Feeling a Little Behind

Okay, I'm feeling A LOT behind!

I was behind on posting the last two reviews.

I am feeling behind on getting ready for school.  I know!  Don't talk about it...but it's inevitable.  It's coming.  UGH.

I am behind on my book list.  I've made it to 16.  This is pretty good considering that it's 16 in 9 weeks.  I always knew that the 46 books on my list was WAY overboard, but I just want to read them all!.

So I've chosen my next three books (I've abandoned the order I originally came up with weeks ago!) and these are the reasons:

This is one that I ordered for my library towards the end of the school year and I knew I needed to add some more nonfiction into my list so I grabbed it.  I also know that I've read two nonfiction books so far this summer and one was on teaching.  So I wanted to add in another.

I am hoping that The Books of Elsewhere is a quick, easy read.  Although I just realized that it is the 2nd book in the series....hmmm.  Scratch that!  I really dislike reading books out of order.

I guess I get to skip ahead to the book I've been wanting to read all summer!!!!

I can't wait!!

When I've finished this, I'm going to read all the sequels that I put off at the beginning of the summer because I wanted to get through with these others.  If I don't read them now, it'll take twice as long during the school year!

Prisoner B-3087

Based on the true story of Jack Gruener, Alan Gratz has created a fictional account of Jack’s time spent in ten different concentration camps during the Holocaust.  His depictions of the ghettos, train cars, camp barracks, death marches, torture, and death are very honest.  He has described horrid conditions that no human should have to witness, let alone live through, without sensationalism. 

Yanek Gruener is a Jewish boy growing up in Poland in the 1930’s when the Nazis take over.  Under their rule his life changes dramatically as he undergoes one tragedy after another.  Although he manages to survive ten concentration camps and two death marches, Yanek is not always optimistic.  After a while, the death he sees is just commonplace.  He is terrified of it, determined not let it take him, but accepts it because there is no other option.  At times he wonders if it is better to dead. 

I appreciated how Yanek was portrayed.  Written in a first person narrative, it allows the reader to enter the story a little more, but you’re still kept at bay with the very clipped style of writing.  At the end, after he and his fellow survivors have been rescued by American soldiers, Yanek notes that “They couldn’t understand our tears, couldn’t know how amazing such a simple meal was to us….We could describe it.  Describe in every detail the horrors of the camps and the way we were treated.  But no one who had not been there would ever truly understand (251).”   

Ungifted by Gordon Korman

Donovan is NOT a genius.  When he finds himself transferred into the Academy for Scholastic Distinction he has to try and fake it.  This is a little hard for Donovan, as he understands nothing that the kids or the teachers are talking about.  Somehow, though they have taken him into their fold and he’s become one of them, which is good because Donovan is hiding out after he caused major havoc on his old school’s gym, and if they like him, they might let him stay…somehow.

I enjoyed Donovan’s character, and even some of the other students at ASD, but the other students seemed very flat.  Chloe had a little more to her, but she was still your basic stereotype of a type of a “nerd.”  The shenanigans that Donovan brings to the gifted students at his new school do cause them to loosen up quite a bit, and they become more real.  I just assumed that they would be real before Donovan shows up to do this for them.

This is a humorous story, and if you enjoy middle school pranks you’ll probably like Ungifted as well.  Donovan is extremely likeable.  He’s a kid that you’d want to hang out with after school as long as you can divert his attention away from any troubling causing pranks, that is.

Doll Bones by Holly Black

Photo taken from goodreads.com

This book is perfect for my 6th graders!  Zach, Alice, and Poppy have always played games, creating stories for their dolls that involve daring feats and adventures, but they’re growing up.  Shouldn’t they be growing out of the silly make believe games?  When Zach’s dad throws out all of his toys, ending the game for him, a new story begins.  Hoping to entice Zach back into the game, she smuggles a bone china doll from her mother’s cabinet, only to discover a mystery.  Complete with a quest, ghosts, a crazy man, and a library, this adventure will keep readers engaged.

I really enjoyed this and appreciated the author’s attempt to convey the devastation of growing up.  I feel that kids who are entering 5th and 6th grade are starting to hit that period where they realize it’s not all fairy tales and that one day they’ll be too old to play pretend (if they don’t already know that now).  In the story I don’t think we ever know how old they actually are (or it’s so subtly stated that I can’t remember and don’t care to go back and look) and I believe that’s a good choice.  By keeping the kids just somewhere in middle school it will allow more young readers to identify with the characters.

I am glad I can put this in my classroom library this fall.  I hope it gets picked up soon so I can hear what students are thinking about it!

Slated by Teri Terry

I picked up Slated from my pile the other day, really wanting a dystopian novel.  They’re my favorites and I haven’t read one in a while.  So I went in expecting a book to make me feel good, keep me entertained, and make me think.  I wasn’t sure if it would be Slated, but I was definitely pulled in. I didn’t realize that it was a series, though, so up until the last few chapters, I expected it all to be tied up.  I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised since that seems to be the thing with the dystopian/sci-fi young adult genre right now. I’m not upset about this, just an observation.

In Slated, Kyla is starting her new life with her new family after being slated.  She has no memories from her previous life and must keep herself happy and calm in order to remain alive.  For most slated kids, this is easy—they don’t remember bad things.  Kyla is different, though, and little glimpses of her past keep revealing themselves to her until she can no longer ignore them.  Now she has to figure out who she can trust before she’s returned and terminated.

I enjoyed the book and it was hard to stop reading.  Kyla’s character grows throughout the novel as she begins to learn more and more about herself.  She learns not only the everyday rules of the world, but about the past and the way society works.  When she arrives, she’s like a little girl, scared and unsure of herself, but within a few weeks she seems to have become herself—whoever that really is.  I’m looking forward to reading the next two novels in the series and finding out how Kyla fares in the world.

So many upsets in my book lists!!

So I posted that I was abandoning The Peculiar last week.  I began reading Doll Bones the next day...I downloaded it onto my nook and accessed it via my phone because
I forgot to bring my nook with me to an appointment.

Well then we went out of town and I packed my nook and two books (I'm always a little overzealous about how much I'll finish reading in the car).  We're on the road and I pull out my nook, power it on and do you what I didn't do?  I didn't download it to my nook before we left...  I could have read it on my phone, but for five hours on that little phone?  No way!!

So I read one of my books on the way there.  Then on the way back I read about half of the next book.

This is what I'm currently reading and so far it's interesting.

This may be a good one for our book club!  A future society where kids who are deemed criminal are sentenced to a new process called "slating."  Their memories are erased and they are rehabilitated to join new families and become productive members of society.  It follows one of the slated girls as she is transitioned into a family.  Very easy read so far.  I should be finished tomorrow and ready to move on!

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake

This novel starts out with a funeral and the untimely death of the narrator’s sister.  Georgie Burkhardt doesn’t believe that her sister is dead, though, and she’s determined to find out the truth—with or without help.  Unluckily, help comes in the form of Billy McCabe, her sister’s former beau.  Set in 1871 in the town of Placid, Wisconsin during a great pigeon nesting that drives through Georgie’s town, sending the town into chaos.  Just like those wild pigeons are a force as they descend on Placid and the surrounding area, Georgie pushes along this story so that you’re there with her, determined to find her sister Agatha. 

Georgie reveals the past to us, the reason for Agatha’s departure, her relationships, and her personality through a series of flashbacks that help us understand, even before Georgie does, how her sister most likely died.  Even so, when Georgie finally does come around, I was suddenly on the other side.  No, she might still be there.  Georgie lost hope, but I kept it for her.  I thought it beautiful how Amy Timberlake made this happen.  It’s almost as if Georgie’s convincing has worked, but not for herself. 

Georgie’s quest to find the truth allows her to learn much about her sister, feeling again close to her, as well as angry at her for putting them all in this situation.  Moreover, she’s able to learn about herself, questioning what she has always known as the truth, and learning actual truths that she never wanted to know. 

I found myself pulled into this story from the get go.  Georgie is an easy character to follow.  She doesn’t demand that you burrow in and accept what she’s saying.  She’s likable, even though she does some unlikeable things.  My only real issue with this book is that I had a hard time really believing that Georgie belonged in this time period.  I can’t pinpoint what caused this feeling, but Georgie seemed like a more modern girl and belonged in more modern times.  It wasn’t due to her abilities, which were not skills that would have been encouraged in a young girl in the late 1800s, but in her voice.  Something about the way she spoke was too modern.  It may have even been too sheltered for a girl living in this growing town, learning to shoot, and traipsing through the woods.  I almost felt like she should have been more mature than she was due to this time period.  Needless to say, it took me out of the space every now and then.

This is a great read and I recommend it for readers who enjoy an adventure.  Georgie definitely has her fair share of adventure in this quest for the truth.  If you really like historical fiction, this may or may not be for you, depending on if you can believe that she really belongs in this time period.

The Peculiar --Moving on and leaving this one behind--for now.

I can’t finish this.  At least not right now.  I’ve been working on it for a week now and I’m only 168 pages in.  There is so much time spent on building the steampunk world that I don’t care for the characters.  I don’t like them.  Now in some cases this doesn’t matter.  For example, in Hunger Games I disliked Katniss from the start.  However I did want her to be successful, mostly because her success meant that others who were likable survived.  Here, not only do I dislike the bratty Bartholomew and the sniveling Mr. Jelliby, but there is no reason for me to want them to be okay.  Bartholomew’s sister might be cute, but it’s hard to tell since he’s pretty self-centered in his views (makes sense for a young boy, but doesn’t help me here).  Mr. Jelliby is truly annoying, and he’s supposed to be, but then why do I care about him?

I have little else to say and I’ve decided to abandon this book for the time being.  It is one that I’m willing to come back to at a later date.  Maybe when I’ve finished my list, revisiting it will be good and I’ll enjoy the book at that time.

Here's What I'm Reading

I thought I would have been done with Mao's Last Dancer sooner, but it was hard to stay motivated.

Now I'm about to start this book.

There's fairies and magic and the mystery!  Perfect.

After that I'm reading

 Don't know much about it, but I put it on my list awhile ago and so now I'm going to get to it!  Hope to have both of these finished by July 12th.  We'll have to see, though!

What are you reading right now?

Mao's Last Dancer

Mao’s Last Dancer: Young Reader’s Edition

by Li Cunxin

Walker and Company

2008

Mao’s Last Dancer drops us into Li Cunxin’s world, growing up in Communist China under the rule of Chairman Mao.  Li’s family lives a peasant life, struggling to survive and battle starvation on a daily basis.  One day is chosen to attend the Beijing Dance Academy and trains to become a ballet dancer.  Li takes us through his struggles growing up in China and his travels to America, where he learns what it means to be free. 

The book is divided into three parts.  The first part, which seemed to be the longest and most difficult to get through, chronicles his daily life in their village.  Li describes his family and how they live in a commune with his extended family.  We learn about his school life and how much of it was devoted to learning the philosophies of Chairman Mao.  Children were taught to love their great leader from the get go and anyone who dared defy his teachings was a traitor.  Most of this section is devoted to describing his mother.  His deep love and respect for his mother is evident in this first section.

Things start to pick up in the second part when Li is chosen to audition for the Beijing Dance Academy at the age of eleven.  He has to leave his family and live at the school for 11 months out of the year, but he already understands that this is an opportunity that could allow him and his family an escape from their tough life.  The curriculum at his school is more focused on indoctrinating the young ballet students rather than ballet technique, however their teachers still expected much of these young dancers from the get go.  This lack care led to many injuries and a sense of fear that Li felt for most of his first few years.  Despite these difficulties, Li becomes a wonderful ballet dancer and when Chairman Mao dies and more Western influences trickle into the ballet training, Li’s love of the art grows as well as his ability.  With an opportunity to study in America, Li leaves for 6 weeks.  It is here that he realizes that most of what he has learned about America is a lie.  He begins to understand that in China he will never really be free like he can be in America and it is essential that he find a way to stay.

There is also a third part in which Li is in America and trying to defect from China.  It is rather short and just wraps everything up neatly.  It was more interesting than the other parts, but also only a few chapters.

I chose this book because it is about a dancer.  Nonfiction books are not what I automatically go to—in fact I often shy away from them.  I figured reading about dance would keep me more engaged since I have a dance background.  It did, but it took a while to get to the part where I was interested.  Although it was beneficial to see how Li’s ideas about Communism and his great leaders evolved and then later faded, I was still pushing myself to stay focused.  There was plenty about his hard work and determination to make it as a dancer, but I was not drawn into this story as much as I had wanted to be.

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town

by Kimberly Willis Holt

Scholastic

1999

I really had no expectations for When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt.  I picked it up because a few of my students had read it this past year.  Going in, I didn’t remember at all what it was about when I reached it on my list the other day.  I didn’t even bother reading the back.  That being said, I still felt a little disappointed.

We meet Toby hanging out with his best friend Cal during the summer in a small town in Texas.  They are lining up to see the most interesting thing to happen in their town in years.  A trailer has pulled up and a man is charging two dollars to see the world’s largest boy.  Toby and Cal eventually end up developing an odd and somewhat strained friendship with “the world’s largest boy” Zachary Beaver, but it’s just one more thing for Toby to worry about this summer.

This small Texas town seemed filled with people.  There are so many characters it become confusing.  We of course have Toby and his best friend Cal, and also Toby’s father, important characters who could have used a bit more filling out.  Zachary Beaver is also an important character whose appearance seems to be a catalyst for a lot of Toby’s realizations.  Then we have the following minor characters: Miss Myrtie Mae is the town librarian and cares for her senile brother; Ferris owns the bowling alley/restaurant; Wylie Womack doesn’t speak anymore and runs the snow cone place; Katy is Cal’s sister and her role becomes more important after she obtains her drivers license; Toby’s crush Scarlett is in a relationship with Juan, and she has a bratty little sister who annoys Toby.  Plus, we have the sheriff, the reverend, Cal’s parents, and his brother Billy.  So many characters!  This story also has two important non present characters—Toby’s mother and Cal’s brother.  Toby’s mom is off in Nashville this summer pursuing her dream of becoming a country music star, and Cal’s brother Wayne is fighting in Vietnam.  No one really gets to be more than a shell of a character and the actions of characters seem to come out of nowhere since we never really get to know them.

For example, Toby learns that his mom isn’t coming back home after she loses a music contest—in fact, she’s not coming home anytime soon.  Toby seems like a smart kid, but he doesn’t get this until half way through the book.  It’s obvious to the other characters in the book that she isn’t coming back, and they allow Toby to lie to them about why his mom isn’t home yet.  They know the truth but let him lie—even his father.  I can understand this as Toby attempts to deal with his parents splitting up.  What I don’t understand is when an even bigger tragedy, a death, affects Cal, why Toby stops being Toby.  He doesn’t speak to Cal, he hides from him, and refuses to go to any of the services, even after his father has lectured him and warned him.  I didn’t expect this from Toby.  It didn’t make sense for his character to act like this. 

We also had Zachary Beaver, a key character in the book who is extremely negative and closed off, lying about the places he has been, creating up stories about his travels.  He is secretive and sarcastic.   It’s easy to understand why he acts this way based on how his life has been so far.  What isn’t easy to understand is the baptism Toby and Cal give him at the end of the book.  They have decided that this is what Zachary wants, even though he has never said it and refuses to talk about it when Cal brings it up.  How exactly did they come to this conclusion?  I’m not sure.  When the boys plan it and “surprise” him with one, he goes—rather easily.  Where did that come from?  It’s explained that because it’s private and down at the lake that he’s okay with it now—but it still doesn’t sit right with me. 

A lot of this novel just didn’t make sense to me.  I felt like characters were never really fleshed out enough to understand their decisions or actions.  It seemed like it was more of a matter of convenience, and all these contrived events lead up to a blasé ending in which Zachary leaves unceremoniously, Toby goes to visit his mom, and all the issues of the summer have been nicely cleaned up and resolved.  

Upcoming books

Currently I'm reading:

So far, so good.  I should be finished by Sunday and have another post up on Monday (maybe--I won't have a designated writing day this upcoming week so I'll have to try and get it in during my daughter's nap).

After that I'm starting this:

I'm excited about this one.  It's nonfiction (which I don't normally read) and it's about dance.  I tried to read it during the school year, but wasn't able to really focus on it.  Hopefully, since I have time to read right now, I'll be able to focus a little more.

Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko

Ooops!!  I posted earlier this week that I was reading Al Capone Does My Homework.  Little did I know that it's the 3rd book and not the 2nd.  I did figure this out and switched book about one page in.  

Al Capone Shines My Shoes

by Gennifer Choldenko

Dial Books for Young Readers

2009

How does living on Alcatraz with Al Capone and 277 of America’s worst criminals sound to you?  That’s where Moose Flanagan lives with his family, along with the other guards and their families.  In Gennifer Choldenko’s second novel about Moose, Al Capone Shine My Shoes, our main character is in a real fix.  In the first novel, Moose asked for help getting his sister Natalie into a special school.  Al has done that, and now it’s Moose’s turn to pay up.

Choldenko connects the events from Al Capone Does My Shirts seamlessly, without a “last time on Alcatraz…” feeling.  While Moose is dealing with this big favor that Al Capone wants from him, he’s also dealing with friends.  Everyone likes Moose—right? Not always.  Right now, it seems like everyone is upset with him.  When his older sister Natalie comes home for a visit, everything becomes even more complicated.  Lots of adventures ensue as Moose tries to do the right thing and still keep everyone happy.  He’ll learn, though, that trying to make everyone happy doesn’t always work.

I like the pressure that Choldenko puts Moose under.  It makes him uncomfortable as he struggles to be a good person and to deal with the false ideas other have of him.  He is a good kid, but finds himself in predicaments with his friends on a regular basis.  Most of the problems he finds himself in revolve around Al Capone and the fascination they all seem to have with the charismatic prisoner who sends messages to Moose through the laundry.

Weaving historical facts with her own imagination, Choldenko has created a believable space for the Alcatraz kids to grow up in.  She has created characters to live in the real life Alcatraz and woven in real life characters with whom they interact.  One of the most interesting things is the author’s note in which she describes the facts surrounding Alcatraz and how she used them.  We’re given glimpses into some of her interviews with people who really did live on Alcatraz with their families.  She also points out to us the events she has created that are fictional, but also explains where she pulled the ideas from.  This is a glimpse into her craft that I enjoyed and made the story even more enjoyable.

Even if you aren’t a huge historical fiction fan, you’ll enjoy the shenanigans of the Alcatraz kids.  Their characters are believable and, although set in 1935, highly relatable by both boys and girls.  Al Capone Shines My Shoes is a fun read that should not be missed!

Coming Up Next!

I read the first of this series earlier in the year.  I enjoyed it more than I had thought I would and have been anxiously awaiting this second book.  There is a third one as well!

The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

Dutton Books

2012

The Fault in Our Stars is a story about many things.  It’s about love and loss, yes, but it’s also about so much more.  Hazel and Augustus are just teenagers, yet already deciding who they are and what mark they will leave on the world.  Will it be a heroic and inspiring legacy they leave in which the universe will remember them?  Or will it be a hurtful and selfish stain thrown on humanity that keeps their memory alive?  Or when they leave this world, will the memories of them also fade?

Hazel has known she will die for years now.  Diagnosed with terminal cancer, she has been given a gift in the form of a drug trial that has managed to keep her tumors from growing.  She goes through her teenage life carting around an oxygen tank, watching America’s Next Top Model, and devouring her favorite novel An Imperial Affliction over and over again.  When she meets Augustus, a cancer survivor who lost his leg as a side effect, her life changes. 

Although this book is full of death and Hazel’s focus on death could be incredibly depressing, it doesn’t feel like your typical cancer book.  Hazel is not a character out of a Lurlene McDaniel book, positive all the time, with inspiring goals and an I-can-do-this attitude.  She is bleak about her life and honest about her fears of hurting everyone around her.  She tries to minimize the inevitable pain by making as few connections as possible.  This isn’t done in a loving and selfless way.  Instead this fear is about herself, about what type of person that makes her if she allows others to be hurt by her death.  She is a whiny teenager, arguing with her parents, annoyed by their hovering, and desperately trying to keep herself out of a relationship with Augustus.  Small spoiler:  they get together.

All the characters in this novel are lovely.  They are real.  Hazel, Augustus, and their friend Isaac talk openly and honestly about the people in their lives and how much it truly sucks to have cancer.  I appreciated this.  You see their flaws, but love them all the same.  And your heart breaks along with theirs. 

The most intriguing thing about An Imperial Affliction, the book with which Hazel and Augustus are obsessed is the way it ends, without an ending at all really—the main character just stops midsentence.  Hazel is haunted by this, needing to know, not what happened to Anna, the main character (it’s obvious that this character has died) but what happens to everyone else.  Are they okay?  Do they move on?  Are they happy?  This all reflects back on Hazel’s own fear of hurting her family and friends by dying and leaving them behind.  She refers to herself as a grenade that will tear everyone near her apart, and she needs the assurance of An Imperial Affliction’s author to give her that.

There is so much I want to say about this book.  The language is so beautiful, and although in most circumstances I would roll my eyes at the words these teenagers use, it’s believable here.  It’s obvious that Hazel is very smart and she devours books, so it makes sense that she would speak with such verbosity and confidence.  There were moments when I had to pause and go back and read a line or paragraph because it was so beautifully written that it deserved another look. 

I was taken by this book and angry at it as well.  What I assumed when I started reading the novel did not happen and as soon I realized what would happen in this book, I was so incredibly angry.  The characters are written so well and we become so attached to them and we think we are prepared for the worst.  In fact, the entire book has been set up to prepare us, to ease us into the inevitable.  Instead we’re blindsided with reality and it crushes.  I’m not sure if I feel tricked or not.  I’m not sure if I really like this novel for doing this, for eliciting such emotion, or if I feel as if John Green and I had an agreement and then he broke it.  I guess I feel a little bit like Hazel and Augustus when they finish reading An Imperial Affliction.  Cheated.

What's Up Next?

Yep I'm jumping on the bandwagon.  To be honest, it's been on my to read list for awhile now, before it became uber popular, so now that my students are reading it and it's a movie I figured I needed to get this done soon!

Dragonwings by Laurence Yep

So this is another older book and not a new one.  I picked it up because it had was in my classroom when I moved in there, a whole class set of books and I never once read it in the past five years.  I figured it's high time I sat down and read it.  I'm glad I did.

Dragonwings

Laurence Yep

Scholastic Inc., 1975

ISBN:0-590-43450-0

Laurence Yep gives us Moon Shadow, a wonderfully written character who guides us through his journey to America at the turn of the twentieth century and the seven years after as he struggles to understand the ways of American.  Dragonwings introduces to Moon Shadow when he still lives in China with his mother and grandmother while they wait for their father who has traveled to the “demon land” in order to earn money and send it back to them.  One day Moon Shadow learns he will travel with a family friend and meet his father in this strange land.  In America he learns about the evils that many of the Tang people have fallen under in this strange new place.  He also learns about the good that the “demons” can bring with them as he and his father meet new people and work towards their dream of building a flying machine.  Eventually they must strike out alone as their family believes their dream of building Dragonwings is foolish. 

Although a historical fiction novel that paints a picture of how life was for Chinese immigrants at this time, this story is more about dreams and not giving up on them than just about the events that happen to the characters.  It shows us how Moon Shadow and his father grow together as they depend upon one another, but it also shows the pair learning to trust others—even those they have been taught not to trust. 

The Americans are painted as evil creatures who make silly decisions and have no idea of the truth towards the beginning of the novel.  This is how Moon Shadow has learned to understand them based on the way his people describe them, but also based on the way he and the other Tang people are treated by Americans.  We see the danger for the Tang people in simply walking the streets in demon villages, and the manner in which they’re spoken to by Americans.  During a disaster, they are made to leave safe ground and travel each day while officials decide what to do with them, while the Americans stay put and given rations.  Moon Shadow also meets “demons” who are kind and helpful and truly interested in what he and his father have to say.  It is through his father’s open-mindedness and encouragement that Moon Shadow begins to understand that good and evil are spread throughout the world and not concentrated within one group of people.

 

I enjoyed this novel, but I it was a rather slow read.  I found myself skimming some parts just to keep things going.  Even though it spans seven years, I found myself just waiting to see what was going to happen and being frustrated with description or narrative that didn’t seem to move it forward enough for me.  The characters were well formed for the most part, though, and I even felt that one of the evil characters was full enough for us to understand the hatred within him.  It was enough to feel sorry for this character, just as Moon Shadow comes to feel. 

Overall this is a great historical fiction that I did enjoy, but I find it difficult to give it more than three stars because it was difficult to get through.  I recommend this for readers who enjoy good historical fiction and stories about hope, because if there is one thing that Moon Shadow has throughout this story, it’s hope.

Slowly dwindling down

I should have taken a picture at the beginning of the summer, but I didn't think of it until just now.  This is my crate of books for the summer.  There are two levels.  At the beginning of the summer it was completely full across two layers.  Now there is some space there at the left!

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan will pull you into the world of Willow Chance.  Willow has just started middle school, been accused of cheating, started seeing a counselor, and may have just made a friend.  With a love for botany, studying diseases, and the number 7, Willow knows she is different from her peers, but it doesn’t matter since she has loving and caring parents—both of whom die in a car accident, leaving Willow alone.  In come a small army of people to help Willow, people no one would imagine to have helped her before—some of whom she didn’t even know until now.  Her counselor, a Vietnamese family, and a taxi driver, band together for Willow’s sake as she navigates her new life.  What Willow doesn’t know is how much she can help them.

                Just as the characters in Willow’s life are drawn to this strange little girl, the reader is also compelled to care for her.  We get to see Willow as herself before her parents die, somewhat lost in early adolescence, but happy and content with the things she loves.  Even here, when she’s happy, we’re cringing along with her mother when Willow announces that she’ll wear her tan gardening outfit and red hat on the first day at her new middle school.  We already want Willow to do well at her school and we know that it will be impossible for her to fit in. Our heart breaks with hers as she tells us that the old her might have taken delight in the instances of 7, but she doesn’t do that anymore….

                I was put off by the character of her counselor, Dell Duke.  He is written to be an unlikable character. He categorizes his students into different degrees of the strange, never thinks anything through, is easily pushed around by a high school student, and is selfish.  He seems more childish than Willow; however he does have redeemable qualities and he tries, but I still could not get over my dislike of him—even by the end of the book. 

Holly Goldberg Sloan’s Willow Chance is a wonderfully written character.  She has immersed us in rich characters who are believable with real flows, yet for the most part we love them all.  Make sure you keep Kleenex nearby, however, as this was tear jerker thought the entire book.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Did you enjoy the first book in The Lunar Chronicles?  Were you disappointed in the ending?  Don’t worry, in Scarlet, the second book of The Lunar Chronicles, Marissa Meyer twists in the story of Little Red Riding Hood with our previous tale of Cinderella.  With Scarlet’s grandmother missing, we meet Wolf, a stranger in a small town and more than somewhat suspicious.  Despite the warning signs and Scarlet’s feeling of distrust, she and Wolf set out together to find and rescue her grandmother.  Meanwhile Cinder has escaped from prison and is also on the search for Michelle Benoit, Scarlet’s grandmother, hoping to find out more about her past.  Unfortunately her escape has angered Queen Levana who will most definitely have her revenge. 

                At the end of Cinder I was upset, needing to know that there was at least hope that she would be okay.  In Scarlet, Cinder morphs into some kind of cyborg hero with her new arm and leg, shooting darts at enemies, opening hatches, and hot wiring space ships so she and her new companion can escape.  Like any hero, she has a sidekick: pilot and criminal, Thorne who reminds me of a little bit of Wash from the show Firefly (side note—Marissa Meyer is a huge Firefly fan, so this shouldn’t be surprising).  Now she has Iko, her android friend, and Thorne on her side, but it feels like Thorne is waiting to take on a little more shape.  As of right now, he is mostly just there for laughs.

                The Little Red Riding Hood character, Scarlet, is presented as a smart, hot headed, independent young woman, but in reality is an idiot.  She falls in love with Wolf and the relationship that ensues during their 24 hour or so trip to Paris is eye rolling (some of their dialogue was just painful to read). Despite all the warning signs and her misgivings, Scarlet throws herself into Wolf’s embrace and then is angry at herself (as she should be!) when the truth is revealed. 

You will be surprised by the truths that are revealed within Scarlet.  The twists and turns of this fairy tale are well done and although I thought I had figured out the ending, I was only half correct.  My biggest complaint is the flip flopping between so many characters’ points of view.  We not only have Scarlet’s and Cinder’s perspectives, but jump to Prince Kai, Thorne, Wolf, and Queen Levana.  It was somewhat jarring to be thrown into some of these points of view for just one or two chapters throughout the entire book and I question whether that was necessary.

Overall, book two in this series has made me want to immediately pick up the third book, Cress.  Meyer has created some moving characters whose lives you really care about and a plot that keeps going.  I am looking forward to when I get to read Cress.