Look Again

(2009)

     I think every parent’s worst nightmare would be to have your child stolen; taken away in the dead of the night by some monster of a person…oh, right, that’s my awful reaccuring dream.  Lisa Scottoline takes an adopting parent’s worst nightmare and crafts this very beautiful story around it.  I loved getting to know Ellen Glesson as she moves from the joys of juggling single-parenting her son, Will, to the demands of a full-time reporting job.  Her comfortable world begins to crack just a little the day she spots one of those “Have you seen this child?” flyer and the child’s photo looks remarkably like Will.  She tosses the flyer away only retrieving it seconds later.  She becomes fixated on looking into Will’s adoption, driving here and there across the East Coast locating family members of the birth mother’s. 
    I knew things were not quite right when the adoption lawyer turned up dead but that was only a small tip of the rest of the mystery involving Will’s legal parents.  I so enjoyed it and at times didn’t want to put it down.  It was supposed to be my lighter book sandwiched between Little Bee by Chris Cleave and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, both excellent books on serious topics.  It was lighter but fun and exciting as well.  I noticed from checking out her website, Scottoline has a a new book out, Think Twice.  I have a lot of books in line to read first but I know I will look for other books by her, including this new one.
Quote: 

“Mommy, look!”  Will called out, running toward her with a paper in his hand.  His bangs blew off his face, and Ellen flashed on the missing boy from the white card in the mail.  The likeness startled her before it dissolved in a wave of love, powerful as blood. p. 2 Look Again

This is a story about a mother’s love and how far that love will push you to go beyond normal and  find the truth.  There are shocking surprises along Ellen’s journey to uncover the truth about her son yet it wasn’t so scary that I couldn’t sleep at night.  She has an interesting love twist and a really wicked coworker bringing her misery but her role as a mother is definetely the strongest.  Doesn’t the cover pull you in a little also.  This is the paperback cover of the one I have while the hardcover has a bright red cover with no picture. 
Recommended
3.5/5 peaceful stars
Check out these other reviews:
and
Mimi and Christina at 2 Girls 1 Book review.
Peaceful Reading…

The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

(2007)

     Watch this fantastic video [below] of Markus Zusak discussing his book. He has a sexy accent and he talks about the book with such passion. I loved that this book is set from a German village giving us the opportunity to see their take on Hitler’s Germany (it wasn’t all Yeah Heil Hitler) and I enjoyed death as the narrator. It gave me a sense of peace at death’s interaction in our daily lives.
     This book like Chris Cleave’s Little Bee is about having hope in the midst of waiting. I highly recommend this book and plan to read other Zusak novels because of his ability to create such real characters and twist the storyline around.  If you, like me, let this one slip by-go find a copy and read it.  You won’t be disappointed.


5/5 peaceful stars
Highly Recommended for HS and adult audience
Maw Books review of The Book Thief (2008)

p.s. I received this book in 2007 as an ARC (before I even blogged and knew what an advanced reader’s copy really was); I passed it on to my son instead and then let it languish on my bookshelf!!

Peaceful Reading…

Teaser Tuesday-Three Wishes

     This is a book I’ve wanted to read for a few weeks.  My friend, Tina found it at the library and is letting me read it first!!  Don’t you just love a good book-loving friend!  I finished The Book Thief this afternoon at peaceful girl’s gymnastic lesson so I am anxious to get into this book tonight. 

Here’s my teaser:

“You have everything you need to calm yourself, even when the world around you is nuts,” I told a class in Newark.
“Yeah, right,” a tenth grader scoffed at me.  “I just breathe, and that makes everything better.  You the one who’s nuts.”   ~p. 29 Three Wishes; A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Love and Motherhood  by Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones, and Pamela Ferdinand

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Just do the following:
  1. Grab your current read
  2. Open to a random page
  3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.
  4. Be careful not to include spoilers.  You don’t want to give away too much information.
  5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Peaceful Reading…

Little Red Riding Hood/Trina Schart Hyman/Fairy Tale Fridays

Tif Talks Books hosts Fairy Tale Fridays and as I’ve been spending my Springtime immersed in fairy tale discussions with 2nd grade students I love to play along.

This week I believe she is discussing The Three Bears, which I did read with students.  They thought Goldilocks was pretty rude for breaking and entering and then breaking more things.  They said she should have apologized!! 

I’m going to focus on a different fairy tale though as it is one very dear to my heart.  A few months after moving from one state to another it was my daughter’s birthday and an amazing friend sent her a handmade red cape and a copy of Trina Schart Hyman’s Little Red Riding Hood.  If my scanner worked I would show you the very first illustration which has Red Riding Hood sitting on a bench, reading a book.  It starts in the familiar way transporting us immedietely “Once upon a time there was a little girl named Elisabeth who lived with her mother in a house on the edge of the village.”  Red Riding Hood is being raised by her single mother…is this why the wolf picks her?   These were, after all, early tales of morality. 

     I love the illustrations in the book and the story is very well-told but I always question this tale (and other fairy tales as well) because it can be so gory with the whole gutting of the wolf at the hands of the male woodcutter, which then leads to Red and Grandmother being “reborn.”  Fairly dramatic, yes. This version does all that but somehow Hyman’s whimsical illustrations make the grimness  fade and in the end Grandmother and Red sit down and have some afternoon refreshments after the woodcutter rescues them. (Note: In the earliest versions of Little Red the girl is able to outwit the wolf herself but later centuries believed it was important to have a male figure come and rescue the helpless little girl.)

     Red Riding Hood reminds herself, as she is walking back home, “I will never wander off the forest path again, as long as I live.  I should have kept my promise to my mother.”  She is comforted by the fact that she has “minded her manners, and had always said ‘good morning,’ ‘please,’ and ‘thank you.”   So she could have been killed by the predator wolf but thank heavens she was always polite!!  See why I love this retelling-it has such spunk and I truly love this illustrator.  She has illustrated other fairy tales but this is her only retelling. 

My Little Red Riding Hood girl with the handmade cape from Verda!

Click here for her long  bibliography.
Peaceful Reading…

Little Bee Activism

We don’t want to tell you WHAT HAPPENS in this book.
It is a truly SPECIAL STORY and we don’t want to spoil it.
NEVERTHELESS, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this:
This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again – the story starts there …
Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds.  ~Good Reads Synopsis
This is the warning that comes with the book and I plan to stick to it but that makes it difficult to actually review and/or talk about the book other than with people who’ve already read it.  My thoughts are if you can handle the reality of this book then you should read it. I think it should be required reading for everyone.  
 We are blessed to live in a country where our civil rights are guaranteed.  Justice is not always what it should be here in the states but our biggest problems stem from natural disasters, stock market prices and occassional groups of terrorists rather than kangaroo courts.   We haven’t had an actual war on our soil for about 146 years. Yet in many countries human rights issues are very real and often insane.  I do believe that we live in a much larger global world than our parents’ generation but we still have only  a vague view on how business is conducted in many countries.  Chinese workers get paid aproximately $3.00 a day for producing goods sold at stores here in the U.S. And when a country rich in oil sells that oil through a corrupt and greedy government the people of the land are the victims in so many ways.  When we pump gas into our cars we don’t see the long history of what it took to get that oil here.  We need to pay more attention to how that oil steadily streams into our internal combustion engines. With BP’s recent oil spill in the Gulf Coast we should again, unrelentingly, be looking for alternative ways to fuel our cars.  We should find a way to make trains efficient at transporting us all over this country.  Instead we continue the status quo while people in oil rich lands continue to suffer, despite the oil, because of their opressive governments and big oils willingness to deal with zealots, and we don’t really know the half of it. 
Seriously read this book because “when the men come” we need to be less oblivious and a little more prepared!! 
We all need a Little Bee and a Batman in our lives to remind us the world needs our help.
Click here for Chris Cleave’s website.
Be Peaceful~
Peaceful Reading…

A Little Sharing

     Before I left work today I took a quick glance at my gmail acct. and flipped through several blog related emails and discovered one from an author.  Aileen Leijten has two books I adore (The Hugging Hour and Bella and Bean) and I’ve posted about and she left me a message telling me thank you.  I typed her a quick note back and then took a gander at her website to see if anything new was coming up.  This is the third time I’ve gone to an author’s website only to see my words there, bragging about their books.  This time Aileen has my website squared with the words “Peaceful Reader -Hugging Hour Blog  Review.”  How can you not love it when an author loves what you say about their creations!!  I’m beaming over here!
Please take a moment to visit her site and see my name in “lights” and while your there wander around a little, explore her whimsical illustrations and her Etsy Shop.  These books deserve spots in your library or your home!!

Have a very peaceful day~

Still to come this week from me:

*review of Little Bee by Chris Cleave
*review of Look Again by Lisa Scottoline
*a giveaway of She’s So Dead to Us by Kieran Scott

Stay tuned!! 
I’m off to a high school band concert:)

Peaceful Reading…

The Book Thief-Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other  participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s my teasers:
Remarkable book.  Off to read…

When a woman with an iron fist tells you to get out there and clean spit off the door, you do it.  Especially when the iron’s hot.  p. 44 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Peaceful Reading…

Kathryn Stockett Adventure

     My friend Tina and I began our blogs at about the same time a few years ago.  She reads a lot more than I can ever get accomplished plus she always has her finger on the pulse of hot new books, authors and literary events happening around our great state.  A couple of weeks ago she informed me that Kathryn Stockett was coming to a town quite close to us and we decided we had to go.  We have girls around the same age and we worked some magic to leave them with dads for the whole Sunday afternoon.  Football season is over anyway.  She pulled up in front of my church and we hightailed it out of there like we were Thelma and Louise, in a minivan.   Luckily we were heading for tamer entertainment; an author reading!!

     In fact the audience was filled with mostly white women, with a heaping handful of men,  and a smaller handful of women of color.  I point this out because I’ve often wondered how the black community views this book and its characters.  Stockett spoke to a full house and we were truly  mesmerized.  She is petite, graceful and fully at ease with herself and the book she wrote.  I loved how she spoke-she didn’t give the usual author talk of how many rejection notices she received or advice-she just talked to us like we were all sitting around her kitchen table with her, like we were old friends.  She seemed amazed by the success of The Help but was happy it had been well-received, not because she wanted her book to be popular, but because it got people talking about race and that’s big for a small Southern woman.

     Even though she said she wasn’t Skeeter in the book it seemed she, like Skeeter, was willing to push against her upbringing to really think about what it was like for generations of black women who worked for her family.  During the Q and A session she answered several  race related questions and her families feelings about the book.  I think after listening to her sweet drawl I might be a little in author love.  She was friendly, low-key and so very, very funny that I couldn’t even take notes-I was just so happy to be there! 
Thank you Tina for sweeping me off to this event!
  *** That and I got a fantastic bargain on a sweet pair of trouser jeans from Ann Taylor about 20 minutes later.
 It was just a really great day.***

If you ever have the chance to hear her speak I highly recommend you take the opportunity and she has a full list on her website of speaking engagements from now until Fall.  If you have not read The Help yet please pick it up at the library or buy it.  After hearing her speak I want to read it again!

Peaceful Reading…