The Winners Curse
We listened to The Winners Curse on audio and once we got past the accent of the lead character, it was pretty good. I’m not sure I’m feeling it as a trilogy. I’d probably have preferred just two books but we’ll see.
Cybil Challenge
The Family Romanov
The Family Romanov was the book I was probably least interested in reading, from the Cybils shortlist, and it turned out to be excellent.
What a mess the Romanovs were. And Russia. And, ugh. The whole horrible mess.
Super interesting read. I highly recommend it.
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3 Non-Fiction Cybils
Popular was fun. A lot of fun. I loved it. I love both Maya and Betty. Heh.
The Port Chicago 50 was excellent. I can’t believe I didn’t actually know anything about this until reading the book. Read it!
Be a Changemaker was good but I didn’t like the format of the book so that bugged me all the way through it. The info was good, this is stuff kids don’t generally learn about and they should — whether they’re planning to start their own company/venture or not.
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The Swallow
The Swallow was an awesome ghost story and I admit that I didn’t see that ending coming. Not at all. I knew something had to happen but I couldn’t figure out what because obviously the ghost girl wasn’t a ghost… that would have been too, well, obvious.
Side note: When I went to amazon to grab the url for the book, only the kindle edition is available. I wonder why. I got my copy at the library… print, not ebook. Oh, maybe because it’s a Canadian press? Still… very unusual.
The Luck Uglies
The Luck Uglies is on the Cybils short list and we listened to it on audio. It started a little slowly but picked up quickly and I really enjoyed it. I particularly loved the ‘gloaming beast’ there at the end. Heh. That was awesome. Surely there’s a sequel? There must be… I hope. Oh, there is! Yippee!
Two from the Cybils
Death Sworn was… not bad. Not my favorite, but not bad. I liked Ileni and I am kind of looking forward to the next book (which is on my library cart now.)
I loved, loved, loved, loved, loved Death By Toilet Paper and didn’t expect to. That darn kid broke my heart over and over again. You don’t realize just how good your toilet paper was until your family can’t afford to buy it any more. *sniff* Also, professional sweepstakes folks, haha. I love those people.
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Nuts To You
We listened to Nuts To You on audio this week. It’s a very cute and very short middle grade fiction book from the Cybils shortlist. We enjoyed it. It was cute. The squirrels are very adorable. It also made me want a peanut butter sandwich.
Two Awesome Middle-Grade Fiction Books
I’m making a lot of progress on my Cybils shortlist and am feeling really happy about all of the really good books that made the list.
I didn’t expect to love Ice Dogs but I did. Victoria is a great character and I loved her strength and I loved her dogs.
I also didn’t expect to love Nickel Bay Nick, either. Totally loved the characters and the story. Even better, I didn’t see the end coming! (That almost never happens and really never happens with children’s books.)
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All Four Stars
All Four Stars was a super cute, super fast read. I chuckled all of the way through it. And, I can’t wait to find out how Gladys explains to her parents that she’s a new restaurant critic for the newspaper. They’re going to freak, lol.
Three Graphic Novels
There’s not much on the library cart that I really want to read right now, thankfully there were some graphic novels from the Cybils shortlist to tide me over until I can pick up something interesting at the library. All of them were pretty good so that made me happy.
Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History was super interesting and drawn beautifully. I was surprised to have never heard of any of the people featured in this volume. My only issue with this book is that the text was difficult to read in places. I’m old, probably could use some bifocals, and the white text on black at times was difficult. In some areas, there was brown text. And, it was tiny, too. This is a book for kids so I’m guessing this is my issue and not an issue the intended audience will have. lol
Harlem Hellfighters was excellent. The pages felt chaotic, which seemed right for the story but made it hard for me to read late at night. Again, this might be an old woman problem. Hah.
In Real Life was pretty darn good. Girl gamers FTW!
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