Babyberry Pie review

Babyberry Pie

by Heather Vogel Frederick, illustrated by Amy Schwartz

Harcourt

October 2010

This is a sweet and very tender story about a baby and his loving parents who are readying him for bed. This book doesn't have the same wry sense of humor as Pete's a Pizza by William Steig but the premise is very similar. After a busy day of play, when the moon comes out, "it's time to bring the baby in for babyberry pie!" Baby receives a thorough bath, and then scampers out of his parents' reach, accidentally plopping a cooling pie on the windowsill on his head.  There he sits, Jack Horner-like, with triumphantly purple-stained cheeks and fingers.  This warrants a second bath, followed by a powdering of "sugar" (actually, baby powder) until he is tucked in to his "pie crust," otherwise known as a crib with blankets.

I enjoyed the gentle, rhyming text and well as the gouache and ink illustrations which alternated between colorful full-bleed double-spread pictures of the little suburban blue house with the dark night sky, and clean single-page images of the round-headed, chubby cheerful baby. The lilac endpapers feature a repeating motif of berries. The family's yard appears enormous and the very round-faced moon with a funny little slip of a body dances along, watching the proceedings with interest, until she too falls asleep, snugged into a cloud outside baby's window.   The mild pace and familiar family surroundings make this book a pleasant bedtime read.  Highly recommended.

I borrowed this book from the library.

Knitting and blogs...

Veteran blogger Liz Burns once famously said about blogging, "When people say, 'Where do you find the time?' my half-serious, half-joking answer is, 'I don't knit' - meaning I don't have a hobby like knitting or scrapbooking; instead, I blog."

Balderdash, I say! Like peanut butter and chocolate, knitting and book blogging are two great tastes that go great together.

Here's my round-up of crafty book bloggers:

The Head Cardigan at Cardigan Nation alternates posts between book reviews, news items of interest to YA librarians and deliciously cozy and stylish cardigan recommendations. What could be better?

Alea at Pop-Culture Junkie alternates posts between cover critiques and her astounding array of knitting projects. Don't miss her "Weekly Dose of Crafts" entries, sure to provoke envy and admiration of her knitting skills.

Do check out Knitting Letters: A to Z, chronicling a woman's quest to knit the entire alphabet. It's not updated very often, but when you see how much work goes into a single post, you'll see why. The gorgeous photos of works in progress alone make it worthwhile. However, each entry delves off into language, geography and history, and has a meticulously footnoted bibliography, making it all the more impressive. She's already made it all the way to the letter U.  Check ou her blog, and soon you'll be cheering for her, just like I am, "Keep it up! Only 5 more letters to go!"

Sad to say, this last one looks like a dead blog, as it hasn't been updated in ages, but it is swoonworthy, all the same. It's called Children's Lit 'n Knit, and it's put together by Shelly. Just as one might expect, each entry pairs a children's picture book classic with some knitting or crocheting projects. Cute knitted giraffes to go with A Giraffe and a Half by Shel Silverstein. Swoon! Adorable little crocheted dolls based on Ladybug Girl by Jackie Davis and David Soman. Swoon, swoon! A sweet, fluffy, felted white terrier based on Good Boy, Fergus by David Shannon. Landsakes, I could nearly die from the wonder of it all. Please, Shelly, come back! Myself (and most of the kidlit blogging world, I suspect) are hungry for more of these marvelous knitting and book match-ups.

Have I missed any knitting/book blogs? Let me know in the comments.

photocredit: knit cover book http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/2442509396/

Read in January

This month I read the following books:

1 Sisters Red - Jackson Pearce
2 Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace - Gordon MacKenzie
3 The Cardturner - Louis Sachar
4 Jane - April Lindner
5 Penny Dreadful - Laurel Snyder
6 Insatiable - Meg Cabot
7 Ghostopolis - Doug TenNapel
8 Dead in the Family - Charlaine Harris
9 Sister Wife - Shelley Hrdlitschka
10 The Strange Case of Origami Yoda - Tom Angleberger
11 The Vespertine - Saundra Mitchell
12 Avalon High - Meg Cabot
13 Inside Out - Maria V. Snyder
14 The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling - Maryrose Wood
15 Lucky - Rachel Vail
16 The Boy from Ilysies - Pearl North
17 Paranormalcy - Kiersten White
18 Doctor Horrible and Other Horrible Stories - Zack Whedon
19 Last Sacrifice - Richelle Mead
20 Fantasy: An Artist's Realm - Ben Boos
21 The Star Maker - Laurence Yep
22 Burned - Ellen Hopkins
23 Hourglass - Claudia Gray
24 Dirty Little Secrets - C.J. Omololu 


Picture credit: The New Novel by Winslow Homer

Everything I Was review

Everything I Was
by Corinne Demas
Carolrhoda Books
April 2011


Irene is thrown for a loop when her father loses his high-paying job and, unable to keep up with their fast-paced Manhattan lifestyle, her family is forced to sell their penthouse and move up north to stay with her paternal grandfather for the summer at his farm in up-state New York.
 
I was surprised when I started reading this to find that the main character is only thirteen.  The girl on the cover looks like she's seventeen, going on twenty-five.  The fact that the protagonist is so young makes this a very different kind of story than what I had expected. Irene's not worried about how to pay for college, and while dropping out of her private school, and losing their Manhattan penthouse is upsetting, she's comforted by the opportunity to spend the summer on her beloved grandfather's farm, closer to nature.  Irene has a schoolgirl crush on one of her teachers, but easily transfers her affections to Jim, one of the kids living down the street and the older brother of her new best friend, Meg.

The real villain of the story, I thought, was Irene's mother Andie, whose idea of "economizing" means ordering daisy floral arrangements instead of more expensive blooms, cutting back on going to the hairdresser a little bit and only buying one new pair of shoes a week.  I was horrified by the way Andie childishly breezes through her husband's money, even after he's been laid off.  Unfortunately, the mother never really grows or changes, unlike her daughter, who finds this to be a very formative summer.  Irene gets the opportunity to reconnect with her older half-sister Jenna in Wyoming, enjoys making friends with the relaxed and playful Fox family down the street from her grandfather, and is happy to see her grandfather get a new chance at happiness with Lucia, a widow who runs the local gardening shop.  There are a few moments of tension: will Irene's grandfather sell his land in order to finance a grand return to New York for Irene's family?  Is Lucia responsible for a hit-and-run car accident?  Everything is satisfactorily resolved by the book's end, however.  I had assumed the story was set in present day, but a reference to Bonwit Teller, a department store that closed in the late 80's, suggests that it might be historical fiction. This book is marketed as YA, but it has the feel and cadence of a middle-grade novel.   I'll recommend this to readers aged 9-14.


I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

I Don't Want a Cool Cat review

I Don't Want a Cool Cat!

by Emma Dodd

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

August 2010

In this British import, a little girl enumerates all the kinds of cats that simply will not do for her. "I don't want a cool cat. A treat-me-like-a-fool cat." I loved the expressive cats featured on every page. The grey Himalayan "huffy, over-fluffy" cat stares dourly back at the reader. The greedy cat struggles in vain to push his considerable girth through the cat flap on the door, as the girl determinedly marches forth, can-opener and bowl of food in hand. The marble bengal prize cat pauses to catch her reflection in one of her many trophy cups and smiles back at herself. The big cat (an enormous tiger that takes up the entire page) is followed by a too small, hairless cat, and here, the illustrator has the cat and girl in the lower quarter of a two-page spread, surrounded by empty space, emphasizing the "too smallness" of this cat. The sweet little friendly kitten that the girl finally chooses at the end of the story, who she joyfully calls "my own cat" does appear to be just about perfect. The endpages features a repeating motif of red balls of yarn. Easily rhyming, steadily paced text paired with oversize bold-lined illustrations make this book a natural for sharing at storytimes. Dog-lovers should check out the accompanying book, I Don't Want a Posh Dog.


I borrowed this book from the library.

Beautiful Creatures review

Beautiful Creatures
by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Little, Brown Books
December 2009


Hurrah! A supernatural YA romance with a male lead!  I really enjoyed the unique perspective on this one. The writing in this book was beautiful, Gothic and very atmospheric.  I was in complete suspense and kept expecting vampires to show up, and was a little pleased that ultimately, there didn't seem to be any (although supernatural creatures of other sorts definitely abound.)

Ethan Wate, who can't wait to get out of the small town of Gatlin, South Carolina that he feels trapped in, is a very relatable character. When Lena Duchannes, a girl who's been haunting his dreams, shows up as a transfer student at his high school, he's mesmerized by her.  As their relationship progresses, Lena remains a mystery.  She's counting down the days, and seems to be pretty depressed about it, but as to what it is she's expecting when the clock runs down, the reader doesn't find out until the very end.  Ethan is very tentative and unsure of himself as he reaches out to Lena, which I thought was very believable and sweet.

Garcia and Stohl capture perfectly the intensity of the characters' first romance. The cast of gossipy and petty small-town characters serve to further isolate the two from everyone else, making them that much closer. Lena is staying with her uncle Macon, a wealthy town eccentric who lives in a grand estate up the hill.  I enjoyed the study in contrasts - when Ethan gets the rare chance to see the inside of Macon's decrepit mansion, he's shocked to find that on the inside, it's decorated in a clean, bright, IKEA catalog fashion. While he is quick to attribute many of the odd things he sees to rational explanations, ever so slowly, Ethan is finally able to puzzle out what is happening and it's on a far grander scale than he could have imagined. Shapeshifters, magic spells, ancient curses, a race of people known as "Casters" with supernatural powers used either for good or for evil, a secret underground  supernatural library... for readers who are willing to hang in there for the long, slow set-up, the ending of this book is a proverbial grand fireworks finale, with a huge showdown between good and evil.


I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Culling the TBR 2011

About once a year, I like to sit down and weed my "To Be Read" list, a sad task, but a necessary one. I've got a lot less that I'm eliminating from the list this year, mainly because I did get the chance to read a lot of things that I was after! I even went back and read a few books from last year's culled list: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landeau Banks by E. Lockhart, and The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. So, taking them off my TBR doesn't doom them to "unread" status forever... it just seriously lessens the chances that I'll get to it.

So, with no further ado, here's how I'll be narrowing down my TBR this year:

Awakening 

by Kelly Armstrong

HarperCollins

2008

I read the first book in the Darkest Powers series, and didn't care for it as much as I had hoped, so this is an easy one to strike off the list.

3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows 

by Ann Brashares 

Delacorte Books for Young Readers  

2009 

I've been meaning to read this book forever, and simply haven't gotten to it. I've even checked it out from the library... twice! I think it's time to be honest with myself and admit that even though I loved Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I don't think I'll be able to find the time to tackle it.

Born to Fly

by Michael Ferrari

Delacorte Books for Young Readers 

2009 

How did this one end up on my list in the first place? I couldn't even remember what this one was about. Off it goes.

Death by Latte 

by Linda Gerber 

Puffin 

2008 

Here's another one that must have caught my interest at some brief moment, but I now feel confident about crossing off the list.

Brooklyn Nine: A Novel in Nine Innings 

by Alan Gratz 

Penguin Young Readers Group 

2009 

I think I put this on my TBR when I was having a moment of thinking I hadn't read enough sports stories to recommend to folks. I feel a little guilty taking this one off the list, especially as there's a chance I might run into Alan Gratz at a booksigning one day. And it is an interesting sounding premise -- about nine generations of baseball players. Still. One can't read everything, as much as one might wish to!

Bearstone 

by Will Hobbs 

Aladdin 

1989 

I'd been meaning to take a look at this one, as it had kicked up a controversy in the blogosphere for it's treatment of Native Americans a while back... but I didn't get to it. Off the list it goes!

Loving Frank 

by Nancy Horan 

Ballantine Books 

2007 

I don't have a lot of time for reading adult fiction, what with all the great YA and middle-grade titles out there, so I am pretty choosy about which books I read to "take a break" from kidlit. I started reading this one, but couldn't get into it. I've been determined to get back to it for ages now... but I think I'll feel better if I let this one go.

How to Ditch Your Fairy 

by Justine Larbalestier 

Bloomsbury USA 

2008 

I started to read this and put it down... it just didn't captivate me as much as I'd hoped. We'll just have to call this one a DNF.

Chalice 

by Robin McKinley 

Putnam Juvenile 

2008 

I love Robin McKinley! I feel a little bad about eliminating this one.

The 13 ½ Lives of Captain Bluebear 

by Walter Moers 

Overlook 

2006 

I loved the wildly inventive City of Dreaming Books, and so, put everything Moers had ever written on my TBR, but I guess it's time to admit that I'm not ever going to get around to reading this book.

The Girl Who Owned a City

by O.T. Nelson

Laurel Leaf

 1975 

I've heard that this one is the Mother of All Dystopian YA. But, it's been on my TBR list for far, far too long, and so, it has to go.

Five Children and It 

by E. Nesbit 

Puffin 

1902

This book is supposed to be such a magical classic, but the scary creature on the cover has always warned me off.

I Don't Know How She Does It 

by Allison Pearson 

Anchor

2002

Again, I don't have much room in my schedule for adult fiction.

The Crystal Cave
by Mary Stewart
Eos
1970

I've had friends hounding me to read this classic over the years, and I loved The Mists of Avalon. But, ultimately, this has been sitting on my TBR for - yes, an astounding, 10 years at least. I think I'll have to take a pass on this series.

Book of Shadows 

by Cate Tiernan 

Puffin 

2001 

I've heard amazing things about the Sweep series, but in the last several years, I simply haven't gotten to it. I might as well start fresh with Tiernan's new series, Immortal Beloved.

Breathless
by Jessica Warman

Walker Books for Young Readers

2009

Here's another title that intrigued me when it first came out, but I know that I won't have time to read now.

And that's it! Only 16 titles eliminated... and my TBR still hovers at around 50 books or so. But, this feels good, very cathartic!