Posts Tagged ‘book response’
Apolonia Flores (known to all as Lina) has problems as she starts middle school. Her English teacher father would rather read books than pay attention to her. In fact, she is driven to reorganizing her sock collection because they have no television in the house. Her best friend Vanessa is too distracted by her new boyfriend to act like a best friend should. Lina likes cute Luis, but can’t tell if he likes her, too. Meanwhile, she is failing English and can’t seem to pull together her science project on whooping cranes. Through it all she just wishes her mother could still be around to help her sort it all out. That can’t be because her mother died two years ago.
Each chapter starts with a dichos, or Spanish proverb that relates to Lina’s life at the moment. Also scattered throughout the novel are cascarones: festive, hollow eggshells, filled with confetti, that are cracked on people’s heads, scattering confetti all over the place and bringing good luck. Just like the cascarones, Lina’s story is filled with joy in spite of the sorrow that she has encountered.
Confetti Girl by Diana Lopez is a fun read that invites you to laugh and cry alongside Lina and her friends and family. The characters are both believable and memorable.
I just finished listening to Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It was not quite what I expected, but I enjoyed it. Looking at the cover and reading the blurb on the back, I expected a fast-paced survival story about a shipwrecked boy stranded on a life boat with a tiger. It is a story of survival, and Pi Patel does survive for 227 days at sea with the company of a Bengal tiger, but Pi is a reflective narrator who will not be rushed in telling his story. Interspersed with the story of his life, Pi shares his knowledge of his two great passions: zoology and religion. It is his thoughtfulness, though, that enabled his survival at sea.
As the summer started, the buzz began to build about this book. I encountered comments in my email and on the blogs I read: Justin Cronin’s The Passage was going to be the book that brought vampires into real literature, and for adults, no less. Even my brother-in-law was reading it on vacation. Finally, the library came through and let me know it was my turn to read it.
I was not disappointed. Cronin weaves a complex, multi-layered story of hope and survival. It starts with Special Agent Wolgast, who as been asked to pick up and deliver certain death row inmates to a secure facility for top secret military experiment. It seems that humans can be infected with a virus that turns them into vampires. The military wants to refine this virus to allow the infected humans to repair their injuries, but not be driven by the thirst for blood. Wolgast is finally pushed too far when he picks up the last subject for the experiment, a six-year-old girl named Amy.
Everything goes horribly wrong when the vampires break free of their cells and escape across the country. They kill and infect the population, and nothing can stop them. Society crumbles under the onslaught. The story jumps foward a hundred years to survivors left inside a lit, walled compound. Unfortunately, the batteries are slowly dying, and the lights that protect the residents of the compound will go out. Where will you be when those lights go out?
This was an unexpected read that showed up in my mailbox. Evidently I clicked the wrong button on the Featured Selections for the book club and bought a book bu Kim Vogel Sawyer. Oh well, I might as well read it, right? I wasn’t disappointed. It was a little predictable. (I knew from reading the front flap who would fall in love with whom.) But I enjoyed the journey and got to taste what life on the Kansas prairie might have been like for those early ranchers.
A Hopeful Heart is a historical fiction/romance/Christian fiction novel. (How many genres can I label a book with?) Tressa Neill, a cannot hope to find a husband or fit into the upper class society of her aunt and uncle without parents or a dowry. So she comes to Kansas to the very first class of the Wyatt Herdsman School. Aunt Hattie promises to teach the girls everything they need to know to be a good rancher’s wife and then supervise their courtin’. Tressa doesn’t think she will ever fit in with the other girls or with any of the single ranchers until she glimpses Abel Samms. But Abel was spurned by an Eastern girl and won’t have anything to do with Aunt Hattie’s girls. All he is concerned with is keeping the ranch he inherited from his father. What will happen when trouble crosses their paths?
Paper Towns by John Green gave me lots to think about. I like it when a book does that.
Quentin Jacobsen, known as Q to his friends, loves the magnificent Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar even though they have been neighbors since preschool. Margo is everything Quentin is not–beautiful, popular, adventurous. A month before graduation, Margo invites Quentin to join her on a night of mayhem, seeking revenge on those who have slighted Margo. He reluctantly joins her. The next morning, Margo disappears, leaving a trail of clues for Quentin to follow. Margo’s clues range from Woodie Guthrie to Walt Whitman. As Quentin follows the clues, he must come to terms with who he is and how he has chosen to see her for all these years. He ends up skipping graduation to go on the ultimate road trip with his best friends Ben and Radar and Margo’s best friend Lacey.
This is a smart, funny book that will keep you thinking long after you turn the last page. Life might not turn the way you always pictured it, but I like how Quentin says: “‘But then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.’ Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else…But imagining being some one else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills facists.”
If you like this book, I would try Wish You Were Here by Barbara Shoup. Now, I need to dig out my copy of Walt Whitman and read “Leaves of Grass” again.
I know many of you enjoyed the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. So did I. Now it’s time for Percy, Anabeth and Glover to step aside and make room for Carter and Sadie in The Red Pyramid. It turns out that the Greek gods are not the only ancient gods trying to survive the modern world.
Carter and Sadie have been kept seperated since their mother’s death six years ago. Carter has traveled the world with his archeaologist father (specializing in ancient Egypt) while Sadie lived with their grandparents in London. After a terrible accident on Christmas day releases the Egyptian gods from their banishment in the Duat (and imprisons their father), Carter and Sadie discover that they are from a long line of Egyptian magicians and the only ones who can make things right. It won’t be easy. The god Set (who brings chaos) is hunting them down with vicious monsters. On the other side, the magicians of the House of Life are also hunting them down to kill them because they believe Carter and Sadie to be powerful and dangerous. Will they succeed, or will chaos overtake the world?
I like how Riordan explores chaos as the opposite of good. Carter and Sadie must also learn to see the good hidden within even the most unlikable characters. Both of these ideas remind me of themes raised in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet, especially A Wind in the Door. What can stop the seemingly random acts of violence that plague our world?
After reading The Red Pyramid, I definitely want to learn more about Egyptian mythology. Somehow I missed out on it during my childhood explorations of mythology. Any good recommendations to get me started?
If you have already devoured everything Riordan has written, check out his recommendations based on his favorites and those of his sons here.
It’s not really YA, but I’ve been hearing so much about this series this summer that I picked it up. I’m glad I did. Even though I accidentally started with the second book The Girl Who Played with Fire, I love this detective series. If you think CSI, NCIS, and Criminal Minds have odd but brilliant characters, you will fall for Lisabeth Salander. Lisabeth, nicknamed The Wasp, is a social recluse (that means she doesn’t like people) and a brilliant computer hacker. She has been out of the country for over a year with no contact with her previous acquaintances. Soon after her return, she is accused of a triple murder. The police and media portray her as a violent sociopath and begin a hunt for her all across Sweden. The police are convinced of her guilt since her fingerprints are found on the murder weapon.
Several people who know her, though, are convinced of her innocence. One of these is journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who worked with Salandar on the previous book (getting it the next trip to the library). Will he discover the real killer before the police bring down Salandar (because Salandar will not give herself up willingly)? Also on Salandar’s side are her former employer, her former guardian, and a pro boxer she used to spar with.
I finally got around to listening to this one while mowing the lawn this weekend. I wasn’t sure how I’d like it since I already knew how it ended: Bree dies. For those of you who aren’t Twilight fanatics, let me enlighten you. Bree is the vampire who plays a minor role in Eclipse. She was one of the newborn army created by Victoria to kill Bella. Bree surrenders to Carlyle, but is destroyed by the Volturi when they show up. My question: how would Meyer create suspense when readers knew how it ended?
The tension comes as Bree and her new friend Diego slowly figure out the they are not being told the truth by Riley, their leader. (You do remember Riley–Victoria’s second in command?) They investigate further to learn if Riley is as clueless as they are or if he is holding out on them. Unfortunately, truth dawns too late to save Bree from forces that are bigger than she is. It’s too bad, I was starting to like her. You can buy it at you local bookstore or read it for free at this website.
I first met Gregory Maguire when one of my students lent me her copy of Wicked. I was hooked and have been devouring the rest of his books as soon as I can get my hands on them. I took What the Dickens with me on vacation, and it did not disappoint.
Dinah, her big brother Zeke and baby sister Rebeccah Ruth are trapped at home during one of the worst and darkest storms to ever hit their area. Their parents have disappeared into the storm, leaving them in the care of cousin Gage. Gage means well but as a brand new English teacher he is ill-equipped to handle the emergencies of the storm. As they huddle around the last candle for warmth and comfort, Gage begins the tell them a tale to take their minds off the raging storm and their growling bellies.
Gage has met the skibbereen, warring colonies of toothfairies who live hidden out of sight. Gage weaves a tale of two of these skibbereen who become unlikely allies. As the storm rages on, Zeke listens and becomes interested in spite of himself. Rebecca Ruth sleeps through most of it when she isn’t crying. Dinah, though, is caught up in the story and must decide for herself whether or not to believe.
Maguire skillfully blends the realism of the storm with the fantasy of the fairies. Like Dinah, I wanted to find out what happened to What the Dickens and his new found friend, Pepper.
Just who killed Humpty Dumpty while he sat on his wall? Detective Inspector Jack Spratt is determined to find out with the help of his new sergeant, Mary Mary and the rest of his faithful sidekicks in the Nursery Crimes Division at Reading Central. The case is threatened with inteference by Friedland Chymes, darling of the Guild of Detectives. (Why let facts get in the way of a good detective story for Amazing Crimes?) Spratt must solve the case (by Saturday, no less) or face disbandment of the Nursery Crime Division and early retirement while living down the embarrassment of the jury letting the three pigs off scott free on murder charges. Oh yeah, don’t forget the Jellyman is coming to town to dedicate the new visitor’s center for the Sacred Gonga while Spratt and his team provide superfulous security for the Sacred Gonga. Meanwhile, Spratt faces challenges at home: his daughter is spending a lot of time with the new boarder, Prometheus; his mother is furious at Jack’s trade of a Stubb’s cow for some magic beans–now a giant beanstalk is growing in her backyard.
Jasper Fforde’s detective story is a hilarious romp through the seedier side of children’s literature. Nothing is as it seems and surprises await at the turn of every page. Even so, patterns do seem to emerge in the Reading landscape that encompasses nursery crime. Just like Jack Spratt and Mary Mary, I think I’ve found where I belong. The Big Over Easy is the first installment of the Nursery Crimes series, and I look forward to the rest. You will, too, if you enjoy humor in the greatest British tradition a.k.a. the Marx Brothers, Monty Python and Douglas Adams.