme to me is most often good versus evil.  I mean it's really cool to be able to do magic and make things happen outside of the world of reality, but if there isn'...

So I've been on kind of kick lately, for no apparently reason, reading books set in England.  One of my friends recommended one of them to me saying it was kind of a pain to read because the author uses so many English slang words, "Why can't she just write in English?", which is pretty hilarious.  But if you want to feel like you're away, it is sort of like speaking another language and yet it isn't! The one I just finished is called "Cuckoo's Calling" by Robert Galbraith.  Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling who is a bit more famous for another series she wrote, also set in England, called Harry Potter.  Cuckoo's Calling could not be further from Harry Potter but I really liked it.  The main character is a private detective named Cormoran Strike.  He is an Afghan war veteran and is currently breaking up with his long time girlfriend.  He comes from a complicated family (rock star dad, groupie mom, many assorted half brothers...

Oh boy, do I love historical fiction.  I seem to have picked up several this week and all of them about the 1960s.  I read Countdown by Deborah Wiles two years ago and absolutely loved it.  If you haven't read it, it's a chapter book about a girl who is living near a military base in 1961.  Her dad is a military commander and the level of tension because of the political situation is extremely high.  Add to that a crazy uncle (post traumatic stress syndrome, most likely) who is digging bomb shelters, a big sister who is trying to find her way, and boys... it's a complicated story.  What I really like about it is the pictures, and there are a lot of them.  The pictures use graphic images and words from that time period to help you really feel what's going on.  I loved it!  Well, Deborah Wiles has a new book out called "Revolution" and it's also about the 1960s but this one is about the Civil Rights movement and specifically about a community i...

Of course it is a cliche to talk about the power of love, but it's sort of surprising how it comes up as a unifying theme in literature. I read a couple of books this week that made me think about how powerful love is. The first one was called "Iron Hearted Violet" by Kelly Barnhill.  It's about a princess named Violet who is not at all beautiful.  The storyteller describes how in all the stories, the princess is ALWAYS beautiful.  Since Violet is not beautiful (but IS the only daughter of the king and the queen) she starts to question if she REALLY is a princess.  Exciting and bad things happen and Violet figures out who she really wants to be, all based on the power of love.. the love of her father and mother, the love of her people she serves, the love of her friends.  It's a really great story.   It has some interesting artwork... it's almost anime, which I found a bit distracting.  It didn't seem to match the story to me... the story is sort ...