Book Notes

This was our pick for this month’s 6th-8th grade book club. I’d never read it before, but became interested after I heard Jeanne DuPrau speaking about her writing. So when the group chose this title, I was very excited.

Lina and Doon are twelve and have just received their work assignments. Lina will be a Messenger, and Doon will be a pipeworker. Everyone works together to keep Ember running. However, things aren’t going smoothly. The lights have been flickering a lot lately. And without lights and a working generator, the entire city will be permanently plunged into darkness. Night and day. Things are looking pretty grim until Lina finds a box with partial instructions on it. It looks like a way out of Ember. If only she and Doon can figure it out before it’s too late.

The author wrote this book based on an true story. There was a real dog who did in fact save the lives of a hundred people by swimming out to their sinking ship in a storm with a rope line.

The fictionalized dog in this story, Sirius, is perfectly amazing. He is sweet, and incredibly smart, and his life is in danger. A new law has been passed forbidding all dogs except for sheepherding dogs from the island. If Sirius is found, he will be killed. Maggie has been hiding him for some time, but when the ship flounders off the coast, and Sirius is the only one who can help, what will she do? Risk her dog’s life to save the people on board, or keep Sirius hidden and let everyone drown?

It’s a very sweet story filled with Newfoundland language and stories. And one amazing dog.

This book was chosen as a Printz honor award winner just recently at the ALA midwinter conference. It’s also one I had sitting on my shelf for a couple of weeks. It’s a sweet story about an Australian family. Each chapter shifts your perspective to a different family member. There’s Lily who worries about how dysfunctional her family is, but who begins to realize that everyone’s family is dysfunctional. Her brother Lonnie, who can’t seem to figure out his place on this planet. All the characters are well formed, and you get to know them really well.

It was a bit hard sticking with a book that was so introspective for 250 pages. No real action or even a lot of dialogue to propel it along. Still, if you can get past that, it’s worth hanging in there for the ending.

This is our January book club pick. Such a sweet story packed into such a small book. I love historical fiction. This is the story of Anna and Caleb a brother and sister who live with their dad on the prairie. Their mom died a long time ago. One day, their father tells them that he placed an add in a newspaper looking for a new wife. Sarah, from Maine responded and she is coming out to visit. Will she like it out there? Will she like them? And most importantly, will she stay?

I’m glad I had the opportunity to re-read this. A lovely book and one that I have always enjoyed.

What a fabulous book! This should have won at least a Newbery honor this year. I was rooting for it to win the Newbery, but alas, it went to Good Masters, Sweet Ladies.

Georgina, her mother and her brother are living in their car. After her father left, they were forced to leave their apartment. The car is temporary, until their mother can earn enough money for them to move into a new home. “Temporary” is taking too long for Georgina, and after seeing a Lost Dog, Reward Offered sign, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She steals a dog to hold on to until a reward is offered. The problem is that she feels like she is doing the wrong thing. And she meets to owner, who loves her dog more than anything. And the dog is a super cutie who misses his house and yard.

This was such a lovely book filled with nice characters and built around a great story. Wonderful for sharing.

I don’t often say this, but every kid should read this book! I’ve been meaning to read Molly Moon for years. I’ve heard so many kids talk about it and how much they liked it. Well, now I have read it and think everyone else should too!

Molly Moon lives in an orphange in England. It’s a horrible orphanage with a mean owner and nasty food. A place where you have to do awful chores like clean the whole bathroom floor with your toothbrush and the food is nasty, rotten fish and yucky, slimy vegetables. The kind of place that you need some kind of escape from.

Molly Moon finds that escape one day in the library. She finds a book on hypnotism. It was written a long time ago by a very famous hypnotist. It turns out that Molly has a knack for it. She is able to hypnotise a way for herself out of the orphanage and over to New York City and then onto Broadway. It’s super fun and full of lots of twists and turns. This is the first of many Molly Moon adventures so get started!

Now that I’ve finally read March, no one is talking about it anymore. They’re conversing about her new one. I’ll have to add that one to my ever growing list of books to read. March was decent though. It takes the father from Little Women, and gives an account of his life at war, and his life before he met and married Marmee, and the back history of how they came to lose their fortune.

It worked really well as a novel. Brooks was at her best chronicling slavery and March’s bystander observation of it. It got a little long for me at the end. I was tired of him, and reading about him. Just in time Brooks brought in Marmee as our new narrator. That helped considerably. Glad to have finally read what everyone was once talking about.

This was another re-read. And a wonderful piece of historic fiction. Set in Scotland in 1306, during the reign of Longshanks of England and Robert de Brus  of Scotland, this book focuses on Robert’s daughter Marjorie and her captivity by Longshanks. She is taken and put in a cage in a town square in England on the Scottish border. This book picks up where the movie, Braveheart, left off, if that helps with setting.

I love the sense of place and time that this book provides. The people are dirty, and they are constantly hungry and cold. Yolen and Harris do a really good job of putting you in the character’s place. And what a great story. A fantastic afterword of what is true and what they had to fill in to make the story is provided.

This was another re-read. And what a fantastic book to re-read. I have so enjoyed this each time that I’ve read it. Hope and her Aunt are on their way to a new town, and a new life in Mulhoney, Wisconsin. Her Aunt Addie is a restaurant manager and is going to be taking over the care of the popular Welcome Diner.

For a small town there sure is a lot happening. There’s a man who is fighting lukemia and corrupt politicians; Braverman who is working as a short order cook and trying to save enough for college; a young mom struggling to make ends meet and care for baby daughter who might have a development problem. And there’s Hope. Who lost a lot of her faith in human beings, but may just be able to find it here at the Welcome Diner in Mulhoney, Wisconsin.

This is the sequel to Spinelli’s wildly popular Stargirl. This book is from Stargirl’s point of view, from her new home in Pennsylvania. She is writing “the world’s longest letter” to Leo, the boyfriend who broke her heart in Arizona.

This book is filled with quirky characters who make Stargirl seem quite average. And I didn’t like that about this one. I want Stargirl to be the sweetest and the most unusual. I also wanted her to not be so broken up about Leo. Sure he broke her heart, but isn’t the essence of Stargirl to be satisfied with who you are? Still, a good read if you miss Stargirl and want to check in on what she is doing now.