Two More Great Reads

I love Caroline Cooney's books and I found a great new one to read this summer. If The Witness Lied presents a family filled with tragedy. First the mother dies with the birth of her fourth child Tris. Then in a horrible accident the family car rolls over the father killing him. The only one in the car at the time of the accident is Tris who somehow as a two-year-old was able to release the emergency brake causing the accident. After the accident the family split apart. Smithy goes away to boarding school, Madison goes to leave with her godparents, and Jack stays at home with Tris and his Aunt Cheryl who delights in completely remodeling the family home. One year after the accident Aunt Cheryl has contacted a TV producer who wants to do a series on the tragic family. The siblings are appalled, and come together to protect Tris, about to celebrate his third birthday, from the media. With all that is going on, Jack begins to question the circumstances of the accident and wonders what really happened. Part mystery, part media spectacle, Cooney has again captured a story that could be right out of the headlines.
Tragedy on a larger scale is presented in John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began. Set in Australia, the story follows a group of teenagers who go off on a camping trip for five days in a wild area called Hell. When they return they find their world has changed for the worse. Some unknown army has taken over their rural community and apparently all of Australia. All the teens' parents and community are imprisoned and the teens are on their own. After a terrifying expedition to check on their homes, the teen decide to retreat back to Hell and to plan their next move. Should they hide out until the world returns to normal or should they take action and mount a guerrilla war against the invaders?

Welcome to My Summer Reading Blog

I am starting off the summer finishing off 3 great books. First, I am reading The Throne of Fire, the sequel to Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid. Like the first book in this series there is lots of action, danger, and a whole lot of Egyptian mythology. This time Sadie and Carter Kane have to stop Apophis, the God of Chaos, from escaping his centuries-old prison -- and they only have 5 days to do it. There is a touch of romance for each of the Kane kids as well as a few new god helpers like Bes, a dwarf god considered lucky by the common people in ancient Egypt.

Next I am finishing Black Mirror, by Nancy Werlin. I started reading this one as a possible addition to the Romeo and Juliet Book Reports list since it deals with the suicide by drug overdose. Now I am beginning to see that it is also a mystery and the death of Frances' older brother Daniel may have been murder. All the action takes place on a preppy boarding school campus where Frances and Daniel are recipients of scholarships sponsored by a showy charitable organization known as Unity that may be involved in criminal activities.

Lastly I am half way through X Isle, by Steve Augarde. In a drowned world, people in the mainland try to arrange for their children to be chosen for the X Isle which is said to be a paradise. Baz and Ray are picked but find that the island is run by a religious fanatic and his brutish sons and the boys are slave labor. Rather than a paradise, the boys each get one can of food a day and have to do all kinds of manual labor without knowing why and are terrorized by the adults and their older teen assistants. The boys are beginning to see an advantage in working together. Their current plan is to create some kind of bomb that will kill the adults so the boys can take over the island. I can hardly wait to find out how it ends.
Please let me know what you are reading or if you have read of the same books I am. Books that I am reading this summer will be available for check out at Lakeview in the fall. Have a great summer and participate in Read S'More, Lakeview' Summer Reading Programs. Details are available on the Lakeview Library webpage.

All Kinds of Trouble

Two books I read this summer deal with Trouble with a capital T. In Tracey Porter's book, Billy Creekmore, young orphans are in trouble at the orphanage. In this early 1900s story Billy and other orphans and abandoned children at the Guardian Angel Home for Boys are sent to work in the glassworks factory as young as ten years old. Their dangerous jobs lead to crippling or fatal situations. Billy, abandoned by his father, is determined to escape this fate. Just in the nick of time his unknown aunt and uncle appear to take Billy to live in a coal mining town. This seeming salvation doesn't last long, for the miners are organizing to strike for better wages and conditions. When his uncle is killed in a raid by mine owner troops, Billy is on the run. He finds temporary shelter with a circus and a friend from the orphanage. This, too, is short lived when Billy's father appears working for a rival circus that cheats its customers. Will Billy ever escape the trouble that seems to follow him and find a real home and family?

In Gary Schmidt's book Trouble, Henry and his family have moved far away from Trouble, but Trouble seems to have found them anyway. Henry's older brother is killed when he is struck by a truck driven by a Cambodian classmate. To honor his brother Henry decides to fulfill his brother's dying wish that he climb Mount Katahdin even though his brother claimed Henry couldn't do it. The journey that Henry and his best friend take to Mount Katahdin involves all kinds of trouble including getting a ride from Chay, the Cambodian refugee who killed his brother. The journey makes Henry take a good long look at his life, his brother, and his family and the Trouble that seems to be all around him.

Billy Creekmore is on Oprah's Kids' Reading List and is already in the Lakeview collection. Trouble is a 2011 Rebecca Caudill nominee and multiple copies will be added to the Lakeview collection in the fall.

Two Fairy Tales Retold

There is a lot of buzz in the young adult literature world about looking back to traditional fairy tales, folklore, and legends for story ideas. note the success of Rick Riodan's Percy Jackson series. I just finished two such books and enjoyed both of them.

In Elizabeth C. Bunce's book A Curse Dark as Gold, we have a retelling of the Rumpelsliltskin story set in a small English village. The village grew up around a river-operated mill owned by the Miller family through many generations. The Millers have had all kinds of tragedies - breakdowns at the mill, unexplained accidents, and deaths of male children in the family. Finally the last of the Miller family, Charlotte and Rosie, are trying to keep the mill going through debt, accidents, and sabotage. One dark night a strange-looking man calling himself Jack Spinner appears and offers to help. Well, you know that part of the story, but Bunce adds witchcraft, mystery, and romance to this fairy tale and gives us a compelling story. This book is already in the Lakeview collection and is listed on Oprah's Kids Reading List.

Shannon Hale has retold a little-known Grimm's fairy tale in Book of a Thousand Days. While I didn't recognize the fairy tale, I was quickly caught up in the story which Hale has placed in a central Asian setting to add an intriguing element. The story is told in a journal/diary kept by a young servant girl Dashti who follows her royal mistress Lady Saren into banishment for not marrying her father's choice. This banishment is to be sealed up in a tower for seven years with enough food and fuel, but little light and no contact with the outside world. The girls are able to escape after about four years but find their world completely changed. The kingdom has been reduced to rubble. No one is left alive. To find out what has happened the girls travel to Lady Saren's true love's city and disguise themselves as kitchen maids. While there is a happy ending, it may not be the one you expect. This book will be added to the Lakeview collection in the fall.

Two Powerful Stories

Sorry for the delay in my summer reading reports, but between storms and power failures it has been difficult to add to this blog. However, those difficulties did not interfere with my reading. I finished two incredibly powerful stories that deserve nominations for the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award.

First, a new book by Gordon Korman, one of my favorite authors, takes up a very serious problem facing many families today. In Pop, Marcus Jordan moves to a new town and wants to pick up his high school football career where he left off. While practicing in the park over summer he is challenged to work his hardest by Charlie, a senior citizen who likes the "pop" of football - crashing into his opponent with everything he's got. When school starts Marcus is sidelined by an undefeated record lead by the star quarterback. But something is strange about his Charlie and the star quarterback. As Marcus puts the pieces together he finds himself getting into trouble with law and carries off an amazing deception. Though the book ends on a tragic note, this story is about family, friends, and football.


Susan Shaw's book One of the Survivors is an equally powerful story of a school fire as told by a survivor. What happened is slowly revealed in Joey Campbell's journal as he tries to cope with the death of 23 students and his teacher. Joey is not only dealing with his guilt and sorrow, but is accused by many people in the town of having set the fire himself as an explanation of why he survived. This story of a painful summer will keep you reading to find out what has happened and what will happen.

Both of these books will be added to the Lakeview collection in the fall.

Hello Summer Readers

I hope you are all enjoying your summer vacation. The weather has been up and down, but there have been some lovely days for reading. So let's dive into summer reading. After one week of vacation I have finished 3 books on my list -- each one different, each one a great read!

Just last night I finished Ridley Pearson's Kingdom Keepers, a perfect book for summer reading because it takes place in Disney World, Florida. Five young people chosen to be hologram hosts at the park now find themselves crossing over when they go to sleep and roaming the park as their holograms chased by evil characters come to life like pirates and Maleficent. Together they must solve the mystery code left by Walt Disney which will stop the evil characters from taking over the park. You rmay ecognize Ridley Pearson as the co-author of the Peter and the Starcatchers series. Kingdom Keepers is equally exciting and adventurous. I can't wait to start the sequel.

Caroline B. Cooney's book Enter Three Witches is also exciting and adventurous but in a completely different way. This is the story from the Shakespeare play Macbeth spotlighting a side character Lady Mary who does not appear in the play. All the main characters are there -- Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, Macduff, the three witches, and more. All the action of the play happens as well as play quotes to start each chapter and snatches of dialogue directly from the play. Even though I knew what has to happen, I found myself caught up in the lives of all these characters and breathless awaiting their fates.

Finally I read a new book by Andrew Clements called Extra Credit. Sixth grader Abby learns that she will have to repeat 6th grade. Desperate to move to 7th grade, she pleads for a chance to improve her grades. Besides promising to do her homework every night till the end of the year, she gets an extra credit project to start a pen pal in another country, make a bulletin board display of her correspondence, and give an speech about what she has learned. Since she loves rock climbing, she chooses a pen pal in a small village north of Kabul, Afghanistan. What really makes this story come alive is that we meet the pen pal as well and hear his/her side of the story. In this small village it is a point of honor for the best English student to write the letters but that is Sadeed and the village elders consider it improper for a boy to write to a girl of the same age. Since Sadeed has a younger sister, he ends up writing the letters for her, sort of. This is a story which brings home to us the differences with people who live half way around the world.

I hope you have found some great reads for this summer too. Please send me your comments about these books or whatever books you are diving into this summer. I plan to be back next week with a new update on the books I've read.

Till Next Summer

The time has come to say goodbye to our summer reading program. Thank you to all of you who participated. Mrs. Warkentien and I had lots of fun picking books to tell you about and reading your book reports. I look forward to next summer and another summer reading program.