I loved A Curse Dark as Gold more than I love Rumpelstiltskin or any other similar story. I loved the characters. I loved the ending. Yes, I loved the ending – can you believe it? I was afraid I’d hate the ending, particularly when I was down to the last 50 pages and was loving it so much. I just knew something was going to happen to ruin it. But nope, excellent. All the way through.
Great Cybil selection!
A Curse Dark as Gold Read More »
The search is on for this year’s Cybils judges and this sent me into a bit of a panic. New judges and I haven’t finished last year’s winners yet? Ugh. So, I’m on a mission to get these finished asap. As sassymonkey smartly reminded me mid-freakout, I’m almost finished.
I finished 3 middle grade/YA non-fiction this weekend and I didn’t love any of them.
Swords was the most disappointing because I was really looking forward to it. It wasn’t horrible, I just wanted more than I got.
I was pretty bored by Lincoln Through the Lens but I expected to be bored so that’s ok.
I enjoyed We Are the Ship the most out of the three. I have a fondness for Negro League Baseball stories because the men behind the teams were brilliant and those stories aren’t told often enough. The athletes were fantastic but it’s the owners and managers who I’m more interested in. I got some of those stories in this book, and I appreciate that.
Three Cybils that I didn’t love Read More »
Another Cybil down… Thaw was good but it’s another one of those books that adults think kids should read (and love) and I don’t think kids will.
And, it’s a BOY problem book. And boy does he have problems, GBS isn’t even his biggest problem. His biggest problem is that he’s an ASS and we get to blame his ASS of a dad.
I’d like to speak with a teenager who has read this one…
Look! Another Cybil! Airman is the book I was least interested in reading from that category. It turned out to be a pretty darn good book. No way it could beat out most of the books in its category but I can see this one being a favorite among the kids it was written for.
Good, solid hero. Bad guys who were just bad enough to hate. A princess who wasn’t stupid. And just enough adventure to keep a kid reading and reading and reading.
Lamplighter is a Cybil. We first got it on audio but after a few minutes gave up on it – we realized that without reading book one, we were completely clueless about what was happening. There are a lot of made up words that make absolutely no sense on audio.
So, I grabbed the first book (Monster Blood Tattoo) and read it awhile back. It was good. Prince J liked it too. TW didn’t read it then, but I grabbed it again and she read it earlier this week.
I knew what was “different” about Rossamund in book one. But TW and Prince J seem unaware.
Book two, Lamplighter… it all comes out. Well not all of it, but there are clues and clues all the way through, leading up to Rossamund (and others) figuring it out. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here folks – sorry!)
Anyway, the only problem with book two is that book three appears to have not been published yet. And I really want to know what the heck is going to happen NOW.
Of the four Cybils I read yesterday, there was only one that was a yawn. Fabulous Fishes, a nonfiction picture book, was just a wee bit boring – especially when you look at the other books in the category. It’s not a bad book, nice photos, nice rhymes but that’s just not enough in this category. I’m not a Nic Bishop fan but even his Frogs book was better. His photos just rock. I wouldn’t have chosen it to win the category but I do understand why others would have selected it.
Moving into middle grade fiction, I loved Shooting the Moon. Maybe it’s the military brat in me. Or the mom of military brats. But I just loved the book. If pushed, I’d say this was my favorite in that category.
Last, Sweethearts, from the YA fiction category. Another good book. A problem book that is just a little different from other problem books. A teen girl who recreates herself, never feels quite right in her new skin and then has to face the past. Really nicely written without a clear, clean, happy ending.
When I saw The London Eye Mystery on the Cybils list, I knew it would be good but I didn’t expect it to be quite this good. Even after reading the reviews and seeing it win. I just didn’t expect this.
Actually, I didn’t know what to expect.
I had no idea “Ted” had been diagnosed with a “syndrome” or that it would be a book about a kid who it appears has Asperger’s. It was a brilliant book, with brilliant characters… even if I knew almost immediately where Salim was.
The London Eye Mystery Read More »
I thought I’d finished with the picture books category but apparently not – I’ve still got some non-fiction books to go through and that’s good because the two I read yesterday are fantastic.
First, Wangari’s Trees of Peace – excellent drawings, simple story of a complex problem without overly frightening young children when speaking about the violence against Wangari.
Next, a book I will have to buy – several times over. My children are huge Wanda Gag fans. OK scratch that, they are huge Millions of Cats fans. The three older ones can probably tell the story word for word with just a wee bit of prompting. The three younger ones, probably can’t but have definitely heard “Hundreds of cats. Thousands of Cats. Millions and billions and trillions of cats.” over and over again.
Loved Wanda Gag: The Girl Who Lived to Draw. Loved the story, loved the art.
I’ve heard an awful lot about The Hunger Games. I’ve seen blogs recommend it. I’ve had people I know recommend it. Sassymonkey has been bugging me to read it for ages and she hasn’t even read it yet (though she’d better have started it by now.)
Finally – got it from the library. TW read it and found it “oddly compelling” and could not put it down. She even stopped reading the second book she was reading so she could focus just on it.
I picked it up right after she finished it and oddly compelling doesn’t even come close to describing it.
Kids. Horrible controlling government. Survivor but for reals. Crazyness.
Sequel in September and I cannot WAIT.
What a way to finish a set of books! Life Sucks and Kin: Good Neighbors were excellent.
Vampires and Fairies. Fabulous. Liz and RJ agree with me about Life Sucks and I’m betting they’ll both love Good Neighbors as well. Holly Black rocks fairy stories. Twiddling my thumbs til the library database comes back online tonight so I can work on reserving more graphic novels in these series’ – there are more available, right? Kin’s ending, in particular, leaves us begging for volume two.
The last of the Cybil Graphic Novels Read More »