In My Mailbox 13

I need more books like a need a hole in the head, but I got tired of waiting for these to come in at the library, and went out and bought them! Check out these beauties. Gorgeous, eh? I'm justifying the purchase by thinning down my collection at home... just donated a box of paperbacks to make room for these on my shelf.

The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan
Red Glove - Holly Black
Forever - Maggie Stiefvater
Supernaturally - Kiersten White

Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley review

Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley
by Stephanie Greene
Clarion Books
June 2010

This is a charming middle-grade novel where readers are treated to a sneak-peek of Sophie's family, school and friends. I loved all the little details about Sophie's family, who obviously have a lot of warm feeling for each other. As the youngest child Sophie is always feeling a bit left out. She's crushed when her older teen sister Nora moves out of their shared artistic messy room into a tidy attic room of her own. For her tenth birthday, Sophie doesn't want much... just a cute baby gorilla. Once she promises her classmates that getting a gorilla is a certainty, there's no end to the teasing she gets. She's worried about how on earth she'll make good on her word, until she saves face when her mom reminds everyone that gorillas are endangered, and therefore, impossible to keep as pets. Greene does a marvelous job of illuminating the inner-life of a child and everything Sophie thinks and says definitely rings true.

This story reminded me a lot of Alice's Birthday Pig by Tim Kennemore, about a similarly sweet and delightful family. Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley is the latest in a series about the irrepressible Sophie, but readers need not have read the earlier volumes to make sense of this one. I'll recommend this book to readers looking for something finer and more gentle than Junie B. Jones, and something just a hair easier than the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary.

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

Book Blogger Hop 11

The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly meme hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books.

This week's question is:

Let’s talk crazy book titles! Highlight one or two (or as many as you like!) titles in your personal collection that have the most interesting titles! If you can’t find any, feel free to find one on the internet!


I suppose I have a few books with crazy titles... but nothing on earth beats the recent spate of romance novels with ridiculous titles like: Magnate's Mistress Accidentally Pregnant! or The Brazilian Millionaire's Love-Child. Those are real titles! No, I don't own them. But just hearing those titles makes me laugh out loud.


Can I Get There by Candlelight? by Julius Horwitz, published in 1963, doesn't have a crazy title, but I loved the back cover copy so much, I had to buy the book. There's a quote from Library Journal on the back which reads: "Librarians will help the cause of literature by rejecting this unsavory stew of sex, liquor and street language." It's honestly a very tame book by today's standards.

Alice's Birthday Pig review

Alice's Birthday Pig
by Tim Kennemore
Eerdman's Books for Young Readers
March 1999

What a sweet little early chapter book! I'd put this at a challenging 2nd grade, easy 3rd grade level. Alice's family is so wonderful, so warm and charming. She's teased by her older brother Oliver for mispronouncing "aminal" After a class field trip to a small farm, Alice wishes more than anything for a real pet pig on her birthday. Her family has a delightful tradition of making elaborately decorated birthday cakes to commemorate an important event of that year for each child. In the past few years they've come up with a penguin, an airplane, a chutes and ladders cake, a train, a stegasorus, Big Bird, even a plain "cake, cake" for the year her brother complains about his cake not being grand enough. 

This year her parents make her a pig cake... and then surprise her with a pet guinea pig. Her little sister Rosie gets into Alice's gifts including a paint set and inadvertently covers Oliver with glitter but none of that matters. Alice names her new guinea pig "Aminal", much to Oliver's dismay. Alice and her family are the kind of people you want to get to know and hang out with. This story is a real winner.
I borrowed this book from the library.

Cover Triplets

It's common enough to find the same stock photo used twice, sometimes with a different treatment on two different covers. But here's a sample of the same photo being used three (possibly four)  times.

The Vespertine
by Saundra Mitchell
Harcourt Children's Books
March 2011

In 1889 Baltimore, Amelia discovers she has the power to see the future -- but only at the moment of sunset, or the "vespers" of the evening.

Dark Angel
by Eden Maguire
Hodder Children's Books
August 2011

Love triangle! Tania and Orlando's perfect relationship is marred by the meddling of Zoran, a hot rockstar, maybe with fae-like powers?

The Goddess Test
by Aimee Carter
Mira
August 2011

This is the cover for the Australian paperback version.
Kate thinks her mother is dying of cancer, and finds herself Persephone-like, engaged to Henry, King of the Underworld.
While the American cover seems more Grecian, this actually may be more acurate to the book, where the Greek Gods force Kate to wear corseted dresses for some reason.

Forgiven
by Janet Fox
Speak
June 2011

Any chance this is from the same photoshoot? It sure looks similar.
Kula runs away from rural Montana to experience big city life in San Francisco.

The Sunflower Sword review

The Sunflower Sword
by Mark Sperring, illustrated by Miriam Latimer
Andersen Press USA
January 2011


A young "knight" wishes more than anything to join the other warrior knights who are busy fighting dragons. He begs his mom for a sword... but she gives him a sunflower instead. He decides to make the best of it, whooshing and swooshing the sunflower to and fro. Bright, cartoon-like illustrations feature the little boy's haphazard outfit, including a dagged tunic, a colander helmet and shoes that look more like cowboy boots than medieval wear. The mother's floral nightgown and whimsical scarf make her appear decidedly modern, inviting readers to wonder if the whole story takes place in a his imagination.

After meeting a real dragon, who mistakenly thinks that he's offering a gift, they accidentally broker peace. Soon all the knights are rushing to the hilltop, bringing offers of flowers, hoping for dragon rides. I almost wondered if this would turn into a bit of a love story... as the little knight offers the dragon a sunflower, her tail takes the shape of a heart. I love finding little details like that in the illustrations. Observant readers will note a small white dove that appears on every page, emphasizing the message of peace.

I borrowed this book from the library.

A Long, Long Sleep review

A Long, Long Sleep
by Anna Sheehan
Candlewick
August 2011

This is a science-fiction re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty story. Depending on how you look at it, Rosalinda Fitzroy is either 16-years old, or well over a hundred. Exploring a sub-basement, Bren is startled when he finds a human girl sleeping in a stasis tube, and after accidentally hitting the wake sequence, he attempts CPR, literally, "kissing" her awake.

It turns out Rosalinda is the heir to a multi-planetary empire. While she was supposed to be in a short stasis, a global disaster known as the Dark Times hit, and forgotten, she ended up sleeping for over sixty years. I really struggled for the first half of the book. Rosalinda is understandably, a disaster... technology, culture, everything has changed while she's been out and feeling physically weak from being in stasis for far, far longer than what is considered customary or safe, naturally, she feels completely overwhelmed. Even though her feelings seemed reasonable considering the circumstances, I was annoyed by how timid she was and how she constantly put herself down. She doesn't consider herself terribly bright and even before being accidentally in stasis, seemed like a bit of a lost soul. I found her very difficult to like at first.

As she slowly starts to open up to Otto, a telepathic alien classmate, readers gradually get glimpses of her tragic past. The privileged daughter of wealthy, elite business-owners, who use stasis on a regular basis, when they are traveling for business, as a punishment (kind of a like a "time-out" only infinitely worse) or just when they feel like they need a break from parenting, Rose has been robbed of any kind of normalcy since day one. After a while, she even begins to crave being "stassed" - getting high off the psychedelic dreams she experiences while in her stasis tube. Her parents truly come off as monsters... and it turns out that they've been inadvertently responsible for the Dark Times catastrophe as well.

As Rose is coping with all of this, there are dark hints of a murdering robot that's been sent to assassinate her. Obviously, there are a lot of people who would benefit if Rose could more permanently disappear. Who sent it? Who can she trust? How will she escape from this tireless death machine? I was surprised also, that while there is a hint of romance, it doesn't feature heavily in the story. Ultimately, Rose has to learn how to be her own person, discovering her own unique abilities and standing up to the board of directors who are running her family's business in her stead. I'll recommend this book to readers who enjoyed Across the Universe by Beth Revis with a caveat to stick with it, A Long, Long Sleep gets better (much, much better) as you go along.

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