FINISHED:

Springer, Nancy. (2006). The case of the missing marquess: an Enola Holmes mystery. New York: Sleuth Philomel/Penguin.

[Was surprised by how much I REALLY liked this one. For one thing, this woman can WRITE. There are some descriptive passages here that are just MESMERIZING. Enola is the little sister of Sherlock, the sister that no one dares talk about because she came along SO late. Here, her and Sherlock's mother disappears - although she leaves cipher clues for Enola - with it looking like she has actually decided to ditch proper society and run off to join the gypsies. In the meantime, Enola herself decides to take off and head to London and, along the way, stumbles across a mystery surrounding a young boy who is believed to have been kidnapped. When our library gets in the second book in the series, I'll be sure to give it a read.]



Fleischman, Sid. (1986). The whipping boy. New York: Greenwillow/HarperTrophy/HarperCollins.

[Newbery Award winner for 1986 - kind of a "prince and the pauper" story about a prince and the boy that has been "hired" to take punishment for when the prince is naughty. They run away from the castle and end up getting into trouble with a couple of kidnappers who want to ransom the prince back to the king. The whipping boy tells the kidnappers that HE is the prince in the hopes that they'll let the prince go and the whipping boy will be free from the prince forever. Enjoyable and quick, but I find it a bit hard to believe that this was THE BEST book for kids of 1986...]

STARTED:
Curtis, Christopher Paul. (2007). Elijah of Buxton. New York: Scholastic.

[Was a Newbery Honor winner this year and I've only heard fantastic things about it.]

*

FINISHED:

Ellis, Ann Dee. (2007). This is what I did:. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

[An upsetting little quick read that would be perfect for reluctant reader males. It's about a kid who moves to a new school because of something that happened to him and his best friend at his old school. Probably would've been a book that I would've gotten into when I was younger, just because the main character just seems to be unable to fit in anywhere - and is horribly confused about what he's seen and how he should handle it. He's got parents that just want to do the right thing but seem to mess up at every turn, and brothers who are big in sports and stuff and just don't seem to be able to connect with their older brother anymore. As I said, just kind of upsetting stuff, but potent, engaging, and well told. I must've liked it because I read it in a day...]

STARTED:
Springer, Nancy. (2006). The case of the missing marquess: an Enola Holmes mystery. New York: Sleuth Philomel/Penguin.

[A children's librarian at the Main is listening to it on tape so I thought that I would read it so that we could discuss.]

*

FINISHED:

Lalicki, Tom. (2006). Danger in the dark: a Houdini & Nate mystery. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[.]


STARTED:
Ellis, Ann Dee. (2007). This is what I did:. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

[Reading for the ACL Distinguished Roundup this Sunday to see if I think it's outstanding.]

*

FINISHED:

Jacques, Brian. (2002). Triss. New York: Philomel/Penguin Putnam.

[Whew. Don't get me wrong, I love the Redwall (i.e. "mousy tales") books - heck, I've read 14 of them - but they can be work. Well, I suppose that I'm not being fair. Jacques is actually a master storyteller, and although each of these tales tends to follow the same BASIC premise - really, a premise as old as Shakespeare - the writing in these is quite strong. Maybe a bit too dense which is why they can sometimes take a bit of effort. Truly, the one thing that causes me to trip up the most are the dialects that he uses for each animal race. At any rate, this one was about a slave named Triss who steals a boat with some others and then travels around, eventually meeting up with some young folks from Salamandastron who are out trying to have an adventure that will propel them into adulthood. The Redwall Abbey folks are here, too - some young dibbuns wander out of the abbey walls and stumble across a door in a tree that leads to an abandoned, underground kingdom once ruled by a tyrant, but is now inhabited by a trio of adders that are bound together by their tails. As in other Redwall tales, all three storylines meet up in the end, but it's the jumping around between tales, especially when they are all somewhat similar and have similarly named characters, that gets me all confused. On to something else for now, but I'll definitely keep reading if Jacques keeps writing.]

STARTED:
Lalicki, Tom. (2006). Danger in the dark: a Houdini & Nate mystery. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[I've been intrigued by Houdini lately - don't know why, just have been. Maybe because he was the ultimate showman. Read about this one... somewhere... and, so far, it's well written and it's got me hooked.]

*

STARTED & FINISHED:

McCarty, Peter. (2006). Moon plane. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

[This guy has made it to the favorites list on the left - his stuff is just so soft and mysterious. As with the Dillons below, I can spot one of his illustrations on a book jacket from 30 paces.]







Bradbury, Ray. (2000). Switch on the night. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

[Chose this one not because it's by Ray Bradbury but because the illustrations are done by two of my new favorite illustrators, Leo & Diane Dillon. What's there to say about them? Their stuff is so instantly recognizable that I spot them all around the library all the time - they've done a million book jackets. They've apparently, done a bunch of science fiction covers, which, if you look at their stuff, makes perfect sense. In addition, they're stuff can be seen on a lot of books focusing on Africans and African Americans. Surreal and mystical with an intense and gorgeous color palette, the Dillons are masters of shading to show depth and are brilliant at combining different hues of the same color in the same illustration. Stunning stuff.]

*

STARTED & FINISHED:

Paulsen, Gary. (2007). Lawn Boy. New York: Wendy Lamb/Random House.

[.]




Heide, Florence Parry. (1984). Treehorn's wish. New York: Holiday House.

[.]

*

STARTED & FINISHED:

Emberley, Ed. (2001). The wing on a flea: a book about shapes. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Company.

[Thankfully, at the end, he includes a note about how fleas DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE WINGS... and aren't rainbow colored. The guy is still absolutely brilliant in my mind. Just such a great sense of graphic design, color, shape and form.]




Heide, Florence Parry. (1981). Treehorn's treasure. New York: Holiday House.

[Another Treehorn story - this one finds him discovering that one of the trees in his back yard has leaves that are turning into dollar bills. Once again, adults ignore him, and the dark humor flows. These books CRACK ME UP. One more in the trilogy to go.]




Gerstein, Mordicai. (2005). Carolinda Clatter! New Milford, CT: Roaring Brook Press.

[This guy has a real gift. He won the Caldecott a few years ago for a book about a guy who walked on a wire between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. I've been a fan of his since I got one of his books through a book sale that's about reincarnation and the afterlife. This one's got a giant who becomes a mountain and the citizens who reside on him try to keep quiet so that he won't wake up. Until... Carolinda Clatter is born and she just can't keep from singing. Gorgeous illustrations - this guy will surely win another Caldecott in the years to come.]



Lobel, Arnold. (1969). Small pig. New York: HarperCollins.

[Was shelving Early Readers the other day and realized that this was probably the ONLY Arnold Lobel book that I'd never read. It's clearly an early one - done a few years before the Frog and Toad books and such - as the writing and art styles are QUITE up to par yet. It's cute though - about a pig who loves to burrow in the mud, but when his owner cleans up his pen has to look elsewhere for a mud bath. Unfortunately, he finds himself stuck in fresh cement.]

*

ABC Books

STARTED & FINISHED:

Emberley, Ed. (1978). Ed Emberley's ABC Boston, MA: Little Brown & Co.

[.]





Piatti, Celestino. (1966). Celestino Piatti's Animal ABC. New York: Atheneum.

[.]






Raczka, Bob. (2007). 3D ABC: a sculptural alphabet. Minneapolis, MN. : Millbrook Press.

[.]

*

FINISHED:

Michaels, Rune. (2007). Genesis Alpha. New York: Ginee Seo/Atheneum.

[Will post my review for ACL when I write it... I'll say right now, though, that I was pleasantly surprised by this one. The cover made it look like it would be some goofy sci-fi thing, but it was actually more of a "whodunit" that raises philosophical questions about cloning. Here's the "formal" review:

Josh and his brother, Max, are alike in more ways than most siblings. In fact, Josh’s understanding is that he’s a “designer baby”, created out of Max’s DNA when Max was suffering from cancer, and cells were taken from Josh’s umbilical cord in an effort to help Max’s body fight off the disease that was ravaging his body. In truth, when Max is accused of, and confesses to, murder, Josh finds out that he is actually an exact clone of Max, thus sending him down a path of deep self-exploration wondering if he, too, will then be predisposed to become a murderer himself. While the book jacket suggests that this will be a sci-fi fantasy tale, the only fantasy element here is Genesis Alpha, the online game that Josh and Max play together, which is ultimately disclosed to be the means by which Max entices his victim. A minor complaint here is that as Josh’s parents are a biologist and a psychologist, the way in which the family deals with the fact that one of their children is a murderer isn’t very realistic or compelling. Similarly, a side-plot involving the murder victim’s little sister hiding out undetected in Josh’s shed for so long despite a flurry of media attention gets a bit old. Those said, however, this is an engaging thriller that brings up a number of ethical and philosophical questions for young people surrounding gene manipulation, cloning, and the nature of good and evil.]


STARTED:
Prevost, Guillaume. (2006, 2007). The book of time. New York: Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic.

[Reviewing for ACL (I got backed up because of classwork at the end of last semester...) So far, my thoughts on it are nothing to write home about.]

*

STARTED & FINISHED:

Abadzis, Nick. (2007). Laika. New York: First Second.

[Graphic novel about the first little dog in space. I read it because it's being voted on in our ACL group to see if it is outstanding enough to be on the year-end Distinguished list. The woman who gave it to me to read was, literally, crying just thinking about how Laika dies in the end. I thought it was really good and a compelling read. The Russian names get a bit confusing to follow, but, otherwise, it's much recommended reading.]



Wolf, Allan. (2007). Zane's trace. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

[Read for ACL review. Will post review when I get done with it. Done:

An epileptic teenager with a family history of mental illness, Zane Guesswind abandons the walls of the bedroom on which he has scrawled the thoughts that haunt him with a Sharpie and steals his brother’s car for a final road trip. While on the road to his mother’s gravesite where, upon arrival, he intends to shoot himself, Zane surreally deals with elements of his past such as his father’s abandonment of the family, his mother’s suicide, and the history of the gun that his mother used in her deed – a Revolutionary War pistol that has been passed down through his family line. Along the way, Zane picks up a hitchhiker named Libba who may be more familiar to him than he realizes, and has dreamlike conversations with his ancestors who appear to him as drive-thru fast-food workers and motel desk clerks. Despite the (often) unsettling details of Zane’s life, the underlying message here of confronting and dealing with family demons in an effort to pave a new future for oneself is a vital one that will ring true for many teenage readers. Told in brisk, narrative prose poetry, this disturbing road trip novel is nihilistic at times, likely a bit too much so for most tastes, but is worth the ride. Included is an extensive author’s note detailing the authenticity of the locations described along the way in the novel, as well as biographical references, internet sites for further information, and a number of suicide prevention resources.]



STARTED:
Michaels, Rune. (2007). Genesis Alpha. New York: Ginee Seo/Atheneum.

[Reviewing for ACL.]

*