Diamonds in the Shadow

First of all I would like to say "I told you so" about the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I read it earlier this year and have been telling everyone it is my "must read" book of the year. Everyone who has read it loves it. Today USA Today has an article about The Help touting it as the 'hot debut novel' this summer. If only they would have asked me what I think, this article could have run back in April.

I finished Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline Cooney today. I must have missed this one when it was published in 2007, but I like Cooney's work and always enjoy the suspense she is able to create in her books.

A family of refugees has come to America and is taken in by a family of four. A fifth refugee also enters America, and forces the family to take one of his possessions into the country with the intent of retrieving it later. While the refugees have been through a lot, even their American family cannot fathom how little they have ever been exposed to -microwave ovens, cars, email, the list is endless. However, while the American parents are busy in their own way- the dad with work, the mom on her endless crusade to help the adult refugees, both the American children find the refugees to be extremely strange and realize that they may not be who they claim to be. When the fifth refugee hunts the family down to retrieve his smuggled goods, both the Americans and refugees must fight for their lives.

This is a great fast read and while I wanted to find out how things ended, I almost didn't want to turn the page for fear that something bad would happen. Cooney's Diamonds in the Shadow is a great young adult novel that can appeal to both boys and girls and also reluctant readers.

Spinelli Favorites

I realize my posts lately have been focusing on a lot of adult books. My stack of books for the summer is enormous and I keep thinking I can get through some grown up stuff quickly, but there is just never enough time. I am still reading picture books at night to my daughters who are a good test audience.

Yesterday we checked out a book by Eileen Spinelli from the library. The Best Time of Day is a cute rhyming book about the best time of day for each person/animal in the book. This book was so cute that I can't wait to read it again tonight at bedtime. As a teacher I can see a lot of good ways to use this book, too - in a farm unit, in a rhyming unit (at various ages), as a writing prompt....I'm sure there are more. I pointed out to my daughters that Eileen Spinelli was the author and refreshed their memory about a book we just couldn't stop reading last summer that is also by Spinelli - Heatwave. My oldest daughter promptly got up to retrieve it and we enjoyed another reading of an old favorite. Heatwave shows the residents in a town - before there was air conditioning- living through a heatwave one summer. Each day throughout the week gets hotter and hotter. Finally as they drift off to sleep one night they have one thing they dream of - rain. We have had some very mild weather in the midwest - in fact it doesn't even really feel like summer yet, so we are definitely not in a heatwave. Still the girls loved hearing this great story and remembering some different hot days we have had last summer.

Both of these are great picture books - it seems that Spinelli has so many wonderful books out there to enjoy.

Slant

Lauren is thirteen years old - finally old enough to get her ears pierced. Her sister, Maia is five - both girls were adopted (Lauren from Korea and Maia from China). Lauren is enjoying getting older, hanging out with her best friend and starting to notice boys. The one thing she doesn't appreciate is that she is often called "gook" or "slant" or other derogatory words because of her eyes. Lauren can of course tell the difference between her eyes and her sisters - both reflect their heritage, but to others all Asians are lumped in one category. Their widowed father is doing his best to keep up with his job as a Shakespeare professor and his growing daughters. However, since the death of his wife three years earlier he and Lauren haven't really talked. Lauren is determined to have surgery on her eyes to correct them - that way no one can call her names. She has been saving up her money for this one surgery that will "fix" everything.

There are good messages about body image and learning to be happy in here. Lauren's relationship with her father is explored as is her relationship with her maternal grandmother and her mother's death. This is a great book for tween girls helping to reaffirm one's self worth.

Published by Milkweed, this publishing company "publishes with the intention of making a humane impact on society, in the belief that good writing can transform the human heart and spirit." Having read other books published by Milkweed, I have high expectations when I see this company's name. Visit their website here.

The Next Generation and Judy Blume

I grew up reading Judy Blume...the Superfudge series, Are You There God It's Me, Margaret?, Tiger Eyes, Deenie, and everything else I could get my hands on that Blume wrote, I've read. I still like all of Blume's work and have loved sharing the appropriate ones with my own girls. One of the all-time favorite read alouds has been the Superfudge series (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Superfudge, Fudgeamania and Double Fudge). You will even hear random quotes sprinkled throughout our conversations....the most popular being "eat it or wear it."

When I heard last year that Blume had been contraced to write four chapter books based on her picture book The Pain and the Great One I was ecstatic. I read Soupy Saturday with The Pain and the Great One to my girls and then The Cool Zone with the Pain and the Great One to them, too. I enjoyed the alternating narration and the humor Blume used in telling these stories of a brother and sister and their fights with each other. My girls were lukewarm about them. They just weren't Superfudge. But then we read Going, Going, Gone with the Pain and the Great One last week and we managed to read it all in two nights. We just couldn't stop reading and laughing. My girls LOVED it. Maybe they would love the others more now, too, because they totally got the humor in this book. In fact, the other night while driving to supper with my sister and my mother we had to listen to my oldest daughter re-reading favorite passages of this book and barely being able to contain her pleasure as she came to funny parts. We still say "eat it or wear it" but we have also added "fuzzy booger" to our lexicon. Blume has one more book she is contracted to write in this series - Friend of Fiend with the Pain and the Great One. I am looking forward to its release as are two very anxious girls at my house.

Visit Judy Blume's website here.

The Wildwater Walking Club

Every year Claire Cook comes out with a new book over the summer months and I always look forward to them. I totally loved Must Love Dogs, which was the first book of Cook's I have read. I can't help but think that everything I have read since has not been as good. They are sort of fun and sort of interesting, but I just never really get into them. I can't decide if it's me, or if it really is the book. This year I mentioned to a friend that I had Cook's latest book, The Wildwater Walking Club on my stack from the library. She gave it a "ehh" rating, too. I like the idea of this book - a group of women who walk together with the main character, Noreen, finding her way in the world in middle age, but the rest of the story was sort of weak. I am not sure how plausible it is that the three women who walk together- Rosie, Tess and Noreen actually do decide to walk together and then travel together...they aren't even friends when the book begins and then decide to travel together for fun? And the idea that lavender is so important in the story? I guess I just don't get that, either. I don't want to totally discourage everyone from reading this one because maybe it truly is just me. If anyone else has read this and wants to weigh in, I'd love to know if I am totally off base on my feelings about this book.

Isabelle's Boyfriend

This is a lovely YA book by Caroline Hickey. I was expecting a very chick-lit type of young adult book, which would be fun, but this book is a bit more than that and I really ended up liking this book a lot and I could totally relate to Taryn even though I have never had an experience quite like hers.

Taryn is walking her mom's dog, Camille, one snowy night when she runs into Epp, a drop dead gorgeous guy also out for a walk. After she meets him and finds out that Epp is Isabelle Graham's boyfriend, Taryn comes up with a way to have more interactions with Epp. While she and Isabelle live close by each other they are not really friends. However, after Taryn dreams up the idea of writing an article for the school paper about the difference between boys and girls athletics and interviews Isabelle for the article - and eventually Epp, she has to come up with a way to back up this plot she dreamed up. Taryn does actually join the paper and tries to write an article for it. The whole time this is going one Isabelle, who had really never given Taryn the time of day before, starts really befriending Taryn. Epp even sets Taryn up with a friend of his, Pete. In fact things are going along rather well. Taryn's mom takes Taryn shopping for some beautiful new clothes to wear to her first ever dance. Things could go along perfectly and no one would ever know that Taryn harbored a crush on Epp, except that Taryn quit the paper after realizing she was not able to write the article and came clean about her motives to the editor. When Taryn runs into the editor at a party where she has been drinking (the editor, not Taryn) and things come out about Taryn's motives things can't just quietly go away.

I knew as I was reading that Taryn was probably not going to be able to hide her original motives....it is a better story if there is some type of conflict and then resolution. The ending is totally satisfying and while Taryn did do some kind of rotten things, it is hard not to like her and realize that she is a good person underneath some bad decision making.

To find out more about Caroline Hickey, check out her website.

Shopping Spree

Yesterday my mom and I packed up my three girls to go on our annual trip to Des Moines to visit my sister. We have done this each year since my oldest daughter, who will be eight in just a few weeks, was one year old. Sometimes we stay overnight and other times we drive there and back in one day. One of our stops yesterday was Jordan Creek Mall. I mentioned this when some neighbor ladies got together yesterday morning and they enviously talked about my luck at getting to go to a "real mall." While our shopping experience here is not dismal, it isn't great, either. I agreed that Jordan Creek is a lovely mall, and it is. The girls most enjoy they play area, so heavy duty shopping is never really on the agenda with them. But mostly I am an on-line shopper. My mom and sister offered to sit at the play area with the girls while I went to two stores I was interested in looking through because we don't have them locally. While I found cute stuff at Ann Taylor Loft and The Gap, I didn't buy a thing. We had supper at Macaroni Grill and then visited the Barnes and Noble right across the parking lot. While I didn't get a thing at the "real mall" I did purchase some new books. My purchases include: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick, The Lost Summer by Kathryn Wlliams, Hollywood is Like High School with Money by Zoey Dean, and The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper. I am sure I would be a disappointment to my neighbors who had visions of JCrew in their eyes. I am happily looking forward to reading my new books and am even more behind than eves as the TBR pile keeps growing.

Perfectly Imperfect

Lee Woodruff, wife of news anchor Bob Woodruff, has just published a new book, Perfectly Imperfect. In this memoir-ish book, Woodruff writes chapters on various parts of her life - motherhood, the relationship between mothers and sons, her own father, having a pet. In each chapter I felt as though Lee and I could be good friends. As the oldest of three daughters, Lee comes from a solid and loving family, and while she married a man who became very successful after they had already been married for a while, her own life prior to this was very normal. Woodruff and her husband had already written a book together, In An Instant, which chronicled Bob's injuries and recoveries after being hit by a bomb in Iraq where he was reporting from. I enjoyed Lee's frank account of what life is like when you are experiencing a tragedy and the way she was able to cope with things. Lee again touches on Bob's injuries and the way their family was affected by this. Now three years later Bob is doing remarkably well, but Lee offers some words of wisdom in her final chapter as she shares tips with others on how to help friends and family who may be coping with a tragedy of their own, or wanting to help others through difficult times.

I enjoyed revisiting Lee in her latest book and hope she offers another glimpse into her family in the future. To read more about Lee's books, check out her website.

Methland

Nick Reding has written a book about small town Iowa - and happens to focus on a small town not too far from my hometown. Oelwein, Iowa, is a town of over six thousand people in northeast Iowa, and is the central feature in a story about the death and life (not life and death) of small town America. As the title suggests, this book discusses the prevalence of drug abuse, especially methamphetamine, in small towns. While Oelwein is featured, it certainly is not the only town experiencing this problem, or even the worst. Reding was interviewed on the local news last night because of this controversy surrounding his book. He is quick to state that the reason he chose Oelwein is because people in the town were willing to talk to him. While some people feel the book shows Oelwein in a negative light, the town eventually triumphs as many residents including the mayor, police chief, and high school principal, come together to try and revive their town. A few names and places sound familiar, which I always find interesting, and I enjoy the ability to connect with a story in that way.

Because I live in small town Iowa and grew up going to Oelwein a few times a year, a part of me also wonders how oblivious I am to the meth epidemic. While I do know people who have struggled with their addictions, at some points I questioned whether Reding was painting the epidemic to be far worse than it is. Or maybe I am just that oblivious. I still don't know where I sit on that exactly, but Methland certainly gave me a lot to think about. While I most enjoyed reading about the personal stories in this book, there is a lot of information Reding gives that includes statistics and historical information about drug use. While I enjoyed the book, I think my husband enjoyed it even more. He spent our dreary, cold Independence Day reading this entire book. Here in Iowa it is hard to find a copy of this book to buy - has anyone else around the country heard of Methland?

Peace, Love and Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle

This book by Lauren Myracle sat around my house until yesterday - and then I picked it up because it was due at the library today and I wanted to get through it quickly....I will say I was very happily surprised by how much I liked this book. Initially I thought this book was just going to be teeny-bopper chick lit without much substance to it at all. I used to really like chick lit, and I still read it sometimes, but I usually read something a little bit in the women's fiction category than chick lit. And as far as YA books go, I love historical fiction. Anyway, while the cover does sort of seem like the book is more on the "fluff" end of things, the story has a bit more to it than that.

Carly has returned from a summer of doing volunteer work to her home in a rich suburb of Atlanta. While she was away her younger sister, Anna, has grown up a lot (one of the most obvious ways is the fact that she has developed quite a bit which everyone notices). While Carly has come home with the desire to be a more "real" person instead of getting sucked into the lifestyle her friends and sister lead- thinking of little more than boys and clothes - she finds it is difficult to be the older sister to her bombshell sibling, and finds herself moving away from some friends she grew up with. Carly has a few boy problems of her own, and while the flap of this book touts the fact that this book is about sisters and the relationship between them (which it is) , it is also a pretty good book about self esteem and body image issues.

I thoroughly enjoyed this young adult book, and was happy to discover that Myracle has written several other books I have not yet had the pleasure of reading. To find out more about Lauren Myracle visit her website.

Finished- Finally!

We have officially finished with the Little House on the Prairie series....just the other night I read the last page of The First Four Years. How weird will it be to not be reading about what Laura and Mary are doing? I offered to the girls that we could go on to read The Rose Years or the Caroline Years, and we purchased a book about Mary's time at the School for the Blind in Vinton, but for now we are taking a break. The same day we finished I received my newest issue of Oprah magazine in the mail. In it is an article by a woman who read the Little House series to her daughter. She and her daughter live in New York and are feeling the effects of the struggling economy. Laura and Mary were good models (as were the rest of the Ingalls') on how to get by on very little. I admit that when my girls complain I will often ask them if Mary and Laura acted like that? "Did Mary and Laura get to complain about what they had for supper?" "Did you realize that Mary and Laura didn't get dessert every night? An orange was a TREAT!" I am sure my girls are tired of me pointing out to them all the ways that Mary and Laura had things rougher than we do.

While I was reading the last book to them, I picked up Melissa Gilbert's memoir, Prairie Tale. I grew up watching Little House on TV, so Melissa Gilbert has been and will always be Laura to me. My expectations for a celebrity biography weren't very high. Seems I skim many celebrity bios. However, I was quite pleasantly surprised. Gilbert's book was interesting and well written. And as much as I know that there is more to Gilbert than her role as Laura, I really haven't tried to learn more about her. Her life is not the wholesome life Laura had- she has abused drugs and alcohol and has been divorced, but I did find her likeable. I also appreciate the fact that even though her role as Laura may be what many people remember her for, there are many other things Gilbert has done during her career as an actress.

For now we are done with our Little House obsession. We have just a month left of summer vacation and are still trying to decide when to take a trip to Walnut Grove, MN, to visit one Laura's homes. Maybe that will reignite a desire to read more books about the Ingalls.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

I'm just a bit too young to have watched Art Linkletter's show Kids Say the Darndest Things. I have seen little snippets that have been replayed on television, so I understand the premise of the show. When I was nine or ten and my family would travel on a Saturday to see my aging grandparents living in a small Iowa town, I would try to find something to amuse myself in their house. The one book I returned to time after time was Kids Say the Darndest Things, a collection of humorous conversations from the television show. I no longer have to read any book to find my daily quota of humor. In just the past week my daughters' friends have provided me with several humorous comments worth more than a chuckle.

I have been told by one girl that her father takes a VERY long time in the bathroom. He even takes his newspaper in there.

I have also been told that one girl's mother is going to take some medicine so she doesn't have any more babies.

Because I work in a school there are many opportunities for kids to say the darndest things. During my first year of teaching my mother and I taught in a small Lutheran school. She taught kindergarten and I had first and second grade. Being a small town, we knew every student and their families quite well. When one of my mother's kindergarten students told her all about how his parents showered together, that was all we could think about each time they came in to school to pick up their son.

While I may remember some of the humorous comments kids make I know that some fade away over time. Any teacher who kept track could write their own version of Kids Say the Darndest Things....our students and own children provide such great entertainment!

First Daughter: White House Rules

I enjoyed one of Mitali Perkins' books a few months ago, and have been eyeing her book First Daughter, so I was quite excited to come across it at the library a week ago.

While I don't think that the book quite lived up to my expectations, I think a fifth or sixth grade version of myself would have really liked it. The book centers around Sameera, the teen age daughter of the newly elected president. Sameera was adopted as an infant, born in Pakistan. Interesting that Perkins wrote a book about a minority child living in the White House before the Obama adminstration. While I didn't think there was much plot driving this story forward, I did appreciate the little tidbits about the private life of the First Family in the White House - some true (like the fact that there is a bowling alley in the White House) - and others that are a part of the story. Sameera is dealing with her new life in the spotlight, a crush on a boy, deciding whether to attend a public school, and enjoying her cousin, Miranda who is visiting.

During my own junior high years I remember reading The President's Daughter by Ellen Emerson White which I have only recently come across again (this book has been republished and is the first of four books in this series by White), and loved reading.

To find out more about The First Daughter, visit Mitali Perkins' website.

How Do You Know A Book Is Good?

I have a few tried and true tests that let me know if I am really enjoying a book.....like, if I actually end up running longer than I ever planned, or more often, just so I can read the book I have on my treadmill. Or, as was the case yesterday, I rushed through getting my lessons ready for VBS at church just so I could pull out the book I had hidden in my bag. Yes, I found all kinds of ways to sneak in a page or two of John Hart's newest book, The Last Child. Just like Hart's previous two books, this book is set in the South, is full of suspense, and kept me turning the pages until the very end. I think I reviewed Hart's first book, Down River, on the Des Moines Register book blog and equated him to John Grisham. I take that comparison back. I often find the endings in Grisham's books unsatisfying, which is not the case at all in any of Hart's books.

This latest story centers around Jonny Merriman, a thirteen year old boy whose twin sister went missing a year ago. Jonny is determined to find out who took his sister (and essentially life as he knew it since his father abandoned the family shortly thereafter and his mother is close to a breakdown) and ends up getting in the middle of some very dangerous things that are happening. Hart has a cast of characters, all with their own issues and secrets that he somehow is able to connect by book's end. The few paragraphs I could write to provide a synopsis would be inadequate. Hart's books are worth your time - enjoyable from beginning to end.

Anything But Typical

Nora Raleigh Baskin's new middle grade novel, Anything But Typical, gives a firsthand account of what it is like to live with autism. I have read a few other books for adults (think Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time) narrated in this manner, but this is the only one I can think of written for kids. There are several things I liked about this book:
1. Jason's parents, while affected by his autism diagnosis, were great advocates for him and helped him and his brother (also diagnosed in the autism spectrum) with trying to assimilate into the real world.
2. The writing is much like Jason's thoughts. Things jump around a bit from time to time. A question asked in one paragraph might not be answered until a page or so later.
3. Even though Jason didn't necessarily fit in socially at school, there was one person he had grown up with who continued to make an effort to include him
4. Baskin created what I think is a realistic reaction to Jason by some others- and it isn't always good. She shows that teachers and peers and even Jason's cousins are not always very understanding of him.
5. While Jason is able to share his feelings by writing, expressing himself verbally is not very easy for him at all.

I am planning on purchasing this title for my school library - I am excited to share this title with my older elementary students who may be surprised to hear a story from Jason's perspective.

Sleepwalking in Daylight

I spent a lot of time yesterday reading. I just couldn't put down Elizabeth Flock's newest book, Sleepwalking in Daylight. This book is women's fiction at its best.

Samantha is in her forties, married to Bob, and while they look like the perfect couple, things aren't as they appear. The intimacy is gone from their marriage and while Bob doesn't want to talk about it, Samantha can't help but think about this constantly and how unhappy she is. Cammy, their sixteen year old daughter, also narrates part of this story. Cammy has a lot of troubles. She was adopted when she was two and has decided to try to find her birth mother without asking her parents for help. Samantha is so focused on her struggling marriage that she doesn't seem to notice Cammy's problems, which also include drug use as well as promiscuity.

When Samantha meets Craig one day on the train the two strike up a friendship. Both claim they are unhappily married and start emailing each other and meeting for coffee several times each week. While there is no real physical cheating going on, there is a lot of emotional cheating occurring.

I won't give away the ending of this book, but I will say that as I was reading I continued to wonder how this story would end. Would Sam leave Bob? Would Cammy get help? I absolutely loved this book, and anyone who enjoys women's fiction should give it a try.

Twenty Boy Summer Giveaway

Check out Amanda's giveaway at A Patchwork of Books. Some lucky person may win Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler. I have been waiting to read this one for a while now myself!

Musical Beds

A few year ago we were over at some friends' house and were looking at their sons' bunkbeds since we were planning on purchasing some for our house. We happened to look over in a corner of the bedroom where a body pillow and blanket were wadded up and Pete, the dad, hurriedly explained that that was his stuff he used when he played musical beds. If one of his kids (and he has four) had a bad dream, was sick, couldn't get to sleep, was scared, or whatever, he would use those things to lie down in that child's room. At that time, even though we had two kids, Chris and I had never played musical beds, so on our drive home we chuckled a bit to ourselves. Sometimes I would fall asleep with our oldest daughter because I just do that sometimes when I am reading at night while laying down. But our second child was still in a crib and loved to sleep. Then we added our third child and they have now all graduated to real "big girl" beds and now we play musical beds.
This is a sample night while playing:
9:00 finish reading stories, say prayers, lay down with oldest daughter while we both read to selves
11:00 wake up still in bed with oldest daughter since I have fallen asleep while reading;
go to own bed
12:30 Middle daughter wakes up (very unusual) needs to go to bathroom. I help. Then she aks
me to lay with her for five minutes.
2:00 youngest daughter starts crying. Go to lay with her because she shares a room and I don't want all three girls up (it's happened before and it isn't fun!).
2:30 go back to own bed
3:00 oldest daughter wakes up and has a bad dream. Could I please lay with her for a few minutes?
4:30 alarm goes off for me to work out. I feel like I have already had one, so I reset it for later. Unfortunately, my youngest daughter woke up with my alarm, too, and thinks it is morning. I convince her to lay by me on the couch.

Doesn't that look fun? It's not often I get to move sleep locations seven times. More often it is only one or two locations, but on the nights I play musical beds, my work out the next day is pretty much shot, and I try to remind myself that they won't always be this age forever. I am sure childcare experts or Super Nanny could solve this problem, but they don't have to live in my house, either. At least this way I am getting some sleep. What does this have to do with books? Not much, except that the nights after a great session of musical beds, I fall asleep even faster while reading.

The Rock and the River

I finished The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon a few days ago, and have been thinking about it since then. I knew as soon as I finished it that I couldn't write anything about it immediately and just needed to wait a bit longer.

Sam and Stick (Steven) are brothers growing up in Chicago in 1968. Their father, the famous Roland Childs, is good friends with Martin Luther King, Jr., and a part of King's movement toward peacefully achieving equality for African Americans. While this movement seems to work for their father, Stick starts meeting with the Black Panthers, another group looking for equality for African Americans, but not as peacefully as MLK. Sam and Stick face several different episodes in this novel that are not easily resolved, not black or white, right or wrong. Even though peaceful resolutions would be nice, Magoon shows how reality didn't allow for that and how Stick and Sam struggle with finding their own ways to resolve the different issues they face simply because they are black.

I liked that Magoon contrasted the Black Panthers with MLK - showing how their goals were similar but their methods were not. While I am not sure it is historically accurate, I found it interesting, that when it came right down to it both groups did work together and respect each other even though they were not in agreement about the use of weapons. And, while I don't want to spoil the ending, I will just say that I was totally not ready for what happens to Stick. I know I had to take a deep breath while reading. I'm still thinking about it today.
This was such an interesting look at being a young African American male in the 1960s, trying to figure out how to find a place in the world, trying to find a way to make their dreams reality.

I'm still thinking about it two days later and probably will be for a while.

Visit Magoon at her website.

A Good Summer Beach Read

I have been reading Jane Green for a few years now, and am always happy when I see she has another book coming out. It often seems they are published for the summer months, and are perfect beach reads. We took a day trip to Des Moines and did the whole Adventureland thing with the girls on Monday which gave me about five hours of reading time, allowing me to get some good beach reading done without the beach.

Dune Road made me feel like it is summer - finally. It is a fun beach read - chick lit, with a bit of suspense, depicting lives of some very interesting and beautiful people. Kit is forty-one, newly divorced, raising two children and gets hired as a famous author's assistant. Her neighbor, Edie, acts as a surrogate mother to Kit and a good friend as well. Kit's circle of friends includes Charlie whose husband Keith manages to lose everything in the financial crisis, and Tracy, who has some secrets of her own she is hiding. When Kit's long lost sister shows up there is more drama in store.

Green does a great job of creating fun reads. For anyone who enjoys some good, summer reading, Dune Road is a wonderful selection.

Book Borrowing....do I lend books?

Natasha over at Maw's Book Blog has a great post about loaning books out. I have so many things to say about it that I didn't comment there, instead deciding to post my own thoughts on this topic.

First of all, I do loan books out. There are a few friends out there who I trust to take care of my books (after all I feel as though my books are my friends) and know they will return them. However, when I do loan things out, I am always worried they won't come back. Even as a child I hated loaning things out. My sister often wanted to read my books and my parents would make me allow her to borrow them (I can see their point: we didn't need two copies and the library didn't always have the same things I did for my sister to borrow from). I would in turn make my sister sign a contract agreeing to a variety of things. We have come across these contracts a few times as adults and my husband usually has a good laugh about it.

There were a few times I got burned when I loaned things out. I can still remember exactly who never returned some of my books, and it is years since these events happened. My own mother in law borrowed a copy of Judy Blume's Summer Sisters several years ago. It was a brand new book. I had not read it. I even wrote my name in the cover. When I asked for it back, after a few months, she informed me that she gave it to her friend because it was that friend's book. I couldn't believe it. I probably stewed about this for days. The obvious answer (at least to me) would be to ask that friend to have Summer Sisters back, since my name was in it, it would be obvious that it was mine. Well, she didn't think she could do that. (Huh?) "What should she do?" she asked me. Well, the next obvious answer (at least to me) would be to replace the book that was lost. Now, this was not an expensive book, and I could have bought another copy, but the idea that my book was just given away was so annoying to me. I have never given her another book to borrow. Petty? Probably. However, I don't think she gets my attachment to books, so I don't plan on giving her any others to lose or give away.

I totally understand the idea of loaning books out. It makes sense that not everyone has to buy a copy of a book. Perhaps I should try borrowing books from people sometimes instead of being the one to lend books out. I know it would save me a lot of money. However, then I wouldn't be able to look through my books again and again and revisit old friends.

Happens Every Day

Isabel Gillies may be best known as an actress on Law and Order, but to me she will be known for writing an exceptionally interesting, easy to read memoir of her marriage and divorce to the father of her two sons.

Because this is my book I have designated to read while on my Airdyne bike, I have actually wanted to ride bike the last few days. (This weekend I rode for an hour each day, and truly the test of whether a book is good or not is if I spend extra time working out just so I can read more). Gillies life is not like my own - she is from old money (she calls it exhausted money); her parents were friends with the Cheevers. Her family summered Maine each year. Gillies graced the cover of Seventeen magazine at the age of fourteen. Even though Gillies' life seems much more cosmopolitan than my own, her book is written as though she is having a conversation with me, and I liked her.

When Gillies met Josiah, also from old money, whose family also summered in Maine and who she has known since childhood, the two quickly fall in love and marry. The fact that Josiah was married at twenty four, had an affair and then divorced should have been a red flag, but Gillies is certain that she and Josiah are made for each other.

They embark on a new life in Ohio when Josiah is hired to teach in the English department at Oberlin College. They have what Gillies believes is the perfect life: two beautiful children, a beautiful older home they have redone, friends that are interesting and lovely, and Gillies can see years into their future unfolding.

Then Sylvia moves to town and is hired to teach in the English department at Oberlin. Gillies and Sylvia become fast friends, but she and Josiah become more than that and despite their initial denials, they truly begin acting as a couple. When Josiah decides to end his marriage, Gillies realizes that their life is over.

Confronting Sylvia with her suspicions of an affair, Sylvia, who happens to be married at the time, but who is childless, responds, "It happens every day." With that one sentence Gillies knows that her suspicions are more than just that.

Gillies eventually learns to go on and makes a new life for herself and her sons. This story shows the devastation a divorce brings with it, but also the ability for one to go on. My only regret about this book is that I read it so quickly. I would like to visit this new friend again.

Far From Xanadu

Far From Xanadu by Julie Ann Peters has been around for a few years, but is new to my library, and a book I had been meaning to read every time I read a review of it. This young adult book deals with the sensitive subject of sexuality. Sometimes I feel like there are already a lot of books out there covering this topic, and it is not one I always want to read about. However, while this is an issue in Xanadu, it is not the only issue by any means.

Mike, really Mary Elizabeth, is sixteen and a wonderful softball player. She looks and acts masculine, and happens to be gay. Her best friend, Jamie, is a boy, a cheerleader, and happens to be gay, too. (You don't know how long I was reading thinking Jamie was a girl). The small town they live in has known Mike and Jamie their entire lives and neither have felt discrimination because of their sexual orientation.

When the story begins Mike is remembering her father's death two years ago. He climbed up the water tower and jumped, leaving Mike, her brother Darryl and her mother to cope with their loss and the financial troubles that have ensued. Mike has never really grieved for her father properly. Her mother, while physically present, is self medicating by eating herself to death. While Mike thinks Darryl doesn't have much going for him, he surprises her by the novel's end.

Enter Xanadu, a wild girl being sent to live with relatives instead of being shipped off to a reform school. Xanadu is beautiful and Mike is instantly attracted to her. Can Mike get someone who is straight to return her love?

I liked this book a lot - more than I thought I would. I didn't like Xanadu very much, though. Even though she appeared to be Mike's friend, it was obvious she was using Mike and didn't really care about Mike's feelings. Mike was a likeable character, someone I was pulling for. I wanted her to come to terms with her father's death, to succeed at fulfilling her dream of getting to play professional softball, to develop a relationship with her brother, and to move on with her life.

This book was definitely worth reading....a great young adult novel about a girl facing many real world problems.

Happy Independence Day!

It doesn't feel much like the 4th of July today - we are expecting a high of 72 degrees and rain. So far my girls have watched a few episodes of Full House on DVD and are putting in a Lazy Town DVD. What a lazy summer day. I have a few things on my list of things I should do - like clean- but am not very excited about any of those things.

Yesterday I finished Dyan Sheldon's second book in a series (if you can call it that), I Conquer Britain. Sophie Pitt-Turnbull, a Brit, has gone to New York to stay with her mother's good friend from college. In Sophie Pitt Turnbull Discovers America, Sophie is in awe of the strange lifestyle of her mother's friend. She is also disgusted by the work she is required to do. She had expected a vacation, not having to be a babysitter.

I Conquer Britain is Sheldon's account of the experience Cherokee Salamanca has visiting Sophie Pitt Turnbull's parents in Britain. Cherokee is the product of the hippie, alternative lifestyle she has been accustomed to in New York. When she arrives at the Pitt-Turnbulls she, too, is in awe of how different their life is from hers. They are very traditional and proper.

Both of these books were fun reads. I wouldn't say that either one gave a lot of information about the cultures that the girls experienced, rather it was the very different home lifes and lifestyles that gave each girl a shock. Definitely humorous and worth reading both to see the girls perspectives of each lifestyle...almost like a teenage version of Wife Swap. Next I would love to see Sophie and Cherokee meet somewhere.

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Flavia de Luce is such a likeable sleuth in Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. This has been marketed as an adult book, and I don't think my elementary kids would get this book at all, but Flavia is only ten years old and able to solve the mysterious death of a former classmate and rival of her father's in her family's garden. Flavia possesses a great wealth of information about chemicals that she uses to help her in her deductions. Bradley's style of writing made me pay attention, it was both charming and clever, and I enjoyed the humor included in it. Bradley is already at work on his second book about Flavia that I will be looking forward to reading.

My local public library will be re-opening in just a few days after being closed for over a month for a remodeling project. I have a huge stack of books to return and am looking forward to picking up some new things to read, too. This weekend we have nothing too exciting planned - taking in some fireworks being the only real thing on the agenda. That should leave quite a bit of time for reading and maybe some running and doing my new DVD, Jillian Michaels No More Trouble Zones (which I like even better than The 30 Day Shred).