Children’s Literature

Under a Red Sky

2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I put off reading Under a Red Sky because I thought it was going to be boring. I thought it was going to be something other than what it was – which means I didn’t know it was going to be more of a memoir than a historical look at Romanian Jews after WW2.  (The darn sub-title that says it’s a memoir of a childhood in communist Romania is missing from the cover of the book.)

Because it was a memoir, it wasn’t boring at all. It was interesting and just a little sad and scary. The only thing I wish was that we had a few more chapters – what was it like to finally reach Israel? But then I’d probably want a few more chapters about heading to America.

I’m very glad I read this one and I’m sorry I waited so long.

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The Kneebone Boy

2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Young Adult /

Maybe it was me but… The Kneebone Boy was slow. I had to fight to keep reading it. At the point in the book where the storyteller (Lucia, is my guess, lol) tells us that we would be stupid to put the book down now… I had a hard time agreeing with her.

I didn’t hate the book, not by any means. I even liked the ending. It was just too slow for me and I never quite managed to get attached to any of the characters – except maybe Haddie and the Sultan.

TW, on the other hand, read it straight through and really liked it.  Weird how that happens sometimes.

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Scrawl

1 Comment / 2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Young Adult /

The last of the YA Cybils. Hurrah! Even better – I really liked this one. After the first “chapter” aka journal entry of Scrawl, I didn’t think I would. It starts off with a boy writing about bullying another kid and leaves off in the middle of a sentence. The beginning of the next chapter aka journal entry does not pick up where the last chapter starts. I was confused. I thought maybe there was more than one kid writing. A couple more pages into it and I was hooked.

The first three pages though – rough, and if I was a woman who quit books early, I might have quit.

If you’re a woman (or a teen, since this IS YA fiction after all) and tend to give up early – don’t. Stick with it. The pay-off is worth it.

I don’t suppose this won the Cybil … nah, couldn’t have. Too bad. I’d have voted for it. 

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I’m on a Cybils Roll!

2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Non-Fiction /

Four more children’s books from the Cybils list and I can just barely see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, I think the end of the tunnel will appear sometime in January of 2012. Behind schedule – but I’ll get there. Eventually.

Non-fiction first, since there are three of them:

First, Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped.

Next, Bones: Skeletons and How They Work. I liked it more than I thought I did. Some to scale images of bones of different creatures. Other smaller scale images of bones. Lots of different animals (and fish and birds and reptiles) represented here. Nice contrast between the bones and the background colors.

And, Dinosaur Mountain was fabulous. I’ve read a lot of dinosaur books in my time, for all ages, and this is one of the best. It was the narrative that did it. Forget the gold rush, think about the BONE rush. You’ve got Americans excited by the first dinosaur display, you’ve got Andrew Carnegie with an empty dinosaur room telling you to go find something big and here’s the money to do it… how do you find that big something? And just when you’re about to give up hope, you find it… but winter is coming and you’re in Utah. Gah. Imagine living in a tent next to the bones of a brontosaurus all winter long and not being able to get in there and dig those fossils out? Fabulous story. Loved it.

From the children’s fiction list, Shark vs Train. For some reason the two little boys reminded me of my nephews. Well really they reminded me of one nephew. That kid should have been twins, heck on wheels… heh. So two boys are playing. One has a shark, one has a train – who will win! Depends on the competition, now, doesn’t it? Cute book. Not my thing but I’m guessing there are a lot of kids who would get into this who would win type of game.

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Three More Cybils – Children’s Poetry

2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Poetry /

And with these three, I finish up the Poetry category from the 2010 Cybils Shortlist.

Sharing the Seasons was a nice enough book of poetry. It seems like there’s a new seasonal poetry book every year, doesn’t it? This one is pretty much just like those. Some poetry that you’ve seen in other places plus some new poems. The illustrations are nice. I didn’t love the book or hate it. It was nice.

Next, a book I really liked. It reminded me a wee bit of another book from the short list that I didn’t like… (Ubiquitous). You might remember that I didn’t like that one because I didn’t like the poetry. I liked the science-y descriptions but the poetry bored me. Dark Emperor of the Night was similar in that it had a page of poetry and then it had factual discussions that were related to each of the poems. The poetry was excellent. The discussions, equally excellent. The kicker was the artwork. I kept running my fingers over the images – Rick Allen’s prints were amazing. I would buy one of his prints, it doesn’t matter of what, and hang it on my wall. Beautiful work. Beautiful choice for this book.

Finishing it up, Switching on the Moon. Very nice book of bedtime poetry. I even liked how it was sorted into sections and I liked the poems chosen to end/start each section. Nicely done. No complaints about this one.

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The Quest of the Warrior Sheep

1 Comment / 2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction /

KitCat was the first person I saw talking about The Quest of the Warrior Sheep. The minute I finished reading her post, I reserved the first book. Who cares that I’m behind – I have to read that book!  A few weeks later, Sassymonkey talked about the Warrior Sheep and I gazed longingly at my library book cart where the book has been sitting for ages. I thought I’d never get around to reading it!

But I did, last night.

Super fast read. Amusing, because sheep mysteries always are, aren’t they?

Sheep in a tube.

Sheep on a plane.

Sheep on a train.

How damn amusing is that?

And, oddly enough – I didn’t see that bad guy coming!

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Three More Cybils

2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Non-Fiction, Poetry /

Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat is a children’s non-fiction book about Ella Fitzgerald. Great photos. Nice storytelling. Ella as a homeless teen is kind of dark, if you have really young kids – but I liked that her difficult early years weren’t glossed over. Nicely done.

Mirror Mirror is a children’s poetry book and it was pretty good. Each duo of poems is based on a fairy tale. The poem is told top to bottom and then bottom to top. Smartly done.

A Sick Day for Amos McGee was not my kind of story. Amos gets up everyday and takes the bus to work at the zoo. He does things with the animals like play chess with the elephant and tell bedtime stories to the owl, who is afraid of the dark. One morning Amos wakes up with a cold and doesn’t go to work – so the animals take the bus to his house and do all of the things for him that he always does for them. It was nice enough and I’m betting my kids would have asked for it to be read to them over and over again while I yawned a lot.

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Four Children’s Non-Fiction (During the #readathon)

2 Comments / 2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Dewey's Readathon, Non-Fiction /

I took a break from the other two books I’ve been reading and picked up four of the books from the Cybils Shortlist for children’s nonfiction. I enjoyed them all.

The Secret of the Yellow Death – I expected to find this one dull but I didn’t. It was interesting and exactly the right length with the right amount of photos. I highly recommend it.

The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy) – I expected to like this one the best, but I didn’t. It was fine but a little too dry though I did like the way Suzy’s journal was tucked into the book as its own separate journal. That was smartly done. The illustrations were nice as well. It was fine – just not my favorite.

Henry Aaron’s Dream – Why are there always baseball books in the Cybils shortlist? Could we have some football or basketball or soccer every now and then? I like the baseball books but there are other sports stories to be told to kids, ya know? Warning: If you are thinking of reading this to your children or letting them read it, the N WORD is written out (twice, I believe) so be prepared. 

Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum — Heh. Enough said, right?

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Crunch

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites /

We’ve been listening to Crunch, in the car, for weeks – and it’s been a lot of fun. It’s also made both of us wish we had bicycles. We might just have to get a couple for Christmas. (Not that we can ride them at Christmas. Gah! But at least we’ll be prepared when the gas stops flowing…)

There was one tiny little problem with Crunch – the kids were too good. Even when they were fighting with each other (which was rare) they were just too perfect.

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Belly Up

1 Comment / 2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Mystery /

People in my house kept asking me if I was reading a book about a hippo. Or why I was reading a book about a hippo. Or why was that hippo DEAD?  I don’t think I’ve gotten as many questions about a book, from a cover, in ages. Which means – Belly Up had an excellent cover.

These discussions also led me to realize I don’t read many middle grade mysteries. It’s always scifi/fantasy. Or relationship-y stuff.

Belly Up was good and deserved a place on the Cybils shortlist. A little slow to start but I really liked Teddy and I liked that he was an animal expert and adults should listen to kids more often.

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