Cybil Challenge

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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Guardian of the Dead

2011, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

We finally finished listening to Guardian of the Dead (from the Cybils shortlist) – there was a lot to like about this book but Ellie Spencer drove us a bit crazy. It’s one thing for a teenage girl to be self-deprecating and have body issues but Elly’s issues were excessive. It was tough to listen to and I think it was a little much.

The Maori mythology was cool. I love a good creation story, after all. The magic was interesting.

This book also has something that no other book has… it has THE most disgusting scene ever. (It has several really disgusting scenes actually but one of them, involving geckos… that will live on as being the worst scene ever. EWWWWW.)

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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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I Now Pronounce You Someone Else

1 Comment / 2011, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Young Adult /

I knew going in that I Now Pronounce You Someone Else was not going to be my favorite YA book on the shortlist. And as expected, I did not love it. But – I did not hate it nearly as much as I thought. There was good stuff in there. Some pretty funny parts. Some very sweet parts. Some sad parts. Some serious anger-inducing parts.

Not bad for a book about a teen girl who plans to get married in order to get the life and family she didn’t have.

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Three Cybils – One Yay! One Nay! One In Between!

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

I’m digging into the poetry category and back into the YA category from the Cybils shortlist. I’m nonplussed about both categories so far, which is troubling.

First, Split. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it. Christian seemed wrong to me but not as wrong as both Miriam and Dakota seemed. The women in Jace’s new life seemed almost too perfect and too good, though the author tried to make sure that we understood neither was like Jace’s mom or like Lauren. Still. I don’t know. Miriam before she got to know about all of Jace’s problems seemed a little over the top, then once she found out the entire story, she seemed to willing to dig her heels in for the long haul. It just seemed – backwards and not as realistic as I’d hoped.  The most troubling thing here – this was the YA winner. Darn. Maybe it’s just me?

Then Ubiquitous – great title for a children’s poetry book. Nice pictures. Good idea. The poetry left me bored while I enjoyed the facts about all of the ubiquitous creatures. For a poetry book, the poetry shouldn’t leave you bored. Kids have a hard enough time getting in to poetry to start with.

Next comes Scarum Fair – loved it. Loved the artwork. Loved the poetry. Loved the idea. Not for kids who scare easily but for kids who like ghoulish make believe – fabulous. Love, love, love.

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Fever Crumb

2011, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

This was not my favorite middle grade scifi/fantasy but it wasn’t bad either. I can see why Fever Crumb made it to the Cybils Shortlist but if there’s a sequel. London far in the future is kind of amusing, mostly because of the small twists language has taken. The only real problem with this book  was that I didn’t end up loving Fever Crumb. I liked her well enough but I think I might have liked poor Charley better.

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