83) The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller – inspiring and thought-provoking
84) “The New World” by Patrick Ness – definitely whetted my appetite for the trilogy that this short single precedes
85) Rilla of Ingleside by LM Montgomery- I love Rilla almost as much as Anne
86) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling – just as good as the first time I read it
87) YH Scat by Carl Hiaasen – give me more!
88) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling – I liked it better this time around
89) Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Journey by Alfred Lansing – an amazing & compelling survival story
90) YH The Beef Princess of Practical County by Michelle Houts- warm, funny, touching story from Nowhere, IN–just in time for fair season.
91) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling – still my favorite
92) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling – I liked the book better this time around and the movie much less.
93) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling – Love the DA and the increasing importance of Neville and Luna
94) Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – I’m a sucker for wanting the background information and I soaked up the history of Voldemort. Even though I knew it was coming (and why) I’m still shocked at the end.
95) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – so many powerful scenes and lines. It’s hard to decide on a favorite. I am looking forward to the last movie tonight.
92) YH Runaway Twin by Peg Kehret – action & suspense combine in a story that explores what family is
93) YH Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 by Charles C Mann – Everything I learned in history class was wrong. History may not change, but our knowledge of it does.
94) YH Notes from the Dog by Gary Paulsen – This book was much more than I expected.
95) YH Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix – fast-paced mystery that sets up the rest of the series
96) Heist Society by Ally Carter – makes the life of theives sound glamorous
97) YH The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart – a good story in the tradition of Roald Dahl
98) YH The Girl Who Threw Butterflies by Mick Cochrane – a baseball story about overcoming loss
98) YH The Year of the Bomb by Ronald Kidd – combines physics, horror movies and the Cold War
99) YH When the Whistle Blows by Fran Cannon Slayton – interesting structure where each chapter is All Hallow’s Eve a year apart
100) YH The Brooklyn Nine: A Novel in Nine Innings by Alan Gratz – baseball fans will love how the history of baseball is woven through the generations of the Schneider family in Brooklyn, NY
101) YH The Compound by SA Bodeen – lots of twists and turns right up to the last page
102) Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter – just as good as the first one
103) Forever by Maggie Steifvater – I loved the ending to this trilogy and almost hate to say goodbye
A lot of my girls last year–and every year–eat up books by Sarah Dessen. I can understand why after reading several titles for myself. She has a knack for capturing the lives and hearts of teenage girls today. The Truth about Forever (Speak/Penguin Group 2004) does not disappoint. It may be my favorites of Dessen’s books I’ve read so far.
Macy has always been the good daughter, the one who could be counted on to stay quiet and succeed in school. This summer promises more of the same. While her brainiac boyfriend Jason is at camp, Macy is stuck working a boring job at the library. In fact, it’s Jason’s job, and his coworkers are less than welcoming. In her free time, she expects to study for SATs and quietly support her mother. What no one suspects is how deeply Macy still grieves her father’s death and how much she still blames herself.
Macy’s world threatens to split open once she gets corralled into helping Wish Catering at one of her mother’s gatherings. Macy is strangely drawn to the chaotic and loud group. Before she knows it, she has quit her job at the library (in a very dramatic fashion) and is rexamining her life. There might even be love–or heartbreak–before the summer is over.
I love the eccentric characters Dessen creates. Each one is unique and believable. Even more I love how this book makes me think and wonder along with Macy: Just what might happen if we dare to speak the truth outloud?
Baseball fans will enjoy reading about the Schneider family. For nine generations, their history has been wrapped up with that of baseball. It begins with Felix Schneider, a German immigrant who cheers on the New York Knickerbockers as they play three-0ut, all-out. A tragic accident while fighting fires with Alexander Cartwright (the father of modern baseball) puts an end to some of his dreams, but leads to more. From generation to generation, baseball ties this family together. Louis Schneider takes baseball with him to the battlefields of the Civil War. Arnold Schneider meets one of baseballs first stars, King Kelly as he hopes to gain acceptance from his peers. Walter Schneider/Snider meets Cyclone Joe Williams, the best pitcher of the day, as they both run head-on into prejudice. Frankie has a head for numbers that almost gets her into more trouble that she can handle when she cooks up a scheme with sports writer Joe Kieran. Kat Snider plays with the Grand Rapids Chicks of the All-American Girls Baseball League during World War II. Jimmy Flint has to duc k and cover from both bullies and threatened Soviet bombs, so it’s a good thing he’s the undisputed champion of flipping baseball cards. Michael Flint is desperate for advice from his Grandma Kat when a perfect summer day becomes the opportunity to pitch a perfect game midway through the Little League season. Snider Flint discovers the history contained in a box of baseball memorabilia as he searches for the provenance of Babe Herman’s bat–complete with address and postage stamps.
I’m not much of a baseball fan, but I enjoyed how Alan Gratz wove baseball history into nine interlocking stories in The Brooklyn Nine: A Novel in Nine Innings (Scholastic 2009). Each generation faces a new challenge, but love of baseball ties them all together. The book is divided into nine short sections, basically long short stories. Each story could be read and enjoyed alone. I liked tracing the links between each story as well. Baseball fans will enjoy this one, especially those who appreciate or want to learn more of the sport’s history. Gratz provides notes in the back about the historical figures who appear.
Growing up in the hills of West Virginia, all Jimmy Cannon wants is to work on the railroad just like his dad and older brothers. Dad, however, warns that change is coming. Soon the steam engines whose whistles pierce the air will be replaced with deisels. Once the deisels come, Rowlesburg will no longer be a railroad town. Jimmy can’t see it, and he just wants things to stay the way they’ve always been.
Fran Cannon Slayton creates an interesting structure for When the Whistle Blows (Scholastic 2009) Each chapter takes place on All Hallow’s Eve–or Halloween–a year apart, starting in 1943. The structure works quite well. Halloween is an important day in Jimmy’s life since it is also his father’s birthday. I enjoyed reading of Jimmy’s antics as he grew up. At first he is the younger brother, tagging along and trying to figure out what the grownups are up to. One of my favorite scenes was probably the night they planned to throw rotting cabbages at an older teen’s new car, but pelted the sheriff’s car instead. As Jimmy grows older, the events of Halloween reflect his changing interests, from prankster to football star.
Throught it all, Jimmy is fascinated by The Society, a secret organization he is not supposed to know about, much less spy on. I guessed wrong as well as to what it was all about. It is not until the final, tragic chapter that Jimmy–and the reader–learn its history and purpose.
Molly Williams doesn’t mean to shake things up when she goes out for the boys baseball team during eighth grade. She just misses baseball, that she played and watched with her dad before he died in a freak car accident. She may not be the biggest jock, but she does have a secret weapon: She can pitch a knuckleball. Will it be enough to impress her coaches and new teammates?
While not dealing with the guys on the baseball field. Molly is trying to negotiage the relationship with her mother, who has become irritable and withdrawn. Thank goodness her best friend Celia is ready with loyal support and witty remarks. Then there is the new relationship with artistic Lonnie, who becomes her catcher.
Mick Cochrane weaves a story of baseball, loss, and love in The Girl Who Threw Butterflies (A Yearling Book 2009). I learned lots of baseball lore. Did you know that knuckleball pitchers often wear the number 49 in honor of Hoyt Wilhelm, a great knuckleball pitcher who retired at age 49? Did you know knucklball pitchers often have their own personal catcher (with a specially designed mitt) because the pitch is hard to catch as well as hit? Did you know Jackie Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth in an exhibition game before the commissioner of baseball banned her from professional baseball because it was too strenuous for a woman? I didn’t know any of it, but I do now.
There is plenty of baseball play and lore for fans in this book, but there is much more, too. It is a heartwarming story that is at times humorous, touching, and surprising.
The Year of the Bomb (Simon and Schuster 2009) by Ronald Kidd combines horror movies, conspiracy theories, and quantum physics in this historical fiction novel set in Sierra Madra, California, during the spring of 1955.
Friends Paul, Oz, Arnie and Crank enjoy nothing more than scaring themselves silly at the Saturday movie matinee. They’ve seen them all–The Thing, The Day the Earth Stood Still, It Came from Outer Space, Invaders from Mars. They can’t believe their luck when they learn that the movies are coming to town. An entire film crew will invade their town to film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. While hanging around the movie set, the boys strike up a friendship with two extras, Laura and Darryl. But Laura and Darryl may not be who they claim, and soon the boys are involved in unraveling a Communist spy plot.
Now the fear is not just in the movies. It pervades real life through bomb drills at school and dark accusations of Communism. Are Paul, Oz, Arnie and Crank in over their heads? Who can they trust when anyone could be a spy?
I’m not a horror movie fan, but I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at movie making and history provided in this story. I also enjoyed the boys at the center of the story. Paul holds the group–and the story–together. The movies and his friends are his escape from the predictable, black-and-white-world at home. Oz provides movie-making knowledge from his sound director father. His family also shows the devastating consequences people faced when accused–fairly or not–of being Communist. Arnie would much rather face his fears on the screen rather than in real life. Crank is sometimes blinded by his need for the world to be neatly divided into good guys and bad guys.
The Year of the Bomb opens a window on a different time period that shares at least one characteristic with our own: the fear that pervades society, whether from terrorists or communists. The stories of both reflect that fear. So, what are your favorite scary stories?
Okay, I promised myself that I wouldn’t dedicate every Fun Friday to Harry Potter, but I seem to be having a hard time saying goodbye now that the books and movies are finished. Since these stories inspire so many great videos, I shouldn’t have to, right? This is a tribute to the best broom around, the Firebolt…and Katy Perry’s “Firework” by the BYU Divine Comedy group. Enjoy!
Margaret Peterson Haddix has created another page-turning mystery that stretches current science just beyond where we are now into the realm of believable science fiction. Found is the first book in The Missing series.
At first Jonah thinks the letters are a middle school prank. Inside an envelope with no return address is a single sheet of paper with this message: You are one of the missing. The second letter says, Beware! They are coming back to get you. Then his new neighbor Chip gets identical letters. The only conection linking the two boys is the fact both are adopted (a surprise to Chip, but not Jonah). With the help of Jonah’s younger sister Katherine, the clues and questions pile up until Jonah can no longer ignore them. Why is FBI agent James Reardon assigned to their case? Who is the “janitor boy” who appears and disappears? Just what did Angela DuPres see the night a train full of thirty-six babies pulled up to the Sky Train gate with no warning? The answers are surprising.
The only thing I didn’t like was the ending. It left too many questions unanswered. At least I have the next two books in the series waiting in my TBR pile.
In the tradition of Roald Dahl, and Lemony SnickettTrenton Lee Stewart has crafted an intriguing mystery where only exceptional children are smart enough to outwit the villain. I enjoyed matching my wits right along with these incredible children as they responded to a mysterious advertisement and completed a bizarre set of tests. Only four passed, but what a group of four children they are who found The Mysterious Benedict Society (Little, Brown and Company 2007).
Reynie Muldoon is an orphan who is always curious and questioning. He is by far the most exceptional student his tutor, Miss Perumal, has ever met. Kate Wetherall, who ran away from the orphanage to join the circus, can perform incredible physical feats and approaches any challenge with optimism and a unique perspective. George “Sticky” Washington instantly memorizes and remembers anything and everything he’s ever read, but he’s not sure he’s up to being brave. Finally, tiny Miss Constance Contraire is, well, quite contrary. No one is sure just what her contribution will be, but they wait and see.
The four join the mysterious Mr. Benedict, the energetic Number 2, hopeful Rhonda Kazembe, and the gloomy Mr. Milligan to defeat the evil Dr. Curtain. Will these four children be able to infiltrate L.I.V.E. (The Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened) on Nomansan Island and discover its true purpose before it’s too late?
It turns out almost everything I learned about early US History was wrong. Squanto–actually Tisquantum–was not just a friendly Indian who helped the Pilgrims plant corn and survive the winter. The “New World” was not a vast untamed wilderness, either. The civilizations that filled North and South America were much larger, far older, and more complex than historians realized.
Maybe history doesn’t change, but our understanding of it sure does. Charles C. Mann journeys through those places long ago and far away to reveal a clearer picture of what life may have been like in Before Columbus: The Americans of 1491 (Scholastic 2009). Historians and archaeologists hotly debate which version of history is accurate, and this book raises those interesting questions.
If more nonfiction was written in such an engaging manner as this is, I’d definitely become a fan. In fact, I’ve already read excerpts of 1491 (the grown up version) on Mann’s website and want more. This YA version is packed with pictures and photos as well as astounding facts and stories. Sidebars raise–and offer possible answers–to intriguing questions such as Too Many Mummies? or Why No Wheels?
Mann starts with one of the best-known stories our our country’s beginnings–the Pilgrims–and explains why the simple school version is not nearly enough. The real deal is much more interesting as well, whether Mann is exploring the history of the Pilgrims or the Maya or Inca or other ancient civilizations. This book goes well with one of last year’s Young Hoosier nominees: Who Was First: Discovering the Americas by Russell Freedman.
