I finished The Underneath today!! I began this book as a read-aloud for my 6-year-old daughter because of the cute dog and kittens on the front cover. J and I, soon concluded it was not a good story for her.Gar Face’s character scared her, she did not like the Grandmother Moccasin sections and it simply confused her as to how any of the stories were connected. She liked Ranger’s tale and how the cats all became part of one family. I decided to keep reading on my own. I am still struggling with how I feel about the book. I thought some of the images were beautiful. I love Ranger’s story and I honestly wanted the book to just stick with that relationship. I didn’t think the three stories merged enough to make it work. The Tale of Desperaux by Kate Dicamillo is, for me, a great example of various stories merging to make one great tale. Gar Face did not have any redeeming qualities and yes, he gets it in the end but it all just ties together in one quick knot. I thought the writing was repetitive and went on to long (i would have cut out a few chapters). As a school librarian my main concern is who to recommend this book to; what age group; what teacher for read-aloud. I am left wondering. Many students would love the animal aspect but be very put-off by Gar Face’s treatment of animals and his swilling of every known spirit available to him. The snake, Night Song and Hawk Man thread is complicated and students have trouble traveling back and forth, back and forth so frequently. Was this bookmeant for elementary students? I am glad I read it and parts of it will stick with me; I have especially enjoyed reading the variety of comments about this book from other bloggers. There seems to be no definitive answer on this book and perhaps that is what makes an interesting tale.
Author: peacefulreader
Freaky Friday
I haven’t read any books today! I have been spending far too much time browsing blogs, browsing cookbooks, and selling books to students and I am so ready to go home. What I did not get done was cleaning my desks of piles. The last two days have been conference days and so the Scholastic book fair is in the library. Parents and students have browsed and bought and I like that; I just don’t like the commercialism of the book fair. Two tables are devoted to the amount of Disney stuff they include. High School Musical cookbooks (did they cook in the movie, how is this related??), Hannah Montana work books, photo albums and chapter books devoted to the girl and all that fluff gets in the way of the good books that are there. Doesn’t even count the powderpuff pens and fancy ribbon pencils that I leave in the box…ugh…
Okay enough ranting!! I do love it when parents come in and buy their student a good book or two and say no to the crap. Yeah Parents! Yeah Friday! Ready, set, go home and relax…with a good book.
Here is what I am reading: Elijah of Buxton for a school book club, Elvis and Olive, and trying to finish The Underneath. I’ll take a cold beer with those books and hope and pray we do NOT get the winter storm predicted for this area.
Double O book club
Shelf Awareness link is now working:)
Also President Obama, an avid reader, is launching a book club with Oprah Winfrey. Called the Double O Book Club, the joint venture will feature titles from “distressed” publishers and be tweeted from the White House.-–John Mutter
Just read this great little paragraph from Shelf Awareness. Can’t wait to see their selections. I never really participated in Oprah’s book club but adding my favorite president to the mix will make me read and write about it!!
J and I read a not-very-exciting book last night at bedtime, new from our public library; The Great Doughnut parade by Rebecca Bond. Here is the excerpt from the publisher:
“Just where is small Billy going? Why does he have a doughnut tied to his belt? Does he know he is being followed by, first, a hen (with a cluck, cluck, cluck), then a cat (all quiet and slinky), and, farther down Main Street, a band . . . and firemen? Then sign painters . . . brick layers . . . even cloud catchers! Author/illustrator Rebecca Bond reveals the truly marvelous things that can happen when a doughnut is tied up with string.
okay…I have to admit I have never once been curious about what might happen when a doughnut is tied to a string, especially tied to a belt loop…I did poll my family (we mostly all thought the doughnut would fall apart) and made my husband read the book to see if I was perchance missing something. He agreed with me; the book lacks imagination, a good rhyme scheme and as J put it “who would want to eat a doughnut after it has been bouncing back behind you?” Oops, now I’ve spoiled the ending for you. I’ve not read any of her other books and the illustrations by her were alright. I have to admit I was drawn in by just the word doughnut…sadly, just fluff.
Shift by Jennifer Bradbury
Shift by Jennifer Bradbury (2008)
I picked this book out again for Tristan, the 13-year-old, to read but the blurb inside the front cover had me. I finished it in the middle of the night on Sunday because I am suffering from some serious insomnia not because I was so gripped by the story. Again I liked the book but the front cover gave me a different impression or else how I read the blurb gave me a different impression, I’m really not sure (lack of sleep). I thought the book was going to be a bike ride then swing ahead into the later future where Chris discovers some amazing tale about what happened to his friend, which I guess would have been slightly more fantastical and cool. Instead it goes from bike trip to first week of college-still good. As it is Chris and Winston, two high school friends, set out on a long distance bike trek from West Virginia to Seattle, Washington. The tales along the way are interesting, their friendship is expressed in back-and-forth chapters between past, present and trip. The difference in boys is Chris comes from a loving, supportive family and Winston, a wealthy, cold family with a controlling father and vacation-happy mom. Chris becomes disenchanted with Winston and his antics and lack of responsibility and their relationship spirals out of control. The rest you will have to read yourself. One interesting fault that I had with the book was why Jennifer Bradbury had them ride so far north. She has them trek from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois up through Wisconsin and Minnesota, making note of a stop to see a statue of Paul Bunyon and his blue ox, Babe!! As a Midwest girl I kept thinking “why are they going straight north out of Iowa”- instead of cutting nw through South Dakota. Just me being a picky reader, knowing the lay of the map land way too much or very sleep-deprived. Bradbury does have a great website/blog and I enjoyed her story of how the book came to be. Also the ending (not a spoiler) to Winston’s tale is hmmm…I guess I really can’t say without spoiling so never mind. Suffice it to stay Winston’s character grew on me.
Reading by candlelight…
And flashlight last night we read four great books, My honey, J and I all crowded on the love seat, and read Half a pig by Allen Ahlberg, The Lonely Moose by John Segal, How Mommy met Daddy by Katharina Grossmann-Hensel and The Perfect Bear by Gillian Shields and Gary Blythe, all picked from our local library! Half a pig was interesting but long! The Lonely Moose is a quick, sweet tale about friendship. How mommy met daddy is odd on the last page but the idea is how two very different people can come together and become, through love, a better version of yourself. The Perfect Bear took our collective breath away with the amazing illustrations, which had an antique quality and really bring the Velveteen rabbit-like tale t
o life! The expressions on the tiny face of the “do not touch bear” were so true and real. All four of these books will be added to my to-buy list for school, especially the bear book. It’s not easy reading by a flashlight held by a wiggly 6-year-old!! Thank heavans we are not pretending to be pioneers for the long term. Family decision last night though was we should spend every Saturday using minimal electricity…getting snuggy on the love seat was a positive experience. We’ll see what the teenager has to say about this new family development as he was at a sleep-over!!
Earth Hour
Earth hour is fast approaching and I can’t wait to go outside and see if anyone else on this street could be participating!!! I need to get some candles ready because J is still awake and probably will not like utter darkness. I made delicious soup/chili with tomatoes frozen from last year’s garden so our tummies are full and happy. I wonder if the lights at the White House will be off…maybe at least some of them.
Movie Trailer
I just watched a clip of Where the Wild Things Are by Sendak directed by Spike Jonze!
This is a very treasured book at our home and we even have our own collection of lovable Wild Things my honey has collected for me over the years in celebration of birthdays and anniversaries. I love movies but don’t often spend the bucks to go sit in the theater except for special movies and this one makes that list!!
I just finished The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson, which was so unusual and well-written! I, too fell in love with Jenna and all her complexities! It raised so many questions for me of what the future holds for us humans. Second to Jenna I love Lily and their relationship, which seems cold at first but warms up as Jenna continues to question herself. I don’t want to give any of this great story away but read it because it is filled with admiration for the human spirit!
My favorite read-aloud this week is The Zoo by Suzy Lee
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which tells the story of a young girl discovering the zoo on her own wild romp, while her parents are frantically searching for her. Ms. Lee’s illustrations are so perfectly rendered using something close to chalk, which drew my wee students into it even more. Then when I showed them the back cover many were left wondering but just a few knew about her shoe already…we had to go back into the book to show everyone else her missing shoe. Some students thought the gorilla was going to eat the shoe but those of us that got it knew he was admiring not hungry!
Quick Vacation post; Rick Riordan series
I finished The Sea of Monsters...Yeah!!!!! I love this series. I am reading it with a fifth-grade book club and I love how this book creates an instantaneous love of Greek mythology.
I am anxious to read The Titan’s Curse-wish I had brought it with me to Little Rock! I am reading The Adoration of Jenna Fox also though, which is very good and mysterious as well.
Story time in Little Rock
Today I was hanging with my friend Verda at her home in Little Rock when I nonchalantly went through her current library pile and found an absolute gem of a book by Holly Hobbie called Fanny! I don’t know how this book got passed me because the adorable heroine on the front cover is wearing cute-as-a-button glasses and I am always looking for role models for J. in this area. I love the Toot and Puddle books so I don’t know how this one slipped by but thank heavans Verda had it in her library pile so I had to stop and read it to Sela and Japhy right then and there. I love Fanny’s sense of style because at our house we often have dance outfits mixed in with outfit of the day and we don’t give in to the Bratz doll craze although we do have antique Barbies. Fanny is a heroine who does things for herself in the face of adversit
y…her Mom saying “no” to the fancy Connie doll. She makes her own doll and stands up to her friends as well. I would like to invite Fanny over to my house for a playdate with J.-the two could commiserate over their Mom’s but have a blast playing in the meantime! Thank you V and S for introducting us to this great book!
More Spring Break reading
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I don’t really know what I expected but The Underneath by Kathi Appelt is not some simple animal companion story. I brought it home from the library a few weeks ago because I was anxious to read it and like a good mother I decided to multi-task and read it to J. for a bedtime read-aloud (a change of pace from Junie. B and fairy gems). I don’t really like to read reviews about books before I read them as those words tend to get in the way of enjoyment but this may have been a time I could have used some red flags. Oh, the book is so well written and the story is woven so beautifully together and we have yet to get to where the stories come together. Kate DiCamillo’s The tale of Desperaux is a perfect example of another extraordinary weaving together of seperate threads. I did ask J., after Gar Face appeared, if she would like me to quite reading the book to her and she bounced on her bed and said, something like “no, no, no” about a hundred times so she’s hooked. I would say the book would really be better for 4th, 5th 
grade students, which are exactly who will read it when I take it back to my school library but for now it stays and J. and I will finish it with glee and some sadness- every three chapters or so.
Now for the other child…the 13-year-old I am so frantically trying to keep amongst the reading. The second book( first one was the previously blogged about Compound) I picked out at our public library for him is Gone by Michael Grant(watch this great youtube video of MG talk about the book). This book, I found out, is part of a planned six book series and Tristan and I are ready for the second one to appear. The premise of this book is that something has occured in the world and all the adult have simply disappeared…in fact, every one over 15 disappears. There are town kids, babies, and a prep school for teens in trouble all stuck in one community together. Many normal things happen such as looting but so much happens that I couldn’t even, or wouldn’t even think possible. This isn’t a typical book I would pick up for just me to read but Tristan is looking for new material since the Eragon series is in remission. He finished it the other day so now I have been reading like mad and along the way we talk about it (don’cha love it). We talk about the character’s choices and the author’s ideas. What I love most though is his constant “where are you now Mom, what’s happening now?” and well, it keeps us connected. I haven’t finished yet but tomorrow looks like another good reading day.
Peaceful Reader 
