Happy #Readathon! Updates One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven

Let the fun begin!


I'll admit, I've gotten a bit of a late start to the morning.  But in my defense, I'll be hosting a mini-challenge for hour 23...AKA 5 AM tomorrow.  (So, stop by then...or around then.)

I'm excited for a day of reading.  I could use the fun!

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
Southeastern Louisiana

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
 I'm hoping to start Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler.  It's been on the top of my To Be Read Mountain for weeks.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
 COFFEE!!!!!!!

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
I'm an uber-nerd who teaches literature and writing courses.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?
I think this is my fourth...or fifth-ish? readathon.  This isn't something I'll do differently, necessarily.  This is something I learned from other participants that really helps:  Break-up your reading and read some quick reads (like picturebooks or graphic novels) early on to help you feel a sense of accomplishment and encouragement.


Cups of coffee:  0  :(
Pages read:  0  


Time for caffeine and reading!!!!!!  :)

UPDATE TWO!

Okay, so, it's still been a bit of a slow start to the readathon.  I had to do pesky things that get in the way of reading, like eating and washing my face.

But, I'm not track now.  I finished re-reading Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, a novel in verse that I assigned to my literature class.

Next, I'll work on tackling Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves and The Cupid War by Timothy Carter.  Both are books I started reading last week while in Boston for the Popular Culture Conference.

Plus, I'll also be hosting a mini-challenge during hour eight and nine.  Be sure to stop by for that!



Cups of coffee: 1
Pages read:  75

UPDATE THREE!

Turns out, running a mini-challenge is a little distracting when it comes to reading.  But in a very good way.  I'm enjoying reading through the participants' found poems.  It'll be *very* difficult to choose just one winner.

I'm also started to hunger for food as well as my books.  I'm currently preparing a pasta for lunch.  I'm listening to the audio book of Cassandra Clare's City of Glass as I do.  Very enjoyable.



Cups of coffee: 1  (still nursing that first cup and regularly reheating it)
Pages read:  120  (still not as many as I would like that this hour) and a lot of wonderful found poems!

UPDATE FOUR!

Well, I've been fed, enjoyed a kitty resting upon my arms while I struggled to type some reviews of the books I've been reading and I have *finally* done a bit more reading.

I went through a graphic novel called Hybrid Bastards.  I'd loved the comic series when it came out five or six years ago (but I couldn't get ahold of all of them).  So, I was super excited when a graphic novel collection of the series came out.  Hybrid Bastards imagines that the goddess Hera and the god Hypnos put a spell on Zeus so that for one night, he fell in love with inanimate objects, birthing the hybrid bastards whose mothers were things like a car, apple tree, homeless man, etc.

Eighteen years later, the bastards start to assemble and form a plan to take revenge upon their absent father.

I love the concept and story...but I found the art to be difficult to follow.

I'm currently thinking of ways that it could be included in a revision of my dissertation.

Back to the reading!  (Although, I have to admit, I predict a nap may be in my future.)

Cups of coffee: 2 
Pages read:  252

UPDATE FIVE!

Mid-event survey:

1) How are you doing? Sleepy? Are your eyes tired?
I've been a little sleepy, but the coffee is kicking-in.  Mostly, I've started to feel the need to move and have missed the sounds that human make.  What's the word?  Oh, yeah, talking.

2) What have you finished reading?
I finished Home of the Brave, The Cupid War and Hybrid Bastards.

3) What is your favorite read so far?
Well, I've read Home of the Brave before and have enjoyed it each time.  Hybrid Bastards was fun.  And it was exciting to finally know how the story ended.

4) What about your favorite snacks?
Same as at the start:  Coffee.  Though, I may have to break out some ice cream pretty soon.

5) Have you found any new blogs through the readathon? If so, give them some love!
Each blog I've visited has been great!  It's been nice to see an international showing as well as a lot of people who read young adult and children's books.


Cups of coffee: 2 
Pages read:  335

UPDATE SIX

During the last few hours, I got distracted and did some work on some reviews for the blog.  Then I got even more distracted and starting moving some books around.  I think I needed the physical activity.  But, I was still listening to the audiobook of City of Glass.  Reading was done!  Although, I have no idea how to add that to my page count.

Now, I'm going to transition and read in bed with the hope of falling asleep.

Don't worry though, this isn't the last you'll be seeing of me.  I'll be back to host another mini-challenge for hours 23 and 24.

See you then!

Happy reading to all 

and to all a good night!

Cups of coffee: 2.5 
Pages read:  368

UPDATE SEVEN

Aaaaaand, I'm back.

Last hour!  Yay!

As I was waiting for the responses to the mad lib challenge to come in, I filled-out the end of the Readathon meme:

• Which hour was most daunting for you?

Hours 22-23...when I woke up and just wanted to go back to sleep.

• Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?

I'm on team graphic novel for keeping readers awake and motivated.  I read Hybrid Bastards for this readathon, but it might not appeal to everyone.

• Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?

More cheerleaders!

• What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon?

I liked being able to record which books I had finished on the Dewey website.

• How many books did you read?

I finished three books that I had been reading, but I made progress in five or six.

• What were the names of the books you read?

Home of the Brave, Hybrid Bastards, The Cupid War, Writing the Life Poetic, Chopsticks and Slice of Cherry.

• Which book did you enjoy most?

Hope of the Brave by Katherine Applegate.

• Which did you enjoy least?

The Cupid War.  Ugh.

• If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders?

Make more comments.  During the last couple of readathons I've felt neglected.

• How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?

100%.  I love hosting mini-challenges!



Cups of coffee: 2.5 
Pages read:  472

Readathon Mini-Challenge: Find a Poem!

Find a Poem!


Based on whatever reading you're currently enjoying, jot down some favorite phrases and words and create a found poem.  You are welcome to change tenses, add or drop words and mix up the order of the words or phrases.


When ready, type your poem into the comments box of this post (or post a link to an outside site if you prefer to share your poem on your blog or in another medium).


Let us know which book or text your found poem originated from.


This challenge will run for two hours (or until the bells chime, signaling the start of hour nine of the Readathon).


A winner (who will receive a $10 giftcard from an online bookstore retailer of his/her choice) will be selected based on content and how the poem sounds.


Humor is always welcome! 


Happy reading and poem finding!




UPDATE:  This mini-challenge has now closed.  The winner of the $10 gift card is Sam.  You can see her found poem here.


Sam, send me an email at s.j.kessel.writes (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll be sure to arrange the book store of your choice sends you your prize.


Thanks to everyone who participated!  It was a lot of fun reading your poems!!!!!  It was very difficult to choose just one winner (but alas, I lack the funds to allow for you all to win a prize).

REVIEW: Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Taylor, L.  (2011).  Daughter of Smoke & Bone.  New York:  Little, Brown and Company.

418 pages.



Appetizer:  Karou is not like the other girls who live and go to her art school in Prague.  Her ultramarine hair is its natural color since she wished it that way.  She's had some tattoos for as long as she can remember.  She lives alone in her beautiful flat.  And when summoned by a bat-bird creature, she does errands all around the world for the demons who have watched over her for as long as she can remember.

Karou travels from place to place through a network of doors that always open into her guardian, Brimstone's, store where he sells wishes for extracted teeth.  Karou's biggest fear is that, someday, when she knocks, nobody in the magical realm of the demons will answer and she will be stranded in a strange city, penniless.

When Karou begins to notice handprints burned onto some of the entryways that the demons use, she discovers that the angels may be planning a strike against them.  And Karou will be stuck in the middle with one angel in particular fixated on her.

I had heard rave reviews of Daughter of Smoke & Bone as well as Laini Taylor's other book, Lips Touch.  I had been meaning to get around to reading both of them for a while now.  And I'm glad I finally did!

Taylor's writing is beautiful.  I mean it.  This is an author who knows how to use words to affect emotion in her readers.  Arguably, there were sections of Daughter of Smoke and Bone that fascinated me less than the rest, but Taylor's prose were beautiful enough to keep me reading and engaged.

From it's first few pages, Daughter of Smoke and Bone drew me in with Taylor's accessible and beautiful prose style and Karou's emotional turmoil with her ex-boyfriend.  Taylor does an amazing job of describing the setting and setting up a tone that was haunting and dark, but that also had a touch of humor.

Read it.  Or else....


Dinner Conversation:

"Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day.  It seemed like just another Monday, innocent but for its essential Mondayness, not to mention its Januaryness.  It was cold, and it was dark--in the dead of winter the sun didn't rise until eight--but it was also lovely.  The falling snow and the early hour conspired to paint Prague ghostly, like a tintype photograph, all silver and haze."  (p. 1)

"It wasn't like in the storybooks.  No witches lurked at crossroads disguised as crones, waiting to reward travelers who shared their bread.  Genies didn't burst from lamps, and talking fish didn't bargain for their lives.  In all the world, there was only one place humans could get wishes:  Brimstone's shop.  And there was only one currency he accepted.  IT wasn't gold, or riddles, or kindness, or any other fairy-tale nonsense, and no, it wasn't souls, either.  It was weirder than any of that.
It was teeth." (p. 33)

"Sometimes, maybe most of the time, she forgot to see Brimstone.  He was so familiar that when she looked at him she saw not a beast but the creature, who for reasons unknown, had raised her from a baby, and not without tenderness.  But he could still strike her speechless at times, such as when he used that tone of voice.  It slithered like a hiss to the core of her consciousness and opened her eyes to the full, fearsome truth of him.
Brimstone was a monster.
If he and Issa, Twiga, and Yasri were to stray from the shop, that's what humans would call them:  monsters.  Demons, maybe, or devils.  They called themselves chimaera."  (p. 38-39).

"She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil's lair.  She wasn't innocent now, but she didn't know what to do about it.  This was her life:  magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing." (p. 45)

"In general, Karou managed to keep her two lives in balance.  On the one hand,she was a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand girl to an inhuman creature who was the closest thing she had to family.  For the most part, she'd found that there was time enough in a week for both lives.  If not every week, at least most.
This did not turn out to be one of those weeks." (p. 60)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: Foiled

Yolen, J.  (2010).  Foiled.  New York:  First Second.

160 pages.


Appetizer:  Aliera Carstairs fences.  No that's an understatement.  She is a champion fencer, someone who has fought at Nationals, beaten fencers older and stronger than her.  She knows how to defend herself and her heart.

Yet, she's invisible at school.  Aliera watches as a new boy, Avery Castle, arrives at school, she watches as he holds the attention of every girl.  When they are paired as lab partners, Aliera must struggle to guard her heart.

Sooooo, lots of people talked-up Foiled, describing it as amazing and wonderful.  It could have been all of they hype, but I was left disappointed within the first few pages.  For a graphic novel, I thought Aliera spent waaaaaaaay too much time talking at the reader.  I wanted more focus on the visual and to get lost in the story.  That never happened with Foil.

On top of that, I strongly disliked Avery as a love interest.  Certainly, he's not supposed to be perfect.  But it was something about this panel that made him completely unredeemable in my mind:

Yep, something about object raping a dead animal for his own amusement makes a man unappealing.

*vague spoiler*, when the fantasy elements emerged, my response was essentially, "What the hell?"  I would have been content with metaphors.  There was very little foreshadowing of the magic and the way that it emerges--when Aliera puts on her fencing mask--an act she's done hundreds of times before in the storydidn't work for me as revealing the magical elements of the world.  *end vague spoiler*

This book just didn't work for me.

What are your thoughts?


Dinner Conversation:

Tasty Rating:  !!

Audiobook Review: Feed (This book is still unit!)

Anderson, M.T.  (2002).  Feed.  Cambridge, MA:  Candlewick Press.

300 pages (5 hours, 1 minute audio book)


Appetizer:  Titus and his friends went to the moon for a good time and while it was kind of fun since he met a girl named Violet, it wound up sucking because some of their feeds were hacked.  But after that, Titus's life isn't quite the same, a fact he has trouble dealing with.

The feed is--essentially--an internet connection in most people's heads, complete with advertising, chats and viruses.  Through Titus's voice, M.T. Anderson reveals a possible future in which skin legions are becoming cool, the English language is diminishing, schools are run by companies and consumerism is a requirement.  Although only written in 2002, some of Anderson's predictions feel as though they are only several years or decades away from becoming realities.

The audiobook was a fun read.  The ads that are sprinkled throughout the novel are brought to life with actual jingles and all of the comments made from the President sound vaguely George W. Bush-like (dating the book a little).

This week my students had the choice between reading Feed and Brave New World.  As I was re-reading Feed though, I thought of an even better book pair:  Feed and A Walk to Remember.  No, seriously.  The different ways that the protagonists deal with the declining health of their girlfriends is fascinating.

When we discussed the book, my students didn't seem to enjoy Feed as much as I thought they would.  But it became apparent from our discussion why they were resisting the text:  It was scary.  Aspects of the scary dystopian future were a little too familiar.

Frankly, that just makes me even more impressed with Anderson's Feed.


Dinner Conversation:

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck." (p. 3)

"I guess if I'm honest?  Then I was hoping to meet someone on the moon. Maybe part of it was the loneliness of the craters, but I was feeling like it was maybe time to hook up with someone again, because it had been a couple of months." (p. 5)

"Link and I were chatting about the girl, like I was going, She is meg youch, and he was going, What the hell's she wearing?, and I was going, Wool.  it's wool.  Like from an animal, and then Calista did her own chat to us, which was, If you want to hear about an animal, what about two guys staring with their mouths wide open so they look completely Cro-Magnon?"  (p. 21)

"She was on the moon all alone.  Here it was, spring break, and she was on the moon, where there was all this meg action, and she was there without friends.  She said she just walked through the crowds and watched, and she saw all these great things that way.  She said she was there to observe."  (p. 28)

"She took me up to a huge window.  We stood in front of it.  Outside the window, there had been a garden, like, I guess you could call it a courtyard or terrarium?  But a long time ago the glass ceiling over the terrarium had cracked, and so everything was dead, and there was moon dust all over everything out there.  Everything was gray.
Also, something was leaking air and heat out in the garden, lots of waste air, and the air was rocketing off into space through the hole, so all of the dead vines in the garden were standing straight up, slapping back and forth, pulled toward the crack in the ceiling where we could see the stars.
"Whoa," I said.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
"It's like...," I said.  "It's like a squid in love with the sky."
She was only looking at me, which was nice.  I hadn't felt anything like that for a long time.
She rubbed my head, and she went, "You're the only one of them that uses metaphor."
She was staring at me, and I was staring at her, and I moved toward her, and we kissed.  The vines beat against each other out in the gray, dead garden, they were all writing against the spine of the Milky Way on its edge, and for the first time, I felt her spine, too, each knuckle of it, with my fingers, while the air leaked and the plants whacked each other near the silent stars." (pp. 62-63)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

REVIEW: Where Things Come Back

Whaley, J.C.  (2011).  Where Things Come Back.  New York:  Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

228 pages.


Appetizer:  My first thought when first hearing of this book:  "Why isn't it called Where Things Return?  Why?!"  Why use two words when you could use one?

My first thought after hearing that this book won both the 2012 Morris Award for debut authors and the Printz Award for young adult literature:  "I must read this NOW.  Wordy titles work!"

My first thought after learning that the author, John Corey Whaley, is a Louisiana teacher:  "Yay!  I can't wait to show my students."

My first thought after reading the book:  "Meh.  Alas, alack, oh dear.  I wanted to enjoy it more."

Where Things Come Back is the story of seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter, whose cousin recently died and who has a crush on the tragic Ada Taylor (her previous boyfriends have a tendency to die....).  Cullen's brother has gone missing.  There's no evidence or reason for Gabriel's disappearance and the grief is hurting every member of Cullen's family.  On top of that, Cullen is stuck in Lily, Arkansas just like all of his other friends, and knows he will never leave until he knows what has happened to his brother.  As Cullen searches for a way to bring Gabriel back, the town of Lily searches for the elusive Lazarus Woodpecker which has been seen for the first time in sixty years.

Every-other-chapter is devoted to sharing the story of Benton Sage, a missionary who works in Ethiopia and then his roommate after Benton returned to the U.S. to attend college.  These seemingly unrelated stories eventually come together in striking ways.  (Although, these chapters never really won me over.  I found the narration to be too telling.)

Throughout the novel, there are paragraphs which begin "When one..." to describe the way Cullen reacts to things.  At first I found this subject change from the first person to be very off-putting, but I have to admit, it grew on me.  I also liked the way that Cullen invented book title names throughout the narrative.  It reminded me a lot of the novel King Dork and the attention its protagonist paid to creating band names and album covers.

Nonetheless, Where Things Come Back never really captured my imagination or interest.  I never desired to pick it up and read it.  However, when I did bring myself to read the book, it was the type of narrative where it was easy to just keep reading.  (To get through as opposed to enjoy)  I can appreciate and respect what Whaley has written.  He pushes away from the way many YA narratives are told.  But I never really connected with Cullen, his friends or the story.


Dinner Conversation:

"I was seventeen years old when I saw my first dead body.  It wasn't my cousin Olso's.  It was a woman who looked to have been around fifty or at least in her late forties.  She didn't have any visible bullet holes or scratches, cuts, or bruises, so I assumed that she had just died of some disease or something; her body barely hidden by the thin white sheet as it awaited its placement in the lockers.  The second dead body I ever saw was my cousin Oslo's.  I recognized his dirty brown shoes immediately as the woman wearing the bright white coat grasped the metallic handle and yanked hard to slide the body out from the silvery wall."  (p. 1)

"Being seventeen and bored in a small town, I like to pretend sometimes that I'm a pessimist.  This is the way it is and nothing can sway me from that.  Life sucks most of the time.  Everything is bullshit.  High school sucks.  You go to school, work for fifty years, then you die.  Only I can't seem to keep that up for too long before my natural urge to idealize goes into effect.  I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good."  (p. 5)

"You see, Ada Taylor had a grim history.  As a sophomore in high school, when I was just a freshman, Ada was dating this ass-hat by the name of Conner Bolton.  Conner was a senior and made it his personal mission to make every freshman in the school terrified to be caught walking alone or near the bathrooms, lockers, or trash cans.  But alas, he died before Christmas break in a car accident.  Ada was the only other passenger.  She walked away without a scratch.  Then, the next year, Ada was dating this okay guy who I used to play G.I. Joes with on the floor of my mom's hair salon.  His name was Aaron Lancaster.  He didn't even make it to Thanksgiving before he up and drowned int he White River during a thunderstorm.  His dad found his empty fishing boat.  A search party found his body four days later.  I heard it looked like he had been microwaved.
After that, it almost seemed like a ridiculous thing to date Ada Taylor, or even go near her.  But that didn't matter much to the young men of Lily, even me.  The unspoken philosophy of all those in love with Ada was something like this:  If I have to die to get that, then death it is."  (pp. 6-7)

"When Benton Sage found out that he would be going on a mission for his church that year, he was overwhelmed with excitement and panic.  His stomach felt a sort of queasy rumble as he stood with his sisters and Reverend Hughes, and watched as the entire church circled around them, clasped hands, and began to pray.  Ethiopia, he thought, would be the first place he could truly exert his faith.  It was his fear of travel, of leaving his comfortable life in Atlanta, of floating mysteriously thirty thousand feet in the air, that made eighteen-year-old Benton feel as if he would collapse onto the church's soft, green carpet as he heard the choir begin to chant amens and hallelujahs behind him."  (p. 16)

"'Did you hear about that bird?' Lucas asked me, still staring toward the house.
Lucas was one of the smartest and strangest people I knew, and so I wasn't very surprised by his choice of topic.
"What bird?" I asked.
"There's this woodpecker that's been extinct for, like, sixty hears.  Only, this guy from Oregon or something was down here and he thinks he saw one."
"In Lily?"
"Right outside of town.  I think he was canoeing down the river and saw it fly by or something.
"Weird."  (pp. 29-30)

"It was one of those moments when you're waiting on someone to say something important or funny or just do anything to break you away from the sad thoughts that overwhelm your mind.  Thoughts like never having enough money to move away or not getting into college.  Thoughts like having to come back to take care of a sick parent and getting stuck here all over again.  That's what happened in Lily.  People dreamed.  People left.  And they all came back.  It was like Arkansas's version of a black hole; nothing could escape it." (p. 35)

"It was three hours later and after calling everyone we knew and driving around town twice that we decided to call the police.  It was a Thursday when my brother, the Left Hand of God, disappeared.  It was on this same Thursday that John Barling appeared on national television to talk about the Lazarus woodpecker and how it had come back from the dead." (p. 55)

"Here's the problem with a fifteen-year-old boy going missing:  No one thinks he has been taken.  Especially Gabriel, who looked to be my age.  Everyone in town, though they didn't say it, was thinking the same thing:  Gabriel Witter has finally run away from his family.  That, or he went hiking through the woods and either got lost or got eaten by a bear.  Here's what I knew:  My brother was taken from me.  He did not run away, because he wouldn't.  He couldn't.  He would never.  And he'd never gotten lost in his life."  (pp. 58-59)


Tasty Rating:  !!

The 2011 Cybiles Award: My perspective on Frost

Appetizer:  The last of the Cybils realistic young adult novels that I'll be featuring is Frost.  The novel is the story of

Opening Line:  "Before I lived there, before any of this happened, I imagined Frost House as a sanctuary.  It crouches on the northern edge of Barcroft Academy in a tangle of lilac and evergreen bushes, shadowed by oaks and sugar maples.  Hidden enough that I didn't even know it existed until junior year, when I chased a field hockey ball through the underbrush into its backyard.  I assumed the white-clapboard cottage was a faculty member's house.  Most Barcroft dorms are three-story brick buildings' this was a weathered old Victorian, small and squat, with a wraparound porch and a mansard roof hugging the second floor.  The kind of place a family would life.  The first time I saw it, I could almost hear a whispered call mingling with the soft rattle of leaves:  Come inside, come inside...  (p. 3)


My Thoughts of the Nominee:  Frost a wonderful haunting novel.  Baer does a wonderful job of bringing the house and setting to life and of slowly revealing Leena to be an unreliable narrator.

I did have some trouble engaging with Frost though.  I wasn't too crazy about Leena, Celeste or any of the other characters.

The one aspect I really loved were the descriptions of Frost House.  It really came alive...and became the coolest character in the book.

The 2011 Cybils Awards: My perspective on the nominee Everybody Sees the Ants

Appetizer:  As a freshman, Lucky Linderman took a vow to stop smiling.  Since the age of seven, he has been bullied.  His tormentor, a boy named Nader, has always gotten away with his pranks, bullying and threats.

The one person who seems to help Lucky is his grandfather.  A prisoner of war in Vietnam who visits with Lucky in his dreams.

When Nader's bullying grows worse, Lucky's mom uproots them both for a vacation and Lucky finds himself guided by his uncle and maybe even facing a romance.


Opening Quotation:

"All I did was ask a stupid question.
Six months ago I was assigned the standard second-semester freshman social studies project at Freddy High:  Create a survey, evaluate data, graph data, express conclusion in a two-hundred-word paper.  This was an easy A.  I thought up my question and printed out 120 copies.
The question was:  If you were going to commit suicide, what method would you choose? (p. 3)


My Thoughts:  I really liked that Everybody Sees the Ants took on the issue of bullying.  I also liked that it would lend itself to discussing the Vietnam War.

A.S. King's writing was clear.  She created a great voice for Lucky.

However, the magical realism of Lucky's conversations with his grandfather did not work for me at all.

Nonetheless, check this one out!  I was glad the Cybils Award gave me an excuse to pick it up.

In case you hadn't heard, the Cybils 2011-2012 winners were announced!!!

You can look over the complete post about the winners at the Cybils website, but here's a quick breakdown of the winners:

Elementary and Middle Grade

Book Apps

The Monster at the End of This Book
by Callaway Digital Arts, Inc

(Just bought it!)

Fiction Picture Books

Me . . . Jane
by Patrick McDonnell

(got it!)

Nonfiction Picture Books

I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat: History's Strangest Cures
by Carlyn Beccia


(Got it!)

Easy Readers

I Broke My Trunk! (An Elephant and Piggie Book)
by Mo Willems

(Got it!)

Early Chapter Books

Have Fun, Anna Hibiscus!
by Atinuke

Poetry

Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto
by Paul B. Janeczko

(Added to my cart...and I'm hovering over the "buy now" button)

Graphic Novels

Zita the Spacegirl
by Ben Hatke

(Added to my wishlist)

Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale
by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright

(Also added to my wishlist)

Middle Grade Fiction

Nerd Camp
by Elissa Brent Weissman

Young Adult

Nonfiction Books

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart
by Candace Fleming

Graphic Novels

Anya's Ghost
by Vera Brosgol

(Already on my wishlist)

Fantasy and Science Fiction

Blood Red Road
by Moira Young

Already on my wishlist)

Young Adult Fiction

Stupid Fast
by Geoff Herbach

(YAY!  This is the book I helped select!!!!!!!!  Read it readitREADIT!)




Over the next week or so, I'll post some of my personal comments on some of the books I looked over as one of the YA fiction judges.

Which of these winners have you already read?  Which books are you going to pick up soon?  (I already downloaded the There's A Monster at the End of This Book app and I'm eyeing a copy of Zita the Spacegirl to start my reading of this collection.

Audiobook Review: The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's a review of a romantic read in honor of the holiday.

Smith, J.E.  (2012)  The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight.  New York:  Poppy.

5 hours and 17 minutes of listening or 256 pages.


Appetizer:  Hadley missed her flight to London by four minutes.  FOUR MINUTES!  Forced to wait several hours for the next flight, she risks being late to her father's wedding to a woman whom Hadley has never met and hates on principle.

As Hadley waits, she meets and befriends a British boy named Oliver--a freshman at Yale--who is scheduled to fly to London on Hadley's new flight.  They are even to sit in the same row.  Their conversations at a cafe near their gate and on the airplane put Hadley at ease.  She is amazed at how comfortable she feels talking to Oliver, even discussing the difficulties she's been having with her father who left her and her mom for the woman he is now marrying.

After just spending several hours with Oliver, Hadley knows that she wants to see him again.  But she doesn't know if the crazy circumstances that first allowed her to meet him will fall into place again; especially after she realizes that his reason for flying home to London may not have been a cheerful one.


I really enjoyed The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight.  I loved the title, cover and premise of this book.  As for the actual story, I found it to be a refreshing break from some of the heavier reading I've been doing recently, yet it still had enough depth of themes and character development that it felt real and went beyond "a happy bit of escapism."  (Although, some of Hadley's realizations about her family members did feel a little forced...but also necessary.)

Smith did a good job of capturing the feeling of being on a plane and--to an extent--being in London.  I do have an odd complaint though...since the title is so "math" oriented, I found myself wishing that Hadley were a math genius throughout the story.  There are one or two moments where she thinks in terms of math, but I found myself wanting more.

Generally, I liked the technique of having Hadley reflect upon her experiences or flashback to events before the 24-hour period that the book is set during, but several of the flashbacks felt unnecessary given the way that some of the information had been alluded to previously.



I did find Hadley's character to be a little whiney at the beginning, but that could have been a product of listening to the book instead of reading the pages.



The audiobook is narrated by Casey Holloway. I thought she did a good job of narrating from Hadley's perspective and I found myself wishing the novel were in first-person so I could have been brought even closer into Hadley's experience.  I wasn't too crazy about Holloway's British accent though, especially for Oliver.  (It was easier to hear when she voiced several women later in the novel.)  But still, it was a fun (and short!) book to listen to.

*Spoiler for the kinda-end*  As a side note, while Smith did a good job of making Oliver's refusal to reveal what he was studying and his misleading her about why he was flying home seem like appealing characterizations, in real life those would have been major red flags.  He repeatedly misleads her.  *End Spoiler/Rant*



Dinner Conversation:

"Airports are torture chambers if you're claustrophobic.
It's not just the looming threat of the ride ahead--being stuffed into the seats like sardines and then catapulted through the air in a narrow metal tube--but also the terminals themselves, the press of people, the blur and spin of the place, a dancing, dizzying hum, all motion and noise, all frenzy and clamor, and the whole thing sealed off by glass windows like some kind of monstrous ant farm."  (p. 5)



Tasty Rating:  !!!!

Audiobook Review: The Fault in Our Stars

Green, J.  (2012).  The Fault in Our Stars.  New York:

313 pages.


So, my signed copy of Green's novel arrived on its release date and it has dutifully sat on my bedside table, begging to be read.  But alas, I lacked the time.

I even had a student who came in to talk to me about the book, but I had to tell her I hadn't read it yet; like a failure.

*Points skyward.*  To the audio book I went (the Kate Rudd version, not the John Green...sorry, Kate's recording was cheaper)!



Appetizer:  Hazel Grace Lancaster is living with cancer.  Worried that she's depressed, her mom makes Hazel regularly attend a support group.  At one meeting, Hazel meets Augustus, a cancer survivor who is there to support his friend Isaac who is having surgery soon.  Augustus and Hazel trade book recommendations that leads to a quest to know what happens to the characters in Hazel's favorite book.  Along with their quest, romantic tensions arise, but with Hazel's terminal diagnosis and Augustus's regular scans to check for more cancer, their future together is uncertain.

So, I loved The Fault in Our Stars.  The audiobook was wonderful.  The way Kate Rudd brought Augustus's voice to life was great.  This was one of those audiobooks that I didn't want to stop listening to even after there was nothing I could think of to do while listening.  (I actually dusted my apartment so I could keep listening!)

Green does a good job of sharing about a realistic romance (which I imagine was one of his many goals with writing this book).  He specifically critiques paranormal romances and "cancer books."  Here's one example:

"AIA is about this girl named Anna (who narrates the story) and er one-eyed mom, who is a professional gardener obsessed with tulips, and they have a normal lower-middle-class life in a central California town until Anna gets this rare blood cancer. 

But it's not a cancer book, because cancer books suck.  Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right?  And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy.  But in AIA, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera."  (pp. 48-49)

Yay!

I absolutely loved Hazel's friend Kaitlyn, who is described as a girl "who just happened to be an extremely sophisticated twenty-five-year-old British socialite stuck inside a sixteen-year-old body in Indianapolis.  Everyone accepted it" (p. 42).  I've been friends with a Kaitlyn sort of girl.  They're fun.

When I teach, I tend to use Looking for Alaska, but I think in the future, I may switch to using The Fault in Our Stars.


Dinner Conversation:

"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer.  But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer.  Depression is a side effect of dying.  (Cancer is also a side effect of dying.  Almost everything is, really.)" (p. 3)

"'What?' I asked.
"Nothing," [Augustus] said.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Augustus half smiled.  "Because you're beautiful.  I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence."  A brief awkward silence ensued.  Augustus plowed through:  "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything."  (p. 16)

"'I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things.  I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."  (p. 153)


Tasty Rating:  !!!!!

Audiobook Review: Dead End in Norvert

Gantos, J.  (2011).  Dead End in Norvelt.  New York:  Farrar Straus Giroux.

341 pages.


Appetizer:  Set in 1962, little Jack Gantos (a kinda-sorta-fictional character who is prone to nosebleeds) gets himself grounded forever.  (It was a bit of a crazy situation, although there were other factors, Jack was following his father's orders to plow down his mother's corn to create a runway for the plane he...obtained.)  Practically the only freedom Jack is allowed is to help old Miss Volker, the medical examiner and obituary writer, who roots for the original founders of Norvelt to die.  (When Eleanor Roosevelt founded the town she tasked Miss Volker with watching over the residents and now, decades later, Miss Volker is ready to move on.)

Norvelt itself is a very interesting character of a town; a bit of history brought to life that embodies different political and economic views.   (For example, Jack's mother favors the barter system, a fact that sometimes embarrasses Jack and his father feels that the town--founded on the principal of putting poor people in a position to help themselves--is a failed Communist experiment.)

Several times throughout the historical novel, Jack talks about the way he engages with books--both fiction and nonfiction--demonstrating the value of both history and literacy.  There was one scene in which he and his best friend discuss the way books smell and sniff the gutters of various books.  This reminded me of my father, who judges the quality of a book based on the way it smells.

Overall, a very enjoyable book.  Some of the plot details threw me for a few loops:  The Hell's Angels make a few appearances.  The story turns into a murder mystery.  That made me ponder a little.

Jack Gantos's--AKA the actual author's--reading of the audiobook was great.  He kept the focus on the story (as opposed to some crazy inflections or accents some authors or voice actors use).  The story was fun and hilarious--enough so that I chuckled out loud several times.  In particular, I'm trying to find a way/reason that I could share the dear hunting chapter with my students.  Although I think the book would appeal to both boys and girls, I can't help but think--with the occasional icky detail or bathroom humor--it was written to target boys.


Dinner Conversation:

"School was finally out and I was standing on a picnic table in our backyard getting ready for a great summer vacation when my mother walked up to me and ruined it" (p. 3).

"I was a nosebleeder.  The moment something startled me or whenever I got over-excited or spooked about any little thing blood would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames" (p. 8).

"'You're looking at the original Norvelt," she said.  "There are two hundred and fifty houses in five sections on this map with the names of the original owners.  If you count up the red pins you'll see that all but nine--eight now that Mrs. Slater has passed--of the original owners have died or left since 1934" (p. 35).

"'Miss Volker," I said about as politely as I knew how, "do you think you will outlast the rest of these original people?"
"I have to," she said.  "I made a promise to Eleanor Roosevelt to see them to their graves, and I can't drop dead on the job--so let's get going" (p. 36).


Tasty Rating:  !!!!

REVIEW: Bleeding Violet

Reeves, D.  (2010).  Bleeding Violet.  New York:  Simon Pulse.

454 pages (but with large font!)


Appetizer:  If she doesn't take her meds, Hannah hears the voice of her dead father.  Listening to him, she arrives at her mother's house in small town Portero, Texas at midnight.  She lets herself into the house of the women who she's never truly known.

Her mother still doesn't want her there, but they make a deal:  If Hanna can manage to make friends and survive for two weeks then she can stay.

Her survival is in question because Lamartine may be even stranger than Hanna is.  Creatures hunt and feed upon the residents.  The only defense is a group called the Mortmaine.  Hanna finds herself attracted to one of their recruits and to hunting the creatures in her struggle to create a home for herself.


Within the first few pages I was captivated by the perspective Reeves created for her protagonist.  Hanna is hilarious, moving and disturbing in the way she reveals that she may have killed her aunt before hitching rides to East Texas.  Having said that though, some of the bonds that had kept me tethered to the book loosened a little when I realized the book had such an unusual fantasy or so many twisted elements of magical realism.  I would have been fine venturing with Hanna through a realistic story as she struggles to begin a relationship with her estranged mother.


I've read multiple bloggers say "It's not for everyone, but I enjoyed it" about both Bleeding Violet and its companion novel, Slice of Cherry.  I suppose my opinion is about the same.  There's a lot that's engaging about Bleeding Violet.  It was the kind of book where I found myself saying, "I'll just read one more chapter...one more chapter...oh look, I'm half way through."

It's engaging, refreshing, but also brutal at times.



Dinner Conversation:

"The truck driver let me off on Lamartine, on the odd side of the street.  I felt odd too, standing in the town where my mother lived.  For the first seven years of my life, we hadn't even lived on the same continent, and now she waited only a few houses away.
Unreal." (p. 1)

"'You broke into my house to fix a snack," she said, testing the words, her East Texas drawl stretching each syllable like warm taffy.  "I better be dreaming this up, little girl."
"It's no dream, Rosalee.  I'm here.  I'm your daughter."
Her hands clutched her sleep shirt, over her heart, otherwise she didn't move.  Her oil black eyes raked me in a discomfiting sweep.
"...Hanna?"
"Yes,"
"God." She seemed to recognize me then, her gaze softening a little.  "You even have his eyes."
"I know." I marveled over the similarities between us.  "Not much else though."
Rosalee looked away from me, tugging at her hair as if she wanted to pull it out.  "How could he let you come here?  Alone.  In the middle of the night.  Did he crack?"
"He died.  Last year."  (pp. 7-8)

"The statue in administration, the statue in the restroom.  "Those were people?"
"Yeah," Lecy said.  "The lure call you to the window and suck out all your juices and organs, all the good stuff, and leave this glass shell behind." (p. 87)

"I kept silent a long while, thinking about everything Wyatt had told me:  doorways to other worlds, a mayor with power over the dead, a Key made of bone.  I let it all sink in and found myself smiling.  I was right to have come to Portero, a town more insane than I could ever hope to be.
"So my mother is the supreme badass of Portero," I said, embracing the strangeness and letting it embrace me in return." (p. 112)


Tasty Rating:  !!!

Cybils Award Finalists Announced!

Late last night, while I was off at a New Year/bachelorette party, the finalists for the 2011 Cybils Awards were announced.

1,289 books were nominated!  And now it is down to the final few in each category:

Book Apps

Easy Readers & Early Chapter Books

Fantasy & Science Fiction (Middle Grade)

Fantasy & Science Fiction (Young Adult)

Fiction Picture Books

Graphic Novels

Middle Grade Fiction

Nonfiction for Middle Grade & Young Adult

Nonfiction Picture Books

Poetry

Young Adult Fiction

As a second-round judge, I will be lucky enough to be reading through the YA fiction category's final seven.  Listed in no particular order, the finalists are:

• Anna and the French Kiss
• Between Shades of Gray
• Bunheads
• Everybody Sees the Ants
• Frost
• Leverage
• Stupid Fast

The discussion has already begun.  Squeeeeeeeee!

My lips are sealed from discussing (and fingers bound from typing about) the judges' discussions, but I'd love to hear about which 2011 YA and children's books and apps would get your votes.

What a wonderful start to the new year!