Bibliomama

Children/Newbery: Holes  by Louis Sachar:  Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes. It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption. Reviewed on blog in September 2015.  The Egypt Game  by Zilpha Keatley Snyder:  The first time Melanie Ross meets April Hall, she's not sure they'

I went to the gym. I was going to literally just do that - step over the threshold just to see if I still could. I was in a good routine up until Christmas. Then I skipped January because I never go to the gym in January - all the new people plus the mid-winter blahs just make it a completely untenable situation. Then, due to various injuries and concomitant mood flattening, and getting the puppy, January just stretched out... and out.... and out... So today I got up, got dressed, then told myself as long as I got INTO the gym, I could turn around and leave and get groceries and go home, if I wanted to. Since I didn't burst into flame or become magically surrounded by a pointing-and-mocking mob the instant I stepped in the door, I thought I'd do a few arm weights. It's a start. Sometimes it feels like all I'm ever doing is starting over and over, but I guess that's marginally better than just stopping and never starting again. A woman approached me in the change

You know the great thing about doing a blog post series of your own volition with no pay and no deadlines? No urgency or unpleasant repercussions if you get busy and your husband leaves the country a lot and you lose the will to live for a few months. This is also probably the bad thing about doing a blog post series of your own volition with no pay and no deadlines. Anyway. Not a clue how I missed this one on my first pass through childhood. Lynn  (HI LYNN) lent it to me a few months ago, but I've been watching too much Supernatural and reading too much after Lucy goes to bed (which means ipad only) to attack the pile of actual books lately. Yesterday I got home from dropping Angus at basketball, went upstairs and declared that I would read the book at the top of the first pile my eyes fell on. And it was this book. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH won the Newbery Medal in 1972. It's a great story, with strong characters and a fantastic plot that has suspenseful intrigue

So Lynn asked whether I usually read paper books or ebooks. Everybody say "Hi, Lynn ", and then go over to her blog like I just did and get lost in a mini-wormhole of tiny potatoes and cool picture books (what's with all the hat-stealing animals, WHAT'S WITH THEM?). We all know what my principles are worth. I mean, odds are pretty good that I will stand staunchly by rules such as the No Drop-Kicking Babies Rule and the No Leaving Mean-Spirited Comments on Blog Posts or Online Articles Rule, and I'm pretty sure I'll never set anyone's house on fire ON PURPOSE (look, there was a lot of caramel spilled, it seemed reasonable to turn on the self-cleaning function and the flames were all out within ten minutes - fifteen, tops - the smoke detectors didn't even go off). But other than that, don't believe me. "I will never start a blog". "I will never join Twitter." "I will never speak in public unless my children are being held

Eve and I are home from the book fair and tired. We had an interview with her teacher who I already loved. She said Eve obviously doesn't face any academic difficulties, so she thinks they should focus on preparing for middle school and high school by working on the challenges of things like group work dynamics and subjects that Eve finds less engaging, like geography (poor kid has a little dead spot in her brain just like mine, where mapping skills should be). Then she said Eve was awesome, which, duh, but always nice to hear. Then we went back to the book fair. It was crazy busy and crowded and I had to go out in the hallway every time somebody used debit or credit again and fighting through the throngs of people wearing winter coats made me claustrophobic and panicky,  but most people were awesome and we made a metric fuckton of money for the school library and by the end of the evening everything was hilarious and math stopped working in the library for a few minutes around

1) I thought of Nicole every time I said "the posters are five dollars each." 2) I thought "there's no way they sent us enough Frozen posters." 3) I told one grade six girl that the pointers were (also) five dollars each and she exclaimed "OH F..." and I gasped and she finished "OH FIVE, I only have FOUR, bummer!" That was exciting. 4) One little boy came back up the counter, clasping his Pokemon book and his Ninjago book, looked at me and the librarian and said 'You guys are the BEST'.  5) I only screwed up simple addition once. Maybe twice. 6) I ranted (probably for the dozenth time) that all the erasers should be the same price, and whoever added a .50 to ANY price should be shot. Or relieved of their position at Scholastic. Or made to work the book fair without a calculator. Don't even get me started on the 1.25 highlighters. 7) There are no cake pop erasers this year so we haven't had to tell an

I reviewed this way back in 2009. I wish I could say, five years later, that this kind of evidence-based research has made a bigger difference. If more people would read a book or two instead of getting their science from flaky movie stars and "shocking" Facebook postings.... This   is a really well-written, timely, important book. And just thinking about it makes me tired, and sad and angry. Thinking about trying to write this review makes me tired. Because this book is well-written, timely and important, and it's completely preaching to the choir. It's not going to convince anyone who isn't already convinced, or leaning that way. The book itself contains the argument that explains why this is the case. I'm sure Paul Offit understands that he is preaching to the choir with this book, which makes it brave of him to have written it. Some people think that brave ones are the doctors and experts who say that mercury in vaccines or vaccines themselves have ca

I've been in a weird reading place lately. My sweet spot is usually to have one fiction and one non-fiction book on the go, I try to alternate between genres and not go too long without a "broccoli book" (something that's good for me, that I usually end up enjoying more than I think I will), and when I'm in a rut I read short stories. But my focus is all over the place, and even while reading I find my mind wandering, and when I get into bed I can't decide what to pick up, and it scares me. Being a reader is such a huge part of my identity, and if depression or anxiety or getting-older hormones are disrupting that, well, that's not cool. One thing I have to watch is over-using the library. I know, that sounds stupid doesn't it? But I splurged on three or four books that I really wanted to read at the beginning of the summer and I've only read one because of this habit I have of going to the library to pick up holds and then panic-grabbing two or

I flat-out adored this book - I wanted to kiss its whole face. It's also the first one I've read where I really think the committee totally shit the bed on the whole "children are the audience" part of the criteria. As one Goodreads reviewer aptly put it, "the story is subtle as heck". It is so subtle - it is woven together out of hints and echoes and allusions. There were things I didn't catch until my second reading, and I am generally no slouch in the catching-things department (okay, I very often am a slouch in the catching-things department, but things like irony, and when something is a flashback in a tv show, which a lot of people have issues with, they really shouldn't be allowed to show flashbacks without the "5 years ago" tag, it's too confusing). The criss cross reference is to the paths of the many pre-adolescent characters converging, diverging, glancing off of each other and sometimes failing entirely to meet. It is al

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell was the 1961 Newbery Medal winner. I had seen it on library and bookstore shelves many times but never read it. The shocker for me when I flipped the last page was that it's based on a true story, about a girl who was alone on an island along the California coast for nearly TWENTY FREAKING YEARS. I also hadn't realized that there was a s equel , published sixteen years later, which takes place after the original protagonist has left the island and features her niece. I do feel like this was written in a way that would be effective for a younger audience. The language is quite simple, and although the story is affecting (twenty years! Alone! On an island!), I sometimes found myself wishing for a bit more complexity. There would definitely be much to discuss if this book was taught in a classroom setting. Nicole mentioned that she tended to read books with female main characters when she was younger - well, here you go. Not