Damn I love Lauren Willig. And I love Turnip most of all, though Arabella is probably high on my love list too. Brilliant use of Jane Austen (and The Watsons) as the foundation for Mischief of the Mistletoe. Brilliant. I couldn’t put it down and didn’t want it to end – and I laughed out loud, over and over again.
I can hardly wait for The Orchid Affair.
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And Dexter really was Delicious in this book. Thank goodness. I really didn’t love Dexter by Design so I was worried that Dexter is Delicious wouldn’t make me love Dexter (and friends) the way the first three books did. I was afraid I’d feel about it the way I feel about the Showtime series – which is cold, bored, and longing for the Dexter of the old days. Thank goodness Lily Anne changed Lindsey’s writing as much as it changed Daddy Dexter. It could be that I just don’t love Cody and Astor very much and I do love Brian. It could also be that I love Sgt Deborah and this book gave us another look at Debs. This book also brought back the funny Dexter which I think was really lacking in the last book. That’s probably the real problem – I need the sarcastic humor that IS Dexter.
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First, Operation Yes – Goodness I loved that book. It’s probably the military family in me but who cares, it was awesome. Little green army men. Air Force (and one Army) “brats” at a small school in a small school in a small military town. What’s not to like? Particularly when there’s a great teacher involved. Heck, the book even made me like air shows and I really do not like air shows.
Next, The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis. Hah. We listened to this one on audio (and I do believe this is my preferred method of reading middle grade fiction) and at first, I was confused. How could a middle grade fiction book start in such a horrible, depressing way? It didn’t make sense. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a middle grade fiction book that started this way and I was pretty sure I was going to hate this book after listening to the first two chapters. But then… the Holiday Rambler appeared and the “vocabulary words from Velma” really got going and I just loved this story. TW loved it too and we were sorry to see it end – but very happy that it ended exactly the way it did end.
Two Must Reads from the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction Short List Read More »
Argh! How many books are there going to be in the Amulet series? They keep ending just when they’re getting interesting and I’m once again left wondering what happens next. Same darn thing happened last night when I read Cloud Searchers. I was just settling in and getting excited about the story and … BAM. When is the next book coming out? Sheesh.
Have I mentioned I really like this graphic novel series (for younger kids)?
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Finishing the Cybils Shortlist Challenge is going to be errr challenging. I’ve got a lot of books to read and some of them have been on my reserve list for a very long time. I’m beginning to think the cuts in library funding are going to prevent me from reading them all. But, I’m still trying. I finished five last night. I only really loved one of them and I couple were just plain bad.
The two that I really did not like were Shampoodle and The Book that Eats People. The Book that Eats People was really disappointing. I had high hopes but it was boring. A book that eats people should not be boring. Shampoodle was just one of those boring rhyming books where dogs have weird grooming things done to them – for nothing. I’m not a fan of those sorts of books.
The Curious Garden was nice. I liked the story. I liked the idea of helping nature grow in the middle of the city and seeing others join in. Very nice. Not great but good enough. Good Dog, Aggie wasn’t bad either but it wasn’t super awesome. Just good enough — though the boxy faces on the animals weren’t my favorite dog illustrations in the world.
The one I loved was Alice’s Shooting Star, though I didn’t love the title. I want a better title for this fun story. Rosie is an awesome kid and Alice is an even more awesome big sister for recognizing her sister’s personality for the great thing that it was. It can be difficult having a kid (or a sibling) like that but it’s who they are and there are lots of things to like about a quirky kid. I almost wish I had a kid in this age group so I could buy the whole series of Alice books.
5 More Cybils – Easy Readers and Picture Books Read More »
Another Cybils YA short lister and another that I kept pushing back on my list because… another beauty/body image book? Really? Do I have to? Because I’ve read an awful lot of them this year. North of Beautiful is better than I expected. It’s more than I expected. I yelled at Terra’s dirtbag father all the way through the book. I cheered at the end. It’s a lot more than a beauty/body image story. It really is. Read it, you’ll see.
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Unicorns FTW!
Last night when I was just a wee bit into Zombies vs Unicorns, Michelle wandered into my bedroom and plopped herself down on my bed – which led me to gripe about kids always laying on my darn bed. My griping didn’t send her away so I figured I’d try asking her some stupid question, a normal surefire way to get her to wander off to do something more interesting… “Zombies or Unicorns?”
She said Unicorns (smart girl) which led TW to try and argue that Zombies were better… unfortunately TW is not very good at debating and she proved the Unicorn’s side over and over and over again with her arguments, which caused Michelle to continue to lay on my bed laughing her a** off. So much for surefire ways to get a kid to get off of your bed.
The zombies vs unicorn debate seems like a good debate but it isn’t. Unicorns win hands down. They’re smarter. They’re magic. The stories about them are better. Not that that zombie stories in Zombies vs Unicorns were bad, they were excellent – but they just proved that Unicorns are just plain smarter, meaner, more magnificent and BETTER.
Don’t believe me? Read the book. Princess Prettypants, the prettiest, sweetest, rainbowyest (that’s totally a word) unicorn in the entire book will kick your ASS and make you like it. No zombie would stand a chance.
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How have I never read the other St Just books before? Death and the Lit Chick was fun! Particularly amusing, the crime/mystery writers arguing over how soon you must insert the dead body into the story before the reader gets bored… the dead body hadn’t been inserted by the point(s) being argued. I wasn’t bored! Also – I didn’t figure out the who did it, which was a bonus since I usually do.
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Wolves, Boys and Other Things That Might Kill Me is another book that I picked up while walking through a strange library. The title called to me but I was worried about whether I’d like it or not – no worries, I loved it. It was almost midnight and I had about 70 pages to go – I wanted to keep reading and see what happened to the wolves – and the boys – and the town. Great characters – kids who seem real and not too perfect or too flawed either.
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I have such a love/hate thing for Meg Rosoff that I didn’t think I was going to read The Bride’s Farewell. In fact, after hearing from Sassymonkey that she didn’t like it I was sure I wouldn’t bother with it. But a funny thing happens when your library is closed for more than a month – you get punchy and panic over the idea of not having enough to read. And when that happens and you see a Meg Rosoff on the shelf… it jumps into your library bag. Even so, you wait almost a full month before you decide to read it… when your choices are getting slim and it’s Nancy Drew or some book about how to find a job using social media or a really long Lauren Oliver book that you’re pretty sure is going to be depressing. That’s how I came to read The Bride’s Farewell.
And it’s also how I realized I loved The Bride’s Farewell. Rosoff still writes like Rosoff but this book is nothing like How I Live Now or What I Was. It’s not even like Justin Case. It’s another kind of book entirely. And I really enjoyed it. Bucking the patriarchy is my thing, after all. So is saving children. And poaching off of wealthy landowners. Oh. Wait. Go back to the patriarchy thing. Also, I like gypsies.
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