Waiting on Dragonswood

I haven't heard a lot of buzz about this book, but I am so excited about it. Dragons? Fairies? Fleeing for one's life? Forbidden romance? Oh man, I am sold on this thing. January can't come soon enough. Everything's better with dragons.

Dragonswood
by Janet Lee Carey
Penguin Young Readers Group

January 2012

Wilde Island is in an uproar after the recent death of its king. The uneasy pact between dragons, fairies, and humans is fraying, and a bloodthirsty witch hunter with a hidden agenda whips villages into frenzies with wild accusations. Tess, a blacksmith’s daughter from a tiny hamlet near the mysterious Dragonswood, finds herself caught in the crosshairs of fate when she is accused of witchery and has to flee for her life along with her two best friends.

Not even Tess’s power to see the future can help the girls as they set off on their desperate journey, but she keeps having visions of a man wielding a sword. And when she finally meets him, Tess has no idea how to handle the magnetic attraction she feels for him, or the elusive call she hears from the heart of the Dragonswood.

In this epic romance, an ancient prophecy comes true in a way neither dragon, fairy, nor human would have predicted.

Top 10 Childhood Faves

I love this week's question by The Broke and the Bookish. What were your top ten childhood favorite books?

Here are mine:

1. Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum

It's hard to believe, but as a young child, I actually hated to read. I loved to be read to, and I loved stories, but I didn't want to be bothered to sound them out myself. My parents inspired me to read better by purchasing several Oz books for me one Christmas and refusing to read them aloud to me! I was forced to puzzle them out myself and my reading scores made a dramatic jump over that break.

2. Nancy Drew by Caroline Keene

My best friend and I used to have reading contests, where we'd each check out the same copy of a Nancy Drew mystery and see who could read faster. I always lost! She was a fearsomely fast reader. Looking back on it, I suspect she may have cheated.

3. Narnia series by C.S. Lewis

My third-grade teacher advised I try this series, which I initially didn't care for. When I was in fourth grade, I gobbled them up like candy, and read them over and over for several years.

4. Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

When I was young, our family didn't have electricity. My parents would send us out on summer nights to collect enough fireflies to read by, and they'd read us a chapter a night. Of course, chasing after fireflies is tiring work, so I'd usually fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and demand they re-read all the parts I'd missed the next night.

5. Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel

I didn't have very many "little kid" type books as a child, but I loved the Frog and Toad stories by Arnold Lobel. My favorite was the one about the delicious cookies that Toad can't bring himself to stop eating.

6. A Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L'Engle

I loved this series as a kid. It was one of the first things I read in third grade, and my teacher made a great point of how it was too old for me.

7. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I didn't discover this until I was in middle school, but once I did, I'd re-read it every year for many, many years- every October. I found it a lot more accessible and fun than the rest of the Lord of the Rings.

8. Xanth series by Piers Anthony

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I loved these books. Now I see them as sexist, pun-filled, potboilers, but at the time I thought they were witty and fast-paced adventure. I liked that time moved quickly - by the fourth or fifth book in the series, the main character is already a grandfather, and soon, the story is picked up by his descendants.

9. The Babysitters Club by Ann M. Martin

I was really kind of too old for this series by the time it came out. I loved them anyway, I loved the entrepreneurial spirit of the girls and I loved how organized they were. I tried to organize a babysitter's club myself, and it fell apart in two meetings with bickering and disagreements between the members.

10. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

My favorite of the E.B. White books. I loved Fern and I rooted for Wilbur. I had a grudging admiration for sneaky Templeton the rat. What an opening! "Where's pa going with that ax?" and what a wonderful ending, "It is not often someone comes along that's a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both."

Iron Giant review

The Iron Giant
by Ted Hughes, illustrated by Laura Carlin
Random House Children's Books
September 2011

Hughes’s parable about peace, originally penned in 1968, is given new life with Carlin’s cut-paper, multimedia illustrations. In the first half of the book, after crashing to Earth, the Iron Giant re-assembles himself and wreaks havoc on the local farming community by eating its tractors and farm implements. After succumbing to a pit-trap, he is tamed by Hogarth, a boy who leads him to a scrap yard where the Iron Giant can finally eat his fill.

In the second half of the story, a space-bat-angel-dragon as large as Australia threatens the Earth. Several pages of concentric die-cut circles punch up the importance of its arrival. The formerly silent Iron Giant finds his voice to challenge the creature to an endurance test. Burnt nearly to a crisp after two consecutive trips to the surface of the sun, the space-bat-angel-dragon relents and agrees to sing peaceful music-of-the-spheres instead of waging war. The oversize illustrations are rendered in a restrained muted palette of blues, browns, reds, and blacks but exhibit great variety, sometimes emphasizing the shadowy, blurry nature of the giant, other times utilizing sharply cut lines and finely drawn small townsfolk. Occasional use of hand lettering amid the text lends drama and interest. Lengthy for a picture book, but a bit short for a novel, this is a smartly designed, highly illustrated novella in picture-book format.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
This review originally appeared in School Library Journal.

Tardis Bookshelf

This has got to be the neatest thing ever. Oh, sure, I've seen various things turned into a TARDIS... refrigerators, door to a photo darkroom. Here's a TARDIS bookshelf! More pictures here.

ALA Midwinter 2012

I purchased my tickets for ALA Midwinter -- just in time to still get the early discount. I always enjoy going to American Library Association conventions. It's a great way to see authors, preview upcoming book releases, and connect with other librarian friends and colleagues around the country.

John Green is one of the featured speakers this year. I must admit, I haven't read many of his books, but I do really enjoy the Vlog Brothers videos that he and his brother Hank Green create.

This is going to be the closest ALA conference to me for a while, for the next several years they're being hosted in various West Coast cities, or up north in the middle of winter. The conference returns to Florida in 2016, and comes to Atlanta in 2017.

Shut Out review

Shut Out 
by Kody Keplinger 
Poppy 
September 2011


I loved Kody Keplinger's debut novel, The DUFF, a frank and honest exploration of high school romance. In her second novel, the author delivers a very capable re-telling of Greek playwright Aristophanes's Lysistrata. In the original play, a comedy, the title character Lysistrata arranges a "sex-strike" to convince the armies of Athens and Sparta to stop fighting.

The opening scenes of Shut Out are like a slap in the face, and I mean that in the best possible way. Readers are rudely reminded that most high school boys are not dreamy romantics. Indeed, most are horny, inconsiderate jerks. Teen Lissa's boyfriend, football quarterback Randy (get it? Randy??) barely pays attention to her - even when they're making out, he's busy planning some sophomoric prank to play on the soccer team. While many schools enjoy a football rivalry between schools, Hamilton High has an internal rivalry between the football team and the soccer team. Fed up with Randy's disgusting behavior, Lissa decides to enlist her friends in shutting out the boys' advances until they can behave like gentlemen.

In the meantime, Lissa develops a growing interest in Cash Sterling, leader of the soccer team. Even though she's underwhelmed by Randy's charm, she's afraid of letting down her dad and her brother, both big football fans. It's obvious that Cash is the better choice for Lissa but it takes them a while to figure it out. They hooked up briefly a year ago, but due to a misunderstanding never pursued things. They're thrown back together when they end up working at the local library together. I'm always a bit skeptical when I read a book with libraries or books in it; is the author pandering to librarians? But, I loved the scenes where Lissa trains the new clerks. She's simultaneously bossy, detail-oriented and perfectionist, yet still manages to come across as a loveable nerd who is just trying to figure out how to master social skills.

Of course, the book suffers from the same weaknesses as the original play: an overemphasis on sex, and a somewhat juvenile approach to relationships. I had trouble believing that the girls would feel so sex-starved so soon - they have as hard a time with their celibacy vow as the boys do. On the whole though, Keplinger's version warms and humanizes Aristophanes rather two-dimensional characters. All of the characters, including Lissa, her family, her circle of girlfriends, even disgusting Randy really ring true. Cash is a hero, but not in a "too good to be believed" way. There's a lot of discussion, from a feminist perspective, of the double-standard for sexually-active men and women. Keplinger has her finger on the pulse of how teens speak. I'll recommend this book for older teens.


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

Read in November

This month I read the following books:

1 The Pledge - Kimberly Derting

2 The Rise of Renegade X - Chelsea Campbell

3 It's Not Really About the Hair - Tabatha Coffey

4 The Mephisto Covenant - Trinity Faegen

5 Frost - Wendy DelSol

6 The Not Quite Perfect Boyfriend - Lili Wilkinson

7 Hades: Lord of the Dead - George O'Connor
8 Darker Still - Leanna Renee Hieber
9 Peeled - Joan Bauer

Picture credit: Reading Book by Eva D. Cowdery