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?

Wildfire Run

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by Dee Garretson
ages: 10+
First sentence: “The roar came from deep in the earth, growing louder as it raced toward the surface.”
Support your independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me by the publisher.

Luke Brockett is the president’s son. It’s not too bad; he doesn’t get to see his dad much, but he has really cool Secret Service agents hanging around. Not to mention a pretty cool best friend, Theo, who loves to work on robots as much as Luke does. They’re up at Camp David, enjoying some quiet time, when an earthquake along the New Madrid fault wreaks havoc in much of Missouri.

They feel aftershocks in Maryland as well, and it’s those aftershocks (as well as some terrible coincidences) that start a wildfire in the forest surrounding Camp David. Soon, the situation is dire, and by another string of terrible coincidences, Luke, Theo and the daughter of one of the chefs, Callie, are stranded on their own, with the fire closing in, and their lives depend on figuring out how to get out of Camp David.

This book read like an action movie: fast paced, maybe a little bit predictable, and incredibly tense. There wasn’t much character development, though there was a bit for Luke; mostly it was the characters jumping through one hoop after another to solve the big problem of how to get to safety. Don’t get me wrong: it was both a gripping concept and fascinating to watch the three kids problem solve. I’m not sure how plausible it all is, but I’m also not sure it really mattered. Implausable? So what? It’s intense, it’s fun, it’s a page-turner.

Perfect for when you need something exciting.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Mockingbird

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by Kathryn Erskine
ages: 10+
First sentence: “It looks like a one-winged bird crouching in the corner of our living room.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Caitlin is Working On Getting It. It’s a daily process for her, since she has Asperger’s syndrome, and certain things — like figuring out how others are feeling, or reading facial expressions — don’t come easily to her. It used to be that her older brother, Devon, would explain things for her and help her cope with the strange and the difficult. But now, because of a horrible tragedy at his middle school, Devon is no longer around. Caitlin’s father is a basket case, and the only person left to help Caitlin figure out everything — though what she’s looking for, mostly, is Closure — is the counselor at school, Mrs. Brook.

I’m not especially well read in books about the autism spectrum, but I have read a few, and Erskine captured the experience of a high functioning autistic child extremely well. Caitlin’s voice was the strongest thing about the book; in both her inner dialogue and experiences, as well as the way she related to other people, her personality and her challenges came through loud and clear. Erskine’s use of capitals and all caps particularly jumped out at me. Instead of being distracting, it added to Caitlin’s character.

If it were just that, I would have loved the book with absolutely no qualms. However — and kudos to Erskine for being up front about this — this is a book with a Message. Mind you, I don’t disagree with the message: I anti-violence, and I am all for understanding one another. That said, books that are so message heavy, whatever the message, don’t sit well with me. I was never able to get past the message hammer on my head: killing. people. ruins. lives. it’s. hard. to. cope. after. a. loved. one. dies. understanding. others. helps. Yes, we know, thank you very much. I understand the need for conflict; and even understand the need to talk about violent tragedies. But I felt like the message came first in this case, and the story was only a vehicle to getting that message across. I think the book would have sat better with me if those two things were reversed.

Aside from the message hammer, it was a good read. There’s a lot to think about, and I do hope that kids actually get around to picking this one up (and it’s not just one that adults read and love and give awards to, but kids never crack open). Even if it’s only to experience Caitlin as a character.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Sunday Salon: Pulling Back and Redefining

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I have been feeling quite unsettled the last few weeks. Disconnected. Unhappy with my blog, with blogging, with what I’ve got going here. Part of it is my annual blogging blues; I do get this every year, and find a need to reassess. Part of it is all the crazy reading I’ve been doing for the Cybils. But, either way, I am thinking I need to find a new way to approach my blog.

For the past three years, I’ve read over 100 books. I think that has a lot to do with my dissatisfaction. If I’m spending so much time being obsessive about how many books I read, I can’t spend the time sitting back and enjoying them. So, I’m going to consciously slow down in 2011. My goal is to read half as many books as I did this year, to savor them more, and to spend more time thinking about them and more time writing my reviews, so they’re actually interesting instead of dashed off quickly.

I’m still going to do a few of the challenges I like: the Once Upon a Time challenge, maybe the RIP challenge, the 48 hour challenge, and the book swap I’ve set up. But, that’s it. I’m going to keep trying to push my reading boundaries, finding books by and about people of color and GLBTQ, but I’m also going sit in my comfort zone and enjoy those books. I’ve decided that there’s enough people out there reading the new and hip books that I’m not needed for that, so I’m going to stop (or at least severely cut back) taking books from publishers. I’m going to clear off my bookshelves, finally getting to all those books that have been piling up for the last several years.

I’m going to visit blogs more often, actually read posts instead of skimming them (a very bad habit I’ve gotten in to) and comment more. I’m going to try and enjoy the conversation, and work harder at building relationships.

In short, I’m going to try and find what I liked about blogging six years ago when I started. Here’s to pulling back!

The Ring of Solomon

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by Jonathan Stroud
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Sunset above the olive groves.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Ah, Bartimaeus. I’ve missed you.

I’ve missed your snarky footnotes, your adventures, your soft spot for humans, your insights. I could go back and read the other three books, true, but I’m so happy to have you back in a new story.

Stroud re-imagines Solomon and his reign in Jerusalem, using the same world of magicians and spirits he created for the previous Bartimaeus books. The basic idea is this: what if Solomon had a ring, something which accesses magic more terrible, more powerful than any other magician. This allows him to create peace and prosperity. However, he also employs magicians, some of which are not too nice. It’s one of these that summons Bartimaeus and keeps him in servitude. Of course, Bartimaeus being Bartimaeus, he tends to get into trouble a lot. As a punishment, he’s off in the desert cleaning up bandits. Which is where he meets Asmira.

She’s not any ordinary girl, but one of the personal guards of the Queen of Sheba. Sent to Jerusalem on a quest to assassinate Solomon and steal the ring, she’s fairly single minded in her quest. She falls in with Bartimaeus and between the two of them, they attempt the impossible.

It’s a great book for the same reason the rest of the trilogy is great. It’s as fabulously imagined world, and Baritmaeus is a grand character. There’s action and adventure, loathesome bad guys, and an undercurrent of intriguing and deep ideas to think about. It falls apart a bit at the end, but, mostly it lives up to the reputation of the Bartimaeus books.

And you can’t beat that.

Enola Holmes: The Case of the Gypsy Goodbye

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by Nancy Springer
ages: 11+
First sentence: “Mister Sherlock, I’m that glad to see you, I am, and that obliged.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I have heard of Enola for a while. I know Kerry at ShelfElf loves her, and has sung her praises often. I have meant to get to Enola before, even checked out previous books in the series once or twice, but I’ve never actually read any.

For the record: starting with the last book in the series is not suggested. That said, I adored Enola. The much younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, she’s as talented and brilliant in her deductive reasoning as they are. She’s 14 (nearly 15) years old, in hiding in London (from her brothers, especially Mycroft, who want to send her to a girls boarding school) since her mother disappeared a year ago. She finds missing persons, she’s brilliant at disguises, and she’s a winning character.

In this book, she takes on the case of the missing Lady Blanchefleur, who has suddenly disappeared. It turns out, however, that Sherlock is also working on this case, and after however long she’s been avoiding them, they actually confront each other. As a subplot, there’s a mysterious message from their mother, which Enola has to decipher. There’s adventure and suspense, humor and mystery , and a fitting ending for what I assume was a good series.

Now to go back and read the rest of them in the right order.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Moon Over Manifest

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by Clare Vanderpool
ages: 11+
First sentence: “The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

First off: I’ve got a local author! YAY! I really had no idea (honestly, I get the book notes from our local independent bookstore, but I’m not always the best about reading it thoroughly, so I missed it when they announced her) when I started the book, but it’s set in Southeast Kansas, so I flipped to the author blurb to see what credentials this author had for writing about Kansas. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find out that she’s here in Wichita. Pleasantly surprised is too mild. I was quite excited!

I do have to admit that I was a bit anxious as well: what if I didn’t like the book?

I shouldn’t have worried.

Alternating between two time periods, the Great Depression in 1936 and World War I in 1918, Vanderpool tells the story of the small fictional town of Manifest in southeastern Kansas. Nominally, it’s the story of 12-year-old Abilene Tucker who has spent her life traveling the rails with her father, Gideon. Then, soon after her 12th birthday, he up and sends her back to Manifest, a town he’s never talked about but has some connection with, to live with an old friend of his so he can go work in Nebraska. Feeling abandoned, Abilene decides what she needs to do is figure out what connection her dad has with this town, and why he’s sent her there. She ends up working for an old Hungarian fortune teller, and in return she tells Abilene stories, slowly unveiling the mystery of her father’s past. And, by digging up the past, Abilene manages to pull a town that was slowly falling apart back together.

It’s an excellent portrait of a time and a place, making Kansas come alive rather than just being an Everyplace like it usually is in novels. (We need someplace non committal. How about Kansas? ) I could tell that Vanderpool knows her stuff (well, she is a native Kansan; she says that this was based on memories of her grandparents), and loves the place and its small, rural towns. Additionally, she’s created some winning characters; Abilene is a smart, fiesty girl, one with a nose for adventure. But it’s not solely a “girl” book: the two main characters from 1918, Jinx and Ned, are just as engaging as the girls from 1936. Vanderpool manages to balance the two time periods, capturing the essence of each, and transitions seamlessly between them.

It’s a captivating read. I’m really looking forward to Vanderpool’s next work. And not just because she’s a local author.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Jellaby

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by Kean Soo
ages: 9+
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

This monster, this book, is very cute. I fell in love with Jellaby (it’s the monster on the cover) as soon as it appeared in the book. It’s charming, it’s cute in a monsterish sort of way, and made me want to wrap it up and put it in my pocket.

It’s just the beginning of a story — I need to find the next part; I want to know what happens! — but it’s a good beginning. Portia is a girl who’s father is missing (did he die? did he disappear?), and she’s not adapting to that well. She’s struggling in school, her mother leaves her alone a lot. And then she finds Jellaby. It’s a friend (she makes another friend in the bullied kid, Jason Tham), someone to keep her company. And then, by random chance, she discovers that Jellaby is a lost soul, too. Together her and Jason concoct a plan to get Jellaby back to his home.

That plan is just put in motion in this book. It’s really mostly background and set up, though it’s done incredibly well. There’s something deep going on in the book, even if I can’t quite figure out what it is. Which means, I’m definitely curious as to where the story is going, and the adventures Portia, Jason and Jellaby will have.

Joey Fly, Private Eye in Big Hairy Drama

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by Aaron Reynolds/Illus. by Neil Numberman
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Life in the bug city.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent by the author

Joey Fly and his sidekick, Sammy Stingtail are on the case. Again. This time, a big-time (and big) theater owner is asking him to find his main star, the four-winged, long-legged Greta Divawing. Joey and Sammy are up to it of course (they’re up to anything). It’s just a matter of tracking down the bug who did it.

The question is: which bug would that be?

This book is much like the first in the series: smart and fun and interesting. It’s well-written and funny, and has elements that will appeal to both boys and girls (mine were very excited to see it when it came in the mail!). The story has some great twists and turns, plus sliding a bit of educational information in there. There’s a little bit for everyone, but nothing feels shortchanged or slighted. And visually, it’s quite engrossing: it’s worth stopping and poring over the frames to find all the little things Numberman has hidden in there.

In short, it’s a great little series.

As an added bonus, the author/illustrator are offering up these ornaments to print off and cut out. Click to embiggen, and enjoy!

The Great Book Swap of 2011

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I’ve seen this idea of swapping book lists floating around for a couple of weeks now, and (since I think I’m going to forgo most challenges next year) I got to thinking that it might be a fun idea to throw my towel in the ring. So I rounded up two of my bookish friends from my online book group, Corinne and Tricia, and we all swapped lists.

Here they are:

Corinne’s for me:
On Fortune’s Wheel by Cynthia Voigt
Precious Bane by Mary Webb
either The Zookeeper’s Wife or The Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
Pastwatch or Wyrms by Orson Scott Card
Bonus: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

Tricia’s for me:
The Lincolns ~ Candace Fleming
Unwind ~ Neal Shusterman
Crossing to Safety ~ Wallace Stegner
Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie ~ Jordan Sonnenblick
The Power of One ~ Bryce Courtenay

Corinne’s for Tricia:
Davita’s Harp by Chaim Potok
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
A Woman in Berlin by anonymous (okay, this is an intense book, it floored me and sickened me and made me think about a lot of things) or Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn
Quest for a Maid by Frances Mary Hendry

I’ve read the first two and Refuge, but it’s been a very long time, so I think I’m going to reread them as well.

Tricia’s for Corinne:
The Only Alien on the Planet ~ Kristen D. Randle
The Wednesday Wars ~ Gary D. Schmidt
Sabriel ~ Garth Nix
The Shadow of the Wind ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Letters to a Young Poet ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m excited to read all of these!

Advent Tour: O Tannenbaum

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I haven’t thought to talk about our Christmas tree before, because usually we wait to put it up after A’s birthday. Which means, if I generally choose the first Sunday in December (and I do), then I don’t think about my tree as a viable advent calendar topic.

But this year, because my husband is off to Hong Kong, we put the tree up early. And I realized, that there’s a story I could tell.

This is our tree:

I don’t know if it shows, but my tree is not what you’d call elegant. Or put together. It’s a hand-me over, 9 feet tall, and leans slightly to the left; in fact, we’ve warned the kids that if they do too much bouncing around, the tree will fall over (we know this from experience). It’s not color coordinated, and I’m sure Martha Stewart would not approve. However, what my tree has going for it is that each ornament (or at least most) have a story behind them. I can tell you where we got each and every ornament and why it’s hanging on the tree. Okay, sure, I’m getting older, and some of the stories are a bit fuzzy. But it’s one of the things I like most about our tree: it’s got stories.

Let me tell you a few.

This one was the first one Hubby and I purchased, on our honeymoon to San Francisco. We saw it sitting in the gift shop of the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, and knew we had to get it.

This one is another early one: I cross-stitched it because of Hubby’s love of cows. I think there should be more cows at Christmas, personally.

While we’re talking old ornaments, this is one of the oldest on the tree. It’s a shrinky dink, made in 1973, when I was one. I’m constantly amazed that it’s still in one piece (though the words “Merry Christmas 1973” on it are are fading). I do still love seeing it on the tree, though.

Another homemade one… if I had a chance and the money to collect anything, I would probably collect Santas/Father Christmases. I’m quite enamored with the whole mythology of Santa, and how he’s represented in different cultures. (There are a lot of Santas on our tree, in various forms, as a result.)

One of the other things we’ve done is get each one of the girls their own ornament for each year. We’re doing it so they have something to take with them when they move out, but, like everything else on the tree, they have their own stories, too.

This one of M’s we bought when we stopped over in Salt Lake City the Christmas of 2000. I was so excited by the stopover that I took her to see Ballet West’s Nutcracker, which happens to be my favorite. They had a gift shop, and so we had to pick out an ornament. She got the Sugar Plum Fairy. (We also have a Nutcracker ornament from the same place, but he was bought much earlier, and is a bit worse for the wear these days.)

This one of C’s was one that I painted (not well, but there it is) the Christmas she adored The Snowman. She was 20 months old, and it was her favorite movie and favorite book. We wanted to remember that.

This one of A’s was a pair of baby shoes that her grandma sent her the year she was born. (She’s our December baby, if you haven’t figured that out yet.) They were much, much too nice to wear, so we tied the laces together and threw them on the tree. Perfect.

K, being the youngest, only has a few ornaments (she wanted to know why she didn’t have very many). This one we picked up at a craft fair in Coeur d’Alene a couple years back. It’s sculpted out of candle wax. I’m not sure she picked this design out; it may have been picked out for her. Still, the detail is amazing.

And being parents of school-aged children, there’s a handful of odd little school ornaments. Things they make in class, and then bring home to throw on the tree. The girls love seeing them as they come out of the box, and so I don’t have the heart to throw them away.

And finally, our tree wouldn’t be our tree without our fireman. He was sent to us by Hubby’s older sister, many years ago. I have no idea why she sent him, but we immediately fell in love: what tree shouldn’t have a guardian fireman? We stick him near the top so he can keep an eye on all the other ornaments, and protect the tree from any danger.

Merry Christmas!

Be sure to check out the other stops on today’s tour:

Veronica @ The First Draft