Read in May

This month I read the following books:

1 Lost Voices - Sarah Porter
2 Brightly Woven - Alexandra Bracken
3 The Bloomswell Diaries - Louis L. Buitendag
4 Vesper - Jeff Sampson
5 A Long, Long Sleep - Anna Sheehan
6 Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley - Stephanie Green
7 White Cat - Holly Black
8 Cinderella Smith - Stephanie Barden
9 Sidekicks - Jack D. Farraiolo
10 Falling in Love with English Boys - Melissa Jensen
11 Enclave - Ann Aguirre
12 The Girl's Guide to Homelessness - Brianna Karp
13 The Goddess Test - Aimee Carter


Picture credit: Woman Reading, National Media Museum

Little Red Hen feltboard

Here's my latest creation, The Little Red Hen, who plants, grows and cuts the wheat all by herself, grinds it into flour all by herself, mixes and kneads the dough and bakes it into bread all by herself, and when the time is right, eats the loaf of bread, all by herself, with no help from lazy cat, dog and mouse, of course!

Recognize the cat, dog and mouse? I re-used them from my Giant Turnip set I created some time ago. The lovely hen comes straight from the pattern from my beloved Judy Sierra's The Flannel Board Storytelling Book. Oddly, there was no pattern for a stove, or a loaf of bread, so I freehanded those. I experimented with a couple of different looking kinds of bread which all ended up looking lumpy and not-at-all breadlike until I came up with this simple loaf of french bread. As a rule, I don't like to draw on my felt pieces with marker, but I think it works well here. Even though she's a "red" hen, I made her orange, as making her fire-engine red didn't look right, and made her wattle stand out less. I thought about making her all of one piece, to save a little time, but I like the extra dimensionality from having her wing and leg a little separate. This felt board went over very well at storytime. I hewed pretty closely to the Paul Galdone version of The Little Red Hen.

More New Books

Yay, more new books at the library this week. A lot of beginning readers, and more series middle-grade fiction. Let's take a look!

Barbie: I Can Be... A Ballerina - Christy Webster
Tangled: A Horse and a Hero - Daisy Alberto
Toy Story: Move Out - Apple Jordan
Ironman: Panther's Prey - D.R. Shealy
Marley: Farm Dog - Susan Hill
Splat the Cat Sings Flat - Chris Strathearn
Star Wars The Clone Wars: Boba Fett Jedi Hunter - Clare Hibbert
Secrets of a Lab Rat: Scab for Treasurer? - Trudi Trueit, illustrated by Jim Paillot
Dear America: The Diary of Amelia Martin, A Light in the Storm - Karen Hesse
Boxcar Children #127: Monkey Trouble - Gertrude Chandler Warner
Boxcar Children #126: The Clue in the Recycling Bin- Gertrude Chandler Warner
The Buddy Files: The Case of the Library Monster - Dori Hillestad Butler, illustrated by Jeremy Tugeau and Dan Crisp
The Faeries' Promise: Wishes and Wings - Kathleen Duey
The Sisters Eight: Rebecca's Rashness - Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Calvin Coconut: Hero of Hawaii - Graham Salisbury, illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers

Lots of popular series here. I wish television and movies didn't have such a grip on youngster's imagination, but they do devour novelizations of all of these franchises. Lots of commissioned writers here too... it looks like John Grogan and Rob Scotton are farming out their latest books to ghostwriters.

Scab for Treasurer has on its' cover one of my biggest, biggest pet peeves. It's the classic words-crossed-out title. What a nightmare. This does nothing but cause confusion to the public, who are now completely uncertain what the actual title is. This will be an easy sell to Dan Gutman fans, though, as it's the same illustrator as the My Weird School series.

Another beautiful looking Dear America book.

The redoubtable Boxcar Children! They never fail to please. These are kinda updated, although I'm surprised that monkey is holding a disposable camera as opposed to a digital camera. And the subject matter for Clue in the Recycling Bin is very current. It goes without saying that these are obviously ghostwritten, as I believe Gertrude Chandler Warner died decades ago.

The Buddy Files is a new series to me, but mysteries do very, very well at my library, so I'm glad to have it. I'll pitch it as the perfect thing for readers who aren't quite ready for Hank the Cowdog.

Fairies are always a sure bet. This is by the same author of the wonderful Unicorn's Secret books.

I had figured that the Sisters Eight series would be dead in the water, debuting as it did right before Octomom mania (and all of the subsequent backlash) hit. Yet, these circ semi-decently, so I figure why not, let's see if kids go for it.

My love for Calvin Coconut is so great, I'm not sure I have words for it. So happy to get my hands on this newest book in the series!

Would I have bought these for my own home library? Or as gifts for friends or family? Eh, probably not, but I'm confident that all of these will circulate well at the public library.

Education of Bet review

The Education of Bet

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Houghton-Mifflin Books for Children

July 2010

16 year-old Bet is trapped between two worlds... raised in a 19th-century English mansion as a childhood companion to wealthy Will, she is in fact servant class, but used to the life of a lady. She hungers for an education, which of course is not possible. Will attends boarding school -- at least, when he's not being thrown out of them for delinquent behavior. After disgracing himself at his fourth school, Will confesses to Bet that he'd prefer a military career. She thinks of a bold plan: she'll go to school, disguised as him. She tells Will's uncle that she's gotten a job as a governess in order to explain her absence from the family home.

Once at school Bet is overwhelmed by having to get along with other boys who are mostly rough bullies. She thought she'd be entering a paradise, where she could simply concentrate on her studies in peace, instead, she faces hazing at the hands of the other students, with the professors' tacit approval. She starts to develop feelings for her roommate, smart and sensitive James. There is an interesting frisson to their relationship at first. Does James like Bet because he thinks she's a boy or despite of it? There were plenty of elements in the story that strained my credulity. Bet's secret is soon discovered by the school nurse, James and a few others, all of whom wholeheartedly approve of her scheme. Once James knows, they eagerly steal kisses when other students aren't around and even snuggle in the same bed. She rather improbably pulls off a Christmas visit back home where she pretends to be both herself AND Will, changing costumes and coming up with excuses for why "Will" and Bet are never in the same room at the same time.

When the school master and Will's uncle are finally made aware of her deception, the school master's wife quickly leaps to Bet's defense and Will's uncle reveals (spoiler alert) that she is in fact, truly Will's half-sister, and he is now prepared to legally recognize her as part of the family. I wasn't sure whether to be surprised that she wasn't more upset at having been treated as a second-class citizen for most of her life or surprised that the uncle was finally willing to admit that his brother's bastard daughter was family. It seemed unlikely for her to be elevated in status so quickly and easily during that time period. Short(ish) at only 192 pages, this was a light and enjoyable read. I'll recommend this for readers looking for easy, feel-good historical fiction with a happy ending.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

Queen of the Falls review

Queen of the Falls

by Chris Van Allsburg

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

April 2011

Van Allsburg gives us a close-up and personal look into the face of madness in this inspired history of the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Tall pages dense with text contain a story nearly long enough to merit novella status in this exploration of a little known adventuress. Van Allsburg truly shines in his black and white pencil illustrations that lend heart to the story. He perfectly captures the Eureka moment when 62 year-old retired charm school teacher, Annie Edson Taylor, decides her fortunes will be made once she attempts the stunt. Her eyes gleam madly, as a flower vase is heedlessly tipped over at her table.

Taylor's endearing and expressive range of emotions are displayed in full force in the next few pages. An angry scowl when ridiculed at the barrel-maker's shop, her shrewd squinting once the barrel-making is underway, and her quietly smug satisfaction in the office of Frank Russell, who was to become her manager, hint at her obsessive drive to complete a ridiculous and seemingly impossible task. The illustrations featuring her stout frame and grey-bunned head backing into the finished pillow-lined barrel, paired with an alternate view, a close-up of her face, as she cheerfully waves from inside the barrel as they nail her in, play with perspective and can't fail to fascinate readers. Her grimace as she's bandied about inside the claustrophobic environment ratchets up the tension, and the moment when she goes over, with a double-page spread of the Falls in all their glory and the single sentence "'Oh Lord,' she whispered, and then she was gone." stand in stark contrast to the rest of the text-heavy pages.

After surviving the trip, albeit badly bruised and shaken up, sadly, Taylor finds the crowds she'd hoped to impress at state fairs and the like fail to materialize. She finds herself the victim of theft, as first Russell, and then her new manager, Billy Banks, both turn on her, and attempt to steal her barrel. The story ends on an upbeat note with Annie remarking that at least she can say, "I am the one who did it."

The book is appended with an author's note, a list of "successful" barrel riders, a very short bibliography, and a photograph of the real Annie Edson Taylor, looking schoolmarmish posing next to the barrel in question, which is much narrower at the bottom than I'd imagined and covered in old fashioned font declaring Taylor, "Heroine of the Falls."

Pair this unusual offering with Mordecai Gerstein's The Man Who Walked Between the Towers or any biography of Harry Houdini, for a slice of unconventional, dare-devil history. Recommended for ages 5-12.


I borrowed this book from the library.

Tower of Babel of Books

Check this out. It's a tower made of books, erected in Buenos Aires in celebration of being made this year's "World Book Capital" My only concern is how those books will hold up under the weather, but I suppose they are probably not meant to last.

Angel Burn review

Angel Burn

by L.A. Weatherly

Candlewick

May 2011

In this paranormal YA romance, angels are an evil invading force. Their most devastating power is their ability to suck the life force from humans, mesmerizing them all the while, and making them feel enraptured. Disastrously for the human race, this means that those with the most up-close and personal experience of angels are actually the least likely to sound the alarm bells. Despite the cancer and debilitating illnesses that most humans seem to contract from contact with the angels, they remain obsessively devoted, building huge cathedrals dedicated to the new "Church of the Angels"

16 year-old Willow, who struggles with unwanted psychic powers, does a reading for her friend Beth who is thinking of joining the cult and Willow immediately guesses the angels' evil intent. In the meantime, 17 year-old Alex has been living a life on the run, working with an elite group of Angel Killers since he was a young boy. When he's told to assassinate Willow, he's very suspicious, as she has an angel aura, yet clearly is a human girl. With his orders from headquarters growing more erratic all the time, he essentially kidnaps her for a cross-country road trip back to his original base camp to see if he can straighten things out. Along the way, naturally, they begin to develop feelings for each other, despite the fact that Willow is half-angel.

I really enjoyed this book. It's action-packed and the angel mythology is well-thought out. The leader of the angels' invading force, Raziel, is deliciously evil and it's fun to read the scenes where his human secretary, Jonah, slowly starts to put the pieces together from the clues his boss carelessly reveals. The romance between Alex and Willow develops slowly and is very sweet.

The one thing that bothered me about the book was the jarring switches between first-person narration (from Willow's point of view) and third-person narration. On the one hand, I loved the immediacy of hearing Willow's thoughts, especially as she tried to work out her feelings for Alex. If the whole book had been in first-person we would have missed the portions where Alex likes her, but she doesn't know it yet, and of course, I loved all the parts with hapless Jonah. Alex's gruff old mentor, Cully, was also a lot of fun, especially when some shocking twists towards the end of the book are revealed. Overall, switching tenses back and forth gave the writing a very uneven, choppy feel though. I wish the book had been revised so that all of Willow's parts were in third-person. I was concerned at first by the title change and cover change from the British original, but Angel Burn is a more distinctive title than simply, Angel and the new cover design really grew on me.

This is the first in a trilogy, and hopefully the rest of the series will be as thrilling as the first one was.

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