FINISHED:

Clifford, Eth. (1979). Help! I'm a prisoner in the library. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

[Well, even though this one takes place in Indianapolis - and the library in the story was modeled after a library that was on the spot where the Children's Museum is now - this thin tome, which I read in a day, was nothing to write home about... although, I'm writing about it here. A couple of girls get stranded in a car in a blizzard while their father goes off to get gas. One of them needs to pee, so they head into a children's library and get locked inside. SO many things happen where you're like, "Just do ___!" Sure it's a book intended for 3rd graders, but still...]

STARTED:

McCarthy, Cormac. (2006). The road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

[Squeezing in another "grown-up" book.]

FINISHED:

DuPrau, Jeanne. (2003). The city of Ember. New York: Random House.

[Been on my radar for a while now and finally picked it up and read it after I saw that the movie version is on its way. I was sucked in from the VERY FIRST PAGE. The introduction begins with a whiz-BANG premise: some "builders" construct an underground city with artificial light and say that the people who live there should be able to survive for over 200 years. They put some "instructions" into a sealed box that will open by itself in 225 years or so, and entrust the box to the first mayor of the city, telling her that she needs to pass it down to successive mayors without telling anyone else about it. The 7th mayor contracts a deadly disease and tries to break the box open, hoping that it will contain a cure for his disease, but dies before he can open it, and before he can tell anyone else about it. The box, a la "Raiders of the Lost Ark", gets pushed into the back of a closet and opens itself many years down the road. FASCINATING. While the book occasionally looses momentum, the beginning and end are pretty darn exciting, with the last page ending in such a major cliffhanger that I HAD to get books 2 & 3 of the series from the library today.]

STARTED:

Clifford, Eth. (1979) Help! I'm a prisoner in the library. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

[A quick classic that I've never read.]

FINISHED:



Niffenegger, Audrey (2003) The time traveler's wife. San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage.

[This adult novel had been on my radar for awhile. It took me a bit longer to read than I thought it would - I'm used to reading 2 or 3 YA/jF novels a week - but am impressed by how quickly I DID read it. Before I started this MLIS program, it would take me a month and a half to get through a book of this size, but, now that I'm getting in the habit of reading more, it only took me a week. Impressive. Anyway, the book itself was REALLY good. An intriguing premise that was well executed. Highlights for me included the fact that it takes place in Chicago, a lot of the action takes place in Chicago in the late '80s/early '90s - exactly the time that I was getting into going into Chicago and going to the North side for shows, music shops, and military surplus stores. Plus, the main character - the time traveler - is a librarian and has great taste in music. It gets a little mired in silly details here and there - WAY too many names dropped of specific Chicago restaurants, streets, El lines, concert venues, etc. I'm SO glad that you did your homework, Ms. Niffenegger, but you don't need to PROVE it to us so blatently. In addition, sometimes the focus shifted away from what I would've like to have heard about, but, that's my personal opinion. Despite the fact that I thought that the time traveler's wife was a bit of a spoiled rich girl who came off as a pretentious artist as well, all in all, I'm quite glad that I read it, it's going to stay in my brain for quite awhile, and I'm going to make Brian read it next. Oh, and I just saw that it is being make into a movie - so I'll definitely go see that.]

STARTED:

DuPrau, Jeanne (2003) The city of Ember. New York: Random House.

[Back to the jF...]

FINISHED:



Schlitz, Laura Amy (2006) A drowned maiden's hair. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

[FANTASTIC book. SO should've been the Newbery Award winner last year. An orphan girl, Maud, is adopted by a trio of old sisters who want Maud to help them with their seance business. Great characters, setting, and descriptions.]

STARTED:

Niffenegger, Audrey (2003) The time traveler's wife. San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage.

[Brian suggested that it was time for me to read a "grown up" book...]

STARTED & FINISHED:



Sanchez, Alex (2005) Rainbow road. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Black, Holly, & DiTerlizzi, Tony. (2003) The Spiderwick chronicles: The seeing stone. New York: Simon & Schuster. Book 2 in the series.

Black, Holly, & DiTerlizzi, Tony. (2003) The Spiderwick chronicles: Lucinda's secret. New York: Simon & Schuster. Book 3 in the series.

Black, Holly, & DiTerlizzi, Tony. (2004) The Spiderwick chronicles: The ironwood tree. New York: Simon & Schuster. Book 4 in the series.

Black, Holly, & DiTerlizzi, Tony. (2004) The Spiderwick chronicles: The wrath of Mulgarath. New York: Simon & Schuster. Book 5 in the series.

[Resisted reading this 5 part series for a while because it looked like a Lemony Snicket ripoff. But, decided to give them a shot when I heard they were becoming a film. Not bad - really, the 5 short books could've been compiled into a single book. Fun, though not ground-breaking. The best thing about them is the illustrations - with the twin boys' hair being the absolute highlight.]

STARTED:

Schlitz, Laura Amy (2006) A drowned maiden's hair. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

STARTED & FINISHED:


Clare, Cassandra (2007) City of bones. New York: Margaret K. McElderry.

[Reviewed for ACL - http://www.bayviews.org/]

Black, Holly, & DiTerlizzi, Tony. (2003) The Spiderwick chronicles: The field guide. New York: Simon & Schuster.

STARTED:

Knox, Elizabeth (2006) Dreamhunter. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

GAVE UP ON:

Raskin, Ellen (1978) The westing game. New York: Puffin Books.

[Newbery Award winner? Too confusing with too many characters speaking at once. Maybe I'll try it some other time...]