Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

First Sunday Daughter Reviews: April 2016

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Well, after a week of being indecisive, the weather has finally settled on it being spring here. I like spring in Kansas. It’s short, but I do love the flowers and the leaves coming out, and the general greenness that I miss during the winter.

As for the girls, they are getting some reading done. Both C and E are reading this for English class:

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So far, they say it’s a bit boring. I’m afraid I’ve hyped it up too much, and they won’t like it. I hope they do. *fingers crossed*

A is re-reading this because she has to read a William Allen White book (that’s our state award), and we had this kicking around the house:

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She says Sierra is her favorite character because she doesn’t care about the game and just reads the entire time. Good reasons.

K and Hubby are reading this:

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They’re not too far into it (they just started a few days ago), but she’s enjoying it so far. She’s aware enough to know what’s coming at the end, but she’s enjoying discovering it for the first time.

What are your kids reading?

Monthly Round-Up: March 2016

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It was a Middle Grade month, one in which I snuck books in between the cracks. I made some headway on KidlitCon, with a great logo, designed by Sarah Stevenson, a date — October 14-15 — and a hotel. Stay tuned, because we’ve got a registration form coming soon! (It’s work, but it’s manageable so far, much to my surprise!)

My favorite this month was (and is; I keep gushing about it to people at work):

rebelofthesands

Rebel of the Sands

So. Good.

As for the rest:

YA

tellmethreethings

Tell Me Three Things

Adult Fiction:

drivingheat bollywoodaffair darkershade
Driving Heat
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Bollywood Affair (audio book)

Middle Grade:

spiritweekshowdown charmedchildren wildrobot aintsoawful clementine hourofbees alliefirstbooked
The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle
Spirit Week Showdown
The Wild Robot
Completely Clementine
Booked
Hour of the Bees
Allie, First at Last

What was your favorite this month?

Allie, First at Last

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alliefirstby Angela Cervantes
First sentence: “Blame it on Junko Tabei.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at my place of employment. G
Content: It’s a great book for middle readers, short (but not dumbed-down) with no romance or awkward situations. It’s in the Middle Grade (3-5 grade) section of the bookstore.

Allie comes from a highly competitive family. Her great-grandfather was the first World War II Veteran to get a Congressional Medal of Honor. Her mother has won best anchorwoman four years running. Her big sister is a national debate champion. Her big brother is a soccer star, and her younger sister is an aspiring actress. However, Allie feels like she’s just a string of flops. She can’t win anything, most recently the Science Fair. So when the Trailblazer Award comes along — with a fancy trophy and a $200 prize — she’s determined to win.

This was a cute, inter-generational book without the whole mystical Mexican thing. (Mexicans, yes, but not mystical at all.) I liked Allie’s relationship with her Bisabuela, and how he was able to guide Allie through life experience and stories. I liked that there was a nice moral at the end, but the book itself didn’t seem preachy at all. (I didn’t like that all the kids seem to have cell phones and were super-privileged, but that seemed to fit into the story okay, so by the end I let that go.)

It really is a sweet little story.  Plus: the author is from Kansas, which is nice.

 

Tell Me Three Things

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tellmethreethingsby Julie Buxbaum
First sentence: “Seven hundred and thirty-three days after my mom died, forty-five days after my dad eloped with a stranger he met on the Internet, thirty days after we then up and moved to California, and only seven days after starting as a junior at a brand-new school where I know approximately no one, an email arrives.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: April 5, 2016
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Content: There’s a lot of swearing, including a dozen f-bombs, some teen drug use and drinking, as well as talk of sex. It’ll be in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Two years after Jessie’s mom’s’ death, her father decides to move on, marrying a woman from L. A. that he met on one of the grief chat boards. What that means for Jessie, however, is being uprooted before her senior year, forced to leave her Chicago home and friends and forced to move in with a stepmother she doesn’t know and a stepbrother who loathes her and go to a private school where everything she does is wrong. Then she gets an email out of the blue from someone who calls himself “Somebody Nobody” and they start a conversation. One that, over the course of the fall, becomes increasingly important to Jessie. `

The big mystery, though, is who this Somebody Nobody is. Jessie’s pretty sure it’s a guy, but which one? And, as they get closer and she spills more of her secrets to him, will the ever meet?

I fell head over heels in love. Sure, it’s a bit 99% with the private school and the rich California kids, and sure there’s the whole dead-parent thing, but it’s a good picture of a girl trying to get past her mom’s death (rather than her mom dying) and moving on. and I liked how Buxbaum dealt with the whole blended family thing. But, what I really liked was the romance. I adored the conversations between SN and Jessie (is it bad that I peeked at the end to find out if it was who I hoped it was?) and I felt that Buxbaum found a creative and clever way to make their relationship grow without it feeling trite or cliche.

It really was a delightful read.

Hour of the Bees

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hourofbeesby Lindsey Eagar
First sentence: “Something flies too close to my ear.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: It’s a tricky story, moving between “reality” and “magic” for much of it. Though there’s really nothing content-wise that would be inappropriate for younger readers, they might lose interest with the plotting. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore, though I’d give it to a 4th or 5th grader if they expressed interest.

All Carol wants to do the summer before 7th grade is hang out with her friends and have pool parties and sleepovers, but instead she’s stuck out at her grandfather’s ranch in southwest New Mexico, helping her family pack him up in order to send him to a nursing home. Not exactly her idea of fun. And it doesn’t help that her grandfather is suffering from dementia, either. It’s shaping up to be a long, hot, boring summer.

Except, once she gets there, Carol finds out that her grandfather is full of crazy, magical stories, ones that may or may not be true. And, over the course of the summer, Carol decides that maybe it’s not too bad.

Okay, that’s not exactly all there is to it. There’s a whole thread about a drought, and a tree, and bees taking away the rain that, honestly, I didn’t find all that interesting.

Maybe I should start with the good: I really like that there’s a book out there that deals with grandparents, dementia and death. It’s something that children do need to deal with, and it’s good that there’s a book that does take something like moving a grandparent out of the house and into a nursing home as well as tackling the mood and personality swings that come with dementia.

That said, this smack WAY too much of the Magical Mexican for me. Truthfully, it may just be me (though as I was relating it to E — who’s Mexican — she said, “Um. No.” But she may have been biased from my retelling); please let me know if you read it and you think I’m wrong here. But, I felt like the whole thing of “needing to get back to your roots” and the whole magical realism story thing just didn’t work. Yes, roots are important. But, so is change and growth. You don’t need to sacrifice one for the other (and I felt like Eagar was coming down firmly on Family and Roots are Very Important, especially since we’re Mexican).  It just felt… forced. Off. Not quite natural. And then there was Carol’s whole flipping from being a city girl to being a ranch hand at the end. I just didn’t get WHY. Was it her grandfather’s stories? Where did this deep connection to her roots come from? Why did it happen so suddenly, and so deeply that she would do drastic and rash things at the end? It didn’t make sense to me. (Again: it may just be me. I’ll admit I skimmed a lot.)

At any rate, it ended up not being one that I really loved.

Booked

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bookedby Kwame Alexander
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at work.
Release date: April 5, 2016
Content: There’s a wee bit of romance and some difficult situations with bullying and divorce. Give it to readers ages 10 and up. It will be in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

The thing that I admire most about The Crossover was the style of it all. The way the poetry flowed on the page, the way that Alexander captured the rhythm of his characters in the ebb and flow of the poetry.

And lest we think lightning only strikes once, Alexander gives us Booked, repeating much of what I loved about his first book.

Instead of basketball, this time Alexander immerses us in the world of competitive soccer. Nick and his best friend Coby are extremely good, playing not only in competitive leagues but also for fun on the weekend plus the FIFA video game. It’s their whole life. Except, for Nick, it’s not that simple. His parents are going through a rough patch, and they separate so his mother can go help train a horse for the Kentucky Derby. His dad is a linguist and insists that Nick read this dictionary that he wrote, something that Nick resents. And, he’s bullied by these twins at school. There are bright spots: his mother makes him take this etiquette class, but there’s this girl he kind of likes (and who kind of likes him back). And the librarian at school is WAY cool. So, maybe Nick can find a balance in his life after all.

Not only is the story complex and compelling, I again, adored the poetry. Alexander has a way of making something as “stuffy” as poetry accessible and cool, which is wonderful.  I loved how the voice and the form of the poems changed depending on the characters (Nick was ostensibly our narrator, but there were appearances from other characters as well). I loved the footnotes with definitions of some of the bigger words (including snarky asides).  It’s fun and engaging, and yet Alexander tackles tough subjects like bullying and divorce with grace and ease. It’s not just a smart way to get reluctant readers interested in books or unsure kids interested in poetry. It’s a fantastic book.

Three Books for Women’s History Month

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In other news, before I begin: we’ve got a date, a theme, a logo, AND a hotel for KidlitCon. This being in charge thing isn’t half-bad. 99% of that reason is because I’ve got an excellent team cheering me on, giving me (indispensable) advice and basically helping me manage this. Now, if only I had someone to do the dishes.. (Wait a minute…)

You can check out all the KidlitCon goodies at the website.  I hope to see you there! (Or here…)

I centered this month’s three books (no surprise) on Women’s History month. And even though I didn’t have a choice for older teens, I really like these three books. A lot.

9780786851423Elizabeth Started All the Trouble by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Matt Faulkner- A history of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the suffrage movement. It’s not only fascinating, it’s fun to read! (It helps that Matt Faulkner illustrated my favorite Thanksgiving book: Thank You, Sarah!)

9780872866836Rad American Women by Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl – When I met the authors (and illustrator? I don’t remember) at KidlitCon back in Sacramento, I thought that this would be a good book. Now, it’s my go-to when people come in looking for a good feminist read for their kids (and surprisingly enough there are a few here in Wichita!). Nominally an alphabet book (“C is for Carol Burnett”), this book also has brief biographies as well as single-sentence statements on each woman, so it can be enjoyed by varying age levels. Be sure to check out the website as well!
978014751812550 Unbelievable Women and Their Fascinating (and True!) Stories by Saundra Mitchell – This one’s not out until the end of the month, but it’s an excellent collection of facts, art and biographies of 50 women from Catherine the Great to Ruth Bader Ginsberg and more. Great for upper elementary through middle school.
There are a ton of great books out there for women’s history month. What would you have chosen?

 

Completely Clementine

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clementineby Sara Pennypacker
First sentence: “As soon as I woke up Monday morning, I flopped onto the floor with my drawing pad.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged from the ARC shelves at work.
Others in the series: Clementine, The Talented Clementine, Clementine’s Letter, Clementine, Friend of the Week, Clementine and the Family Meeting, Clementine and the Spring Trip (I thought I’ve read them all, but I guess I missed one!)
Content: It’s short, there’s lots of illustrations, and it’s perfect for beginning readers. You don’t have to read the series in order, but it does help a little.

I have a confession: this book came out in hardcover a year ago and I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. I couldn’t, not after eight years of loving Clementine, believe that it was coming to an end. So, I put it off. And put it off. But the paperback came out a bit ago, and I got brave and decided that maybe good things can come to an end.

Interestingly enough, that’s the theme of this last Clementine book. It’s the end of 3rd grade, and Clementine doesn’t want to move on. She doesn’t want to leave her teacher and move on to fourth grade. It’s all so new and scary. It also doesn’t help that she’s not talking to her father because she’s become concerned about animal rights and he won’t become vegetarian like her. Oh, and her mother is about to have another baby.

Pennypacker does with this one what she’s done in all the Clementine books: gives us a normal, every-day kid with a normal, every-day family and makes it super interesting. Clementine is such an affable character in all her normalness, that every kid can relate. Change is hard, and Pennypacker captures that resistance in Clementine. It’s charming, sweet, endearing, and cute. All the things I’ve come to expect from this series.

I’m just sad to see it end.

The Wild Robot

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wildrobotby Peter Brown
First sentence: “Our story begins on the ocean, with the wind and rain and thunder and lightning and waves.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: April 5, 2016
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: It’s fairly large print, with illustrations. It’s good for third grade and up (and is in the middle grade section of the bookstore), but would make a great read-aloud for younger kids.

After a hurricane, the ROZZUM unit 7134 robot washes up on the shore of an uninhabited island. The robot is inadvertently activated by some otters, and Roz (as she introduces herself) comes on. She doesn’t know that she isn’t supposed to be on the island, so she sets about trying to figure out what this place is and how to fit in. She initially meets resistance from the animals: they call her a monster and try to run her off the island. But, through time and some cleverness, Roz learns to adapt. She makes friends with the beavers. She accidentally orphans a goose, but then adopts him as her son. She learns how to fit in.

There really isn’t much to this book; there’s a lot of narration and an intrusive narrator that I didn’t mind terribly much. Because of that, I think this would probably make a better read-aloud than one kids are going to want to pick up. That said, I tossed it in K’s direction for a book report, and so far she’s enjoying it. It helps, I think, that the chapters are short (some as little as one page) and there are illustrations liberally scattered throughout.

In the end, I found I really liked it. I came to really care about Roz and her relationship with the animals. And while I didn’t really care for the abrupt ending (sequel, anyone?), I cared about the journey. And it was an interesting mix of tech — Roz was able to use her computer database to find out answers — and nature — the winter was rough, animals (even though they were talking) died.

A very intriguing book, in the end.

Audiobook: The Bollywood Affair

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bollywoodaffairby Sonali Dev
Read by Priya Avyar
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: Oh there’s some sexytimes in this one. One on-screen, and a couple of off-screens. Not to mention being littered with f-bombs (one character in particular!). It would be in the adult fiction section of the bookstore if we had it.

I was in the mood for something Indian, and this one had been on my radar thanks to the YAckers (even though it wasn’t our book group book) and I got an unexpected credit on Audiobooks.com, so I thought I’d use it for this. I had no idea what I was getting into.

Mili Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in 20 years, not since their wedding when she was 4 years old. She’s spent her whole life working to be the best wife, serving his family, being a dutiful daughter-in-law. Now she has an opportunity to go to America for an eight-month class, and she takes it, thinking it will help make her a desirable, modern wife.

Samir Rathod is a hotshot Bollywood director, and playboy, not really caring about the hearts he breaks. The only people in his life he truly cares about is his foster mother and his half-brother. And so, when his half-brother sends him to America to get an annulment from his “wife”, Samir willingly goes, thinking it will be an easy task.

But once in America, Samir gets pulled into Mili’s orbit, and ends up taking care of her (she falls off a bike fairly early on), cooking for her, helping her help her friend elope, falling in love with her. And soon, their lives are so intertwined that they realize that they just can’t live without each other.

On the one hand, this was SO bad. Mili’s a cry-er (seriously: SO. MANY. TEARS.) and I swear if I ever hear “his bulging muscles” or “her tender golden eyes” or “flashed with anger” again, I might just scream. It’s totally a bodice ripper with saris. But, perhaps, that’s what saved it. I loved all the little details from the food (yum!) to the culture to the interactions between the characters. (Not to mention the narrators spot-on Indian-English accents, all of which were different and unique.) And yes, I did find myself (in spite of the sappy language) rooting for Samir and Mili, wanting them to put aside their differences, their cultural hangups, and just GET TOGETHER ALREADY.

Even with all the tiring romance-y language, it was a ton of fun. And I’m glad I read it.