Meetings

Today we had our staff meeting in the library. Learned all about our new student planners that I will have to make sure I do if I have aides first period. We even have a 15 minute window every Monday (or first day of the week) to go over the planners so I’m going to have to get that down! Ended up listening a lot to the meeting, that I hadn’t really planned on, but it was all good! We then had our potluck and I ducked out quickly so I could get the laminator on and get all the stuff laminated for the teachers that they had waiting for me! It was quite the load! Then I packed up the 10 books I had ready from JLG and headed off to LMSS for the meeting over there. It was such a great meeting. We could all come and batted ideas around, learned some new things and had a great time learning from each other and our PA about what was going on. Now for a four day weekend!

Withdrawal slog

I spent a good part of today withdrawing books for the two teachers that had picked through my carts.  One only picked five books, the other had about 80! That took awhile to delete them from the system, mark all the ‘Leslie’ stamps out, put label stickers over the barcodes and spine labels, stamp them ‘Discarded’. The teachers were very happy to get them though! I put date due stamps in new books. Got the JLG books stamped and ready so I can take them to LMSS tomorrow where we are having a meeting in the afternoon. Found our Math and Read 180 new materials to put the barcodes on them. Thank you our IC. Checked out Schoolwide resources to a teacher (yes, we have to check them out and then make sure all the components are also all checked out). One more day this week, then we are off for four days before students arrive!

Furniture, Frisby and Fun

Another great day in the library! Contacted the Oregon Correctional Furniture shop and have a rep coming out next Friday to look at new furniture for the library! She’ll get to see my vision and bring samples and brochures. I’m excited! Now I just need the money to pay for it! Spread out my graphic novels today. Using the two bookshelves I already had and the shelves from where the everybody books were and it turned out really good. I loved doing that. Quite the job and I know I’ll probably fill that too. Stripped the new books. The laminator had had all its rolls run out, so I put on new rolls today and it actually went pretty easily! I had to ask for some more film since that was my last set. I made a laminated film for a teacher for her to put on her window and laminated a day schedule for a teacher and did some book covers for another one. Then our IC said she just wrote on the window and didn’t need a film! So I’ll suggest that next time. I got materials out to three teachers - one needed 35 of the Outsiders, 10 dictionaries, 10 thesauri. Another needed 35 Outsiders, all our Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh (I had 22) and 10 dictionaries. Number three needed 36 of the Realidades 1 and 2 each. Sent out an email to language arts teachers that I had eight carts of books I had pulled at the end of June. I had two teachers come down and pull books. So I will withdraw them for them tomorrow. One of our new teachers said that his interesting fact was that he had walked the Camino de Santiago!! I made sure to talk to him during a break and that was fun!

Back At It!

Started back to work today and was glad to get in and see that it wasn't nearly as bad as I had thought. The carpets had been cleaned, and I didn't have too much stuff piled into my office. My mailbox was clean, and someone had taken all the books and things that had come in over the summer and brought them to my office! That was so nice! I checked everything in and then made sure to give the lists to our bookkeeper so she could check off the fines that would be deleted off the student account. She had also gotten in two more of our AEM iPads, so I checked those in as well and put them in the cart we had reserved for them. I had several boxes of things waiting for me as well and opened them up. One was some books from the JLG that had been processed and sent back. Another was The Outsiders  books we had lent that came back and then I had a bunch of other Outsiders that I thought were maybe mine? So I tried to look them up and finally emailed the starting library and they were supposed to go to McNary! Ha! Not me! So I will repackage them and send them on to McNary tomorrow! I also took an old printer that we had in front of the main circulation desk and let our principal know that since they had removed the computer lab, it was really no longer needed in the library and could be given to another place in the building. I had all the old kiosk computers changed to print on the printer by my office. I had two computers from the summer work that did not want to connect with the server, so put in tech rings on them. I did have one that would let me log on and of course, when they wiped everything, it took out all my bookmarks! So I found the Destiny one, and got it back so I could work on the books. Checked in the box of books that had arrived that I had sent out in May. Checked the two new JLG boxes and will get those ready to send in tomorrow. My graphic novels are really taking over and are way over the designated book shelves I have for them. I had two stand alone shelves from moving all of them away that had nothing on them, so I took the Everybody books and put them over in the non-fiction section and now I have five shelves I can use for the graphic novels since I already have two filled shelves on a cart that I couldn't even put away last June! I'm hoping that solves the problem! A great day back and lots of things done. Got a new AVID t-shirt for this year as well! Good to be back!

Reading 2017 - 2018

• Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds - Will’s brother Shawn was shot dead and Will finds his gun to shoot the one who shot Shawn. He knows the rules, has the gun and travels down the elevator to exact that deathly payment. But the elevator stops at each floor and Will meets the chain of people who died and had followed the rules. Lovely novel in verse. Stark, troubling to me, the spiral of hate. There are kids in my school who need to read this.
• Wild Bird by Wendelin Van Draanen - Wren is called from her bed at 3:47am and taken in her drug and drunken stupor to a desert camp where she has eight weeks to pull her life out of the wreck she’s chosen to live. Read it. Another excellent story by Wendelin!
• Beartown by Fredrick Backman - Did not like this one so much. Small Canadian town that lives for their ice hockey team. Which might just save the town from the slow onslaught of fading away. But when the team is near to winning the championship, there’s a party and the star player rapes a young girl, who’s father is the director of the team. Does it happen? What does the team do? Sorry, I was going ‘oh, no. A rape, the fallout.’ Sorry. Too pat for me.
• My Grandmother Asked me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrick Backman - Elsa is very sure of her world and the amazing connection she has with her grandmother. When her grandmother dies, she sets a quest for Elsa that involves their fantasy world and the people who live around them. Very powerful. Glad I read it. Traded A Man Called Ove for it!
• H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald - what a literary treat! Hawks and life and T.S. White (Sword in the Stone) and his own Goshawk that brings Helen to training one of her own. Lovely writing as she works through her father’s death and training Mabel. Just incredibly lovely.
• Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern - Loved this coming together tale of three people all bound by a summer at the Riverton Public Library. Sunny gets assigned to work off her theft of a dictionary and is assigned to Kit to manage. When Rusty arrives to do research, their lives entwine and they each take steps they thought they never could. Loved this!
• Summer 2018 reads ^
• Wonderful Feels Like This by Sara Lovestam - Great read of Steffi who meets a hepcat, Alvar who is now in a retirement home and listens as he tells his story and she learns hers as they find the thread of jazz music that sings them together. This was good!!!
• The List by Patricia Forde - Only 500 words. That's all that's allowed to speak since knowledge brought the world we knew to an end as people talked of catastrophes to come, and everyone ignored them. Letta becomes the new wordsmith guarding the old words, only releasing lists when requested. When she is challenged, she begins to dig deeper, listen harder to find the truth behind her world.
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman - Had a bit of a hard time getting into this book. I think all the ways Ove decides to try and kill himself and then, life intrudes, neighbors, cats, old friends. I cried at the end. If Ove was a curmudgeon, this book was a curmudgeon of a book, sneaking around doing it's work to make you realize how the little things can be so important in so many ways.
• My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie - what a chunk of a book! Book Club read with amazing insights into the life of Alexander Hamilton, but more important from his wife's point of view. Full of great historical events and insights into daily life, politics and fighting for your place in history.
• The Trouble in Me by Jack Gantos - that irresistible tickle in the back of your mind that wants you to do something you know is a bad idea. A great book. Definite recommend to students!
• Hunger by Donna Jo Napoli - A tale of the great Irish hunger when the potato crop failed. This book did not really hold me like some of her others, but did bring the daily kinds of choices that people had to make to survive. I will be recommending it to the students though!
• The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard - loved the pictures in this book of the daily life in Oak Ridge Tennessee where they created a city to split uranium. Did not care for the writing too much, and worrisome because of the bomb that was created from that work, but an honest picture.
• Killer of Enemies by Joseph Bruchac - Oh my! Loved this! Native American spirituality and a dystopian world! Loved, this crazy wild roller coaster ride! Read this!!
• Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick - TBI is the focus when Matt wakes up in the hospital. His thoughts are fuzzy. He sometimes can’t remember the right word. And most disturbing to him was watching a young afghan boy fly through the air as the RPG hit the wall next to him. He wonders if he’s the one who killed this boy they all knew. Powerful.
• The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer - Loved this book and it gave me an idea to buy a business here in town. I’m excited and a little scared, so we’ll see if book binding and repair are as exciting in real life as in this book! Though I really do love book repair!
• The Cat King of Havana by Tom Crosshill - what a great book! Maybe a little too old for our kids, definitely an 8th grade book. All about this boy who does an LOL cat site and his friends tell him to get out! So he takes salsa lessons. When a girl teacher he has his eye on gets in a situation with her mom and new boyfriend, he suggests they visit his family in Cuba, to what else? Dance!
• A Time to Dance by Parma Venkatraman - Loved this novel in verse about a girl who does bharatanatyam dance and looses her leg in an accident, yet continues. Wonderful insights into Indian culture, philosophy and dance. Loved it. Definite recommend!
• The Bronte Sisters by Catherine Reef - a nice compact tale of the Brontes and how they managed to publish their work in spite of being women. A great middle school book.
• A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea by Melissa Fleming - Doaa is a typical Syrian girl, loved, loves her country but when politics comes into play her life is tossed into turmoil and we are taken on a journey of the displaced as if we were there living the mortar shells, the soul crunching escape to another country, the terror of a Mediterranean crossing gone wrong. This is a true story, one that for me was hard to read as Doaa floats on a life ring holding onto her life and two babies watching those around her die. I had to skip a few pages because it was so overwhelming. A must read. We need to hear these stories.
• Paper Wishes by Lois Sepahban - When they are sent to live in a Japanese Internment camp during WWII, Manami’s life closes her voice. She draws though and sends her wishes on the wind, most especially for her grandfather’s dog that they had to leave behind. Nicely told.
• Survival Strategies of the Almost Brave by Jen White - Two sisters, their mother dies and they are sent with hopes that all will be well with their father, a photographer/loner. When an the girls are left behind at a gas station and have to plan out their strategy to survive with just the two of them. I loved this book of how they take care of each other using their wits to get to where they need to be. A very good story.
• Handbook of Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell - This one really scratched my fantasy itches! Tilda is a princess but really, just wants time to write her own stories. She thinks she’ll get a chance when an evil cousin takes over her family castle and she escapes with the help of the servant and a squire. Dragons are there, and the metal horses freed from the Wild Hunt and Tilda has to look at what she thinks she knows from another viewpoint. Her clubfoot is told well and a part of the story, but there’s no hindering or twisting the story because of it, and love does win the castle after all.
• Hello Universe by Erin Estrada Kelly - The Newbery Award winner for 2018! The universe and karma collide as Virgil and his pet guinea pig Gulliver walk in the woods, Chet, the bully looks for a snake, Kaori and her sister Gen run a physic service for middle schoolers and Valencia who is deaf needs some advice. Quite a lovely read. I enjoyed it!
• The Girl Who Became A Beatle by Greg Taylor - fun book of ‘what if’ when the fairy godmother grants a wish to Regina and suddenly her band is playing like they are the Beatles and the Fab Four are none existent but the Caverns rule! She has six days to make a decision to stay with her dream, or go back to life as she knew it. Fun book.
• Mudbound by Hillary Jordan - well written, lovely voices of families tied by land. Choices made, come apart as racist and family issues grow and flourish in the mud. Well written.
• Prince Across the Water by JY & RJH - the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the battle of Culloden and how he ended up leaving Scotland forever.
• Girl in a Cage by JY & RJH - the tale of Robert the Bruce’s daughter when she was captured by Edward I.
• Queen’s Own Fool by Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris - the tale of Mary Queen of Scots and her time in Scotland. Since I am going there this summer, thought I’d give these a read for places to go and see!
• You're Welcome Universe by Whitney Gardner - Julia is deaf and a graffiti artist as well. When she gets expelled from the deaf school, she goes to the white high school and gets embroiled in a graffiti war with someone she wants to set straight - except they are so very good.
• Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith - An interesting look at the WASP program during WWII. Ida wants to fly like her daddy taught her, so she applies to be a WASP. To her it's worth the risk of trying to pass as a white girl to get to fly and along the way we all see the burden that racism has.
• The Story of Owen by E. K. Johnston - loved this tale of Owen and his bard and the unwrapping the history of the world according to the dragon slayers. A very great read! Loved it!
• Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart - we have gone from a culture of homogeneity to a culture that needs to make sure we are all different, and many books today celebrate each and every difference. Lily is a girl trapped in a boys body while Dunkin is a bi-polar. How they become friends is the stuff of everyday miracles. Very well told, and a nice book on how we are different, but all want the same thing, acceptance.
• The Library at the Edge of the World by Felicity Hayes-McCoy - Nice realistic fiction of walking away from all you knew to starting over again where everyone knows you, you're back in your parents bedroom and have to take a job when you thought you'd be doing so much more. But the peninsula has a way of fitting those pieces together and making something endearing and true to themselves. Nice read!
• Seeking Refuge by Irene N. Watts - a tale of the kindertransport from Germany to England and what one young girl encountered there. Nice graphic novel.
• How Dare the Sun Rise by Sandra Uwiringiyiman (and Abigail Pesta) - How to escape a war, a home, a country. Sandra walks us through her life and the trials overcome, the trauma that can envelope, the kindness that helps get through another day. A remarkable girl who survived and then some.
• Thick as Thieves - see below! I finally figured out who the Attolian was in this one, again, a great read! Eugenides is truly the Master Thief!
• A Conspiracy of Kings - see below! #4
• King of Attolia - see below! #3 Another great read in the series!
• Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner - decided I needed some great fantasy so headed off to read the rest of the Queen's Thief series since the new one (#5) was just released. So good!
• The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen - A lethal plague rules the country and Ani is captured then forced to endure the test for the Scourge. When she realizes that perhaps things are not quite what the governor is telling people, she rallies the other 'Scourge' victims on the island to set things right.
• Always Faithful by William W. Putney - Very good telling of training and serving with the dogs of the Marine Corp during the Pacific Theater. Very well done and a tribute to the four legged soldiers who did so much for their humans.
• The Secret of Priest's Grotto by Peter Lane Taylor - the amazing story of a cave system that hid three Jewish families during the worst of the war against the Jews. Truly a story of how people banded together and made choices and stuck together and made it through. Gorgeous photos and tales from the families.
• When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Holt - Zach is a sideshow attraction and is suddenly left alone, so two of the town's boys decide to be there for him. Doesn't take much to make a difference except to take action. Nice story.
• I Am Nujood - Nujood Ali - this tale of a young girl and how she took the initiative to go to the court and ask for a divorce at 9 years old is remarkable! Wow. I am humbled by her.
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque - I had never read this and realized that the end of WW I was 100 years ago this year. This is a true tale from a German boy on what it was like to fight, to live, to survive. It is a classic, and deserving of its fame.
• Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin - Great thriller adventure about how the resistance might stop Hitler if he had won the war and taken over the world. They use a long distance motorcycle race, and a Nazi experimented girl to try to accomplish it. Nicely done, though the quote in there "There was still beauty in this world. And it was worth fighting for." was sooo close enough to Tolkien it kind of upset me!
• One Trick Pony by Nathan Hale - loved this graphic novel by Nathan of a world where technology has become food for an alien race of creatures, yet when Strata discovers a robot pony, she is torn between the monsters it draws and that it is so unique. Very good! I don't imagine it will stay on the shelf at all!
• Secret Horses of Briar Hill by Megan Shepherd - Emmaline lives at the mansion given over to children who have the 'stillwaters' - tuberculosis. She has the ability to look into the mirrors and see the winged horses that populate the mirror world of the house! She sees them nuzzling the doctor's bag, drinking tea from cups in their mirror world. One day she climbs the old garden fence to find one of the horses in the garden, wounded, and it is up to her to keep Foxfire safe from the black horse who seeks to kill her. Lovely lovely book!
• Yvain by M.T. Anderson - a tale of the Knight of the Lion, one of King Arthur's own in a beautiful graphic novel format. Andrea Offermann did the splendid illustrations. Love this book.
• Victoria by Catherine Reef - loved this easy telling of Queen Victoria (yes, I've been watching Victoria on PBS!) - such a great middle school read! Definite recommend!
• Girl Rising by Tanya Lee Stone - a tale of girls around the world who have taken the stance that they want education, they want to succeed and help the other girls around them. Beautiful photographs, gripping tales of brutality that are not overtly graphic but tell the truth. Loved this, hope more girls check this one out.
• Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne - students have loved this book, so I decided to quickly read through it. Bruno is a young boy who's father works for Hitler regime and gets sent to manage "Out-With" as Bruno calls it. He is young, taken from his friends and life in Berlin, but goes exploring and finds a friend 'in striped pajamas' one day and they form a friendship that either is not sure why, or how it works as they skirt the hard issues. Nicely done.
• Refugee by Alan Gratz - this was an intimate look at three different refugees from three different eras. Josef, a Jewish boy escaping Nazi Germany, Isabel escaping from socialist Cuba, and Mahmoud escaping from Syria. Definite recommend as our town is becoming a place for refugees to settle in.
• Hoot by Carl Hiassen - Very different from what I had imagined! It's still about protecting the burrowing owls from the pancake house, but so much more about what people can do when they make that decision to take a stand. The last for me to read of the Battle of the Books books!
• Rocks Fall Everyone Dies by Lindsay Ribar - This was really a great book! Aspen Quick comes from a family that literally holds up a cliff outside the town. When they feel that the cliff needs repairing, they head over to the tree near the cliff where everyone from the town leaves a gift for the cliff. They take an object, then a piece of that person who left it to repair the cliff. Aspen uses his powers on the girl he wants, taking away her emotions for her current boyfriend so she's free to love him, and he realizes the power he has, and what it can do. Then he finds they are not really saving the town but rather the ancient family secret for what really happened at the cliff.
• Emperors of the Ice by Richard Farr - I love a good Antarctic story and this was taken from the journals of Apsley Cherry-Garrard in 1913 - nicely pared down from his 900+ actual book, this tells the story of the fateful Scott expedition to the South Pole. Lots of scientific research went on, and though Amundsen got to the pole first, Scott did make it as well, though he and his team perished. The others did live and ‘Cherry’ died in 1956 in England. Makes me realize once again that the snow and cold are not for me! Except in small northwest size doses!
• Dear Bob and Sue by Matt and Karen Smith - Hysterical snarkiness! I loved this look at our national parks through the emails to Bob and Sue. I even bought it! That’s a win anyway you look at it!
• Stepping Westward by Sallie Tisdale - not sure where I got this from but her musings on life in the Pacific Northwest were part literary candy and fact. Enjoyable, but not to read again.
• Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon - read this for one of my students and it wasn’t really too bad. Yes, there is a certain scene, but other than that, it’s about taking chances and finding that what you thought you knew, maybe is not so true after all.
• Camino Island by John Grisham - Intriguing tale of stolen manuscripts from a university library and a tiny bookstore off the coast and the man who owns it and the girl who comes home to write. I really enjoyed it.
• Cooking for Harry by Kay-Marie James - Fun little book about a man who loves to cook, but really needs to lose the weight he’s put on over the years. Cute story, ends sweetly.
• The Turn of the Tide by Rosanne Parry - I want to see her writing treehouse!!! Kai is sent to his uncle’s house in Astoria after a devasting tsunami destroys his town. The only thing he has really in common with his cousin Jet is a love of boats and sailing. They enter the Treasure Island Regatta - part sailing race and Geocaching combined. Great little book!
• Schooled by Gordon Korman - Loved Cap and his outlook on life and how that influences a middle school after he arrives while his grandmother heals from a broken hip. This was very good!!
• Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix - read this for the BOB group! When a plane lands with infants and no one else on board, they end up getting adopted out until they reach the age of 13 when they all get a letter and are invited to an ‘adoptee camp’ with just them in one group. Very interesting!
• The Plot to Kill Hitler by Patricia McCormick -Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggles with the Nazi turnover of Germany. He finds ways to protest, to enlist friends, even wrote to Gandhi and got permission to meet with him. Yet the impact of Hitler on Jews and others makes him realize that to not act is as evil as evil itself. He becomes the conscious of the group of men who plot to kill Hitler. Dietrich was killed in camp just a few weeks before the end of the war. Succinct, factual, perfect middle school read. Definite recommend!!
• The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow - Karl and his family were doing all right until Hitler came along. At the last gallery opening his father hosts, Karl meets an old family friend, the boxer Max Schmeling, who notices that Karl did not ‘just fall down the stairs’ he was in a fight and offers to coach him. Karl wants this and becomes a boxer as we watch the Jewish rules grow tighter and tighter. Definitely will recommend to my students!
• The Last Days of Cafe Leila by Donita Bianca - When her marriage falls apart, Noor runs home to Tehran, and the cafe her father runs. The regime has tied the country into knots of woe, no longer the place of her childhood memories. Noor finds her father very ill, her daughter hateful for the move, but the cafe still smells the same, the people still there working, a magic still lives there weaving all of them together. Lovely.
• When in Rome by Robert Hutchinson - a fun look at life in Vatican City by a journalist who spends a year in Rome probing the secrets of Vatican City. Lots of history, but in a fun way, his life, the people he gets to talk to. My favorite quote is the opening of a chapter that says when the Pope was asked how many people work in the Vatican he replies “about half” Ha!!!
• The Forgetting by Sharon Cameron - great dystopian fiction! Every 12 years the entire population forgets who they are, so they all carry their ‘book’ with them, with all their memories. When the book is filled, they put it in the archives and get a new book. But what happens when someone doesn’t forget, and knows that one of the council also doesn’t forget? Fascinating!
• The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman - read this in one day! Fabulous! I can see why they turned it into a movie! So good! I won’t even describe it, you should read this!
• Being Jazz by Jazz Jennings - Jazz was born with everything to be a boy, except her heart and soul. This is her journey that was truly blessed with a loving family willing to help her be all she could be.
• First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung - Loung is just 5 when her family is forced to flee Phnom Penh and try to hide in the countryside as simple peasants. Heart wrenching loss, survival, and yet some of the family does survive in the end. A true look at what she faced and had to deal with in that horrible time.
• Whirligig by Paul Fleischman - loved this tale of a lost boy who kills not himself, but a girl and the restitution her mother asks Brent to make in building a whirligig in the four corner of the US and each needs to have her daughter's picture on it. Very, very lovely. Already recommended and checked out!
• Master of the Prado by Javier Sierra - Interesting look at the Master paintings in the Prado museum in Madrid. Are they telling a story? A secret cult that can read information from the paintings? I'm not sure, but it really was quite eye opening especially since I was in the Prado summer of 2016!
• Bushnell's Submarine by Arthur S. Lefkowitz - what a tidy and great little book on an unknown fact about the revolutionary war! Even though the submarine never did any damage, the fact that it worked and almost did helped others to keep on working on submarine technology. A very interesting little book!
• The Notorius Benedict Arnold by Steve Sheinkin - loved this historical fiction, though very much based on facts of how Benedict saved our country from the British time and time again, until he betrayed it. It was really, really good!
• You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie - wow. Some really amazing incredible parts of this book. I love how he 'quilted' the essays and poems together. My favorite is the 'Quilt' poem, #52 (I think it was!)
• The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Bradley - Started to read this for our Battle of the Books and fell in love with Ada. Her courage in the face of abuse is nothing but lovely. How she is saved, and her brother and the reclusive woman who takes them in during the blitz is ended perfectly. Truly a lovely story.
• This Kid Can Fly by Aaron Philip - Aaron has had a hard life learning to live with CP and that he was born in Antigua. He needs what the US can offer, so the family is split and the hoops they have to jump through to make things happen for Aaron is inspiring. Definite recommend for my students!
• Full Cicada Moon by Marilyn Hilton - Drip, drip - don't use a hammer, use a steady quiet drip to influence people. Cicada learns that making her voice heard is not easy, but doing it to influence the lives around her is worth it. She will be an astronaut one day, and I'm certain she will get there! Perfect novel-in-verse!
• Frost by M.P. Kozlowsky - This dystopian tale was amazing! Frost has lived after the collapse in an apartment with a robot (who also has a memory chip of her father, so they 'share' the robot body) and a broot she's named Romes. When Romes gets sick, she decides he needs help and heads to the Battery to get him help. Very good!
• Alexander Hamilton by Teri Kanefield - loved this middle grade level volume on the life of Alexander Hamilton! Oh my! What an amazing man! Read this one!
• Dare to Disappoint by Ozge Samanci - She grew up in Turkey, and tried hard to fit in, tried to get good grades so she'd get sent to the right schools, tried to be like her sister who did everything right. But maybe, sometimes we need to disappoint expectations that others put on us. A worthy thought.
• Tomboy by Liz Prince - loved this heartwarming story of a girl, who would rather be a boy. She likes pants, hanging with boys (not gossipy girls) but finds that she really does like boys. A tale of how to be different, and be yourself, and find that you fit right where you are.
• Enchanted Air by Margarita Engle - This lovely novel in verse tells of her two halves, the one in L.A. and the one in Cuba. When the Cuban missile crises hits, she finds herself wondering if she'll ever see Cuba again. Really nice.
• Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt - what a masterful telling of a girl with dyslexia and how she covers it until one day a teacher helps her by helping her admit, she needs help. What if a fish is only based on how it can climb a tree? Or if a girl can read? Lovely.
• Every Falling Star by Sungju Lee - Life in North Korea can be good if you are one of the elite, but Sungju chronicles his family's fall from on high, his father having to leave, his mother too and how he becomes a street boy for over 4 years. He finds a band of brothers and they share everything, until one day, his grandfather finds him. Very, very good.
• Finding Perfect by Ella Swartz - Loved, loved loved this book of Molly's slide into OCD. How it started and began to consume life. Well written, it just captivated me. Definite recommend!!
• Sachiko by Caren Stelson - Sachiko was 6, playing with friends when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. Her friends all died, but Sachiko lived and her family escaped. She watched her brothers and uncle die from the effects of the bomb in the days after. She herself became very sick, but recovered. Suffered through bullies. Found strength in Helen Keller, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. This is her story along with the events that shaped that time. Very nicely done.
• Caminar by Skila Brown - Carlos is told to hide when the soldiers come. Everyone knows he always does what his mother tells him to do. And one day they come, and he hides, and runs up the mountain to warn his grandmother. A beautiful, soul gripping tale of the wars in Guatemala.
• Watched by Marina Budhos - Nadeem gets into trouble and is offered a solution. Be our spy the detective says. Watch people, your kind of people. Get us names. Go to the mosque. Become part of a group. Go on the Net and find us the people we should take an interest in. Interesting how we know we're watched and who might be part of that.
• OCDaniel by Wesley King - Daniel hopes no one ever notices that he lines up the water cups perfectly for use as he sits on the football bench hoping never to have to kick a field goal. His routine at night can last hours until it's safe for him to go to bed. Then a 'Fellow Star Child' asks for help. Then the regular kicker hurt his knee and Daniel has to kick. He turns to his novel (he's rewritten the first page 55 times) and helped to solve a murder. Great story of the lies we tell ourselves and don't let anyone else see.
• The Bone Sparrow by Zane Fraillon - Subhi was born in a detention center in Australia. He is now 9. He wonders what life is like outside the wire, and will he ever know? Then he meets Jimmie, a girl from outside who needs someone to read for her. An impressive tale of surviving in a camp, and yet how to make your voice heard.
• Garvey's Choice by Nikki Grimes - a powerful story of Garvey. He's rather large and can't connect with a father who thinks he should be in football, but he finds his voice and learns to play to his strengths. Lovingly told in Tanka verse which I had never heard of before!
• Short by Holly Goldberg Sloan - Julia is short but doesn't let getting picked as a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz play get to her. She learns that maybe it's not too bad to be short, or a flying monkey. Fun read!
• Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist - Will is blind and off to a new school. He knows what he's doing, to be in control and meets a great group when he sits in the lap of Nick. He gains a great group of friends and meets Ion. She teaches him new ways to think about his blindness. Then he becomes a candidate for an operation to restore his sight and takes that chance. A really good book!!
• August 2017 ∆