And the winner is...

As we all sit back and enjoy the award shows on television this January, I thought that you might also be interested in the 2010 Newbery Medal for excellence in children's literature, and the Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature winners this year. I always look forward each year to seeing those books that the committees choose as the best of the year, sometimes I agree and sometime I don't. This year, I loved the Newbery choice (again!) but I have yet to read the Printz book. I am going to read it this week, and I will get back to you with my review. So without further delay the Newbery winner is... "When You Reach Me" by Rebecca Stead. The book is a great mix of science fiction, mystery, and adventure. I will include a summary below, but I think that you will find it a great book that will leave you thinking about global warming, and the very nature of friendship.

For a complete list of all the winners this year visit http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/index.cfm Also, the book display next month will have copies of many of the award winning books!

Review:

From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 5-8–Sixth-grader Miranda lives in 1978 New York City with her mother, and her life compass is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. When she receives a series of enigmatic notes that claim to want to save her life, she comes to believe that they are from someone who knows the future. Miranda spends considerable time observing a raving vagrant who her mother calls the laughing man and trying to find the connection between the notes and her everyday life. Discerning readers will realize the ties between Miranda's mystery and L'Engle's plot, but will enjoy hints of fantasy and descriptions of middle school dynamics. Stead's novel is as much about character as story. Miranda's voice rings true with its faltering attempts at maturity and observation. The story builds slowly, emerging naturally from a sturdy premise. As Miranda reminisces, the time sequencing is somewhat challenging, but in an intriguing way. The setting is consistently strong. The stores and even the streets–in Miranda's neighborhood act as physical entities and impact the plot in tangible ways. This unusual, thought-provoking mystery will appeal to several types of readers.–Caitlin Augusta, The Darien Library, CT

Recommend Your Own Great Books

Below you will find my book review entry for this week. However, I had several people ask me if they could recommend books, even if they weren't ones that I had talked about, and the answer is ABSOLUTELY! Here is your place to do so. Click on the comment link below and make your entry. Some folks have said that they have had trouble entering a name in the "comment as" drop down menu, so simply choose "anonymous" instead. If you would like your name to appear, simply include it in your comment.

Keep the great suggestions coming!

Umbrella Summer and The Magician's Elephant

Both books this week strangely deal with the topic of loss/grief and recovery, however, they are VASTLY different. The first great book that I read this week is "Umbrella Summer" by Lisa Graff. The story follows Annie Richards as she grieves the loss of her brother Jared. All of the members of her family are suffering in someway, and this story shows how, with time and love of family and friends, all hurts can begin to heal. Don't fear that this story is terribly sad. There are some very funny moments and Annie is completely believable in her quest to remain safe. I highly recommend this one!

From the book description:
Annie Richards knows there are a million things to look out for—bicycle accidents, food poisoning, chicken pox, smallpox, typhoid fever, runaway zoo animals, and poison oak. That's why being careful is so important, even if it does mean giving up some of her favorite things, like bike races with her best friend, Rebecca, and hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Everyone keeps telling Annie not to worry so much, that she's just fine. But they thought her brother, Jared, was just fine too, and Jared died.

It takes a new neighbor, who looks as plain as a box of toothpicks but has some surprising secrets of her own, to make Annie realize that her plans for being careful aren't working out as well as she had hoped. And with a lot of help from those around her—and a book about a pig, too—Annie just may find a way to close her umbrella of sadness and step back into the sunshine.

Next up this week is "The Magician's Elephant" by Kate DiCamillo (author of "The Tale of Despereaux," "Because of Winn Dixie," "Tiger Rising," and one of favorite books of ALL time "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.") To be honest, I had to read this book twice before I decided whether I liked it or not. It is a strange story. Dicamillo is a master story teller, creating modern fairy tales. The book is beautifully written, and as strange as the story is, you find yourself totally sucked into the lives of the characters in this book, who have all suffered a loss of some kind (a sister, freedom, sense of self, the ability to walk, etc.) Some of the best chapters in the book are written from the perspective of the elephant! Read the book and discover for yourself the wonders of the magician's elephant.

From School Library Journal:
Starred Review. On a perfectly ordinary day, Peter Augustus Duchene goes to the market square of the city of Baltese. Instead of buying the fish and bread that his guardian, Vilna Lutz, has asked him to procure, he uses the coin to pay a fortune-teller to get information about his sister, whom he believes to be dead. He is told that she is alive, and that an elephant will lead him to her. That very night at a performance in the town's opera house, a magician conjures up an elephant (by mistake) that crashes through the roof and cripples the society dame she happens to land on. The lives of the boy, his guardian, and the local policeman, along with the magician and his unfortunate victim, as well as a beggar, his dog, a sculptor, and a nun all intertwine in a series of events triggered by the appearance of the elephant. Miraculous events resolve not only the mystery of the whereabouts of Peter's sister, but also the deeper needs of all of the individuals involved. DiCamillo's carefully crafted prose creates an evocative aura of timelessness for a story that is, in fact, timeless. Tanaka's acrylic artwork is meticulous in detail and aptly matches the tone of the narrative.

The Future of Reading

Thanks to all of you that stopped me in the halls this week to tell me that you had read the blog entry about the Twilight Saga. Make sure (when you have the time) to write your comments below with that entry. I always want to hear what you are thinking!

I know that I normally give a comment about a book. I am right in the middle of reading a good one, so look next week for my comments on that. However, I felt that I had to comment on an article that I had read in a professional journal this week. Please don't stop reading now! Just bear with me. It was a fairly optimist view of how electronic media will revolutionise our reading experience. When we use our electronic readers (i.e. Kindle/iPods) perhaps one day we will see multi-media images of the characters acting out the scenes described in the story, and appropriate music will play in the background. With apparent glee, the author of the article discussed the brave new multi-media world of reading, and the full emersion, sensory experience that is to come. The article concluded with the prediction that someday we would see the death of books in print. All I could think, is "Holy cow (or something more colorful), I hope this guy is wrong."

Don't get me wrong. I am all for progress. I do think that the future of reference is electronic, and so do the publishers. Grolier has all ready stopped publishing its print encyclopedia, and every year Britannica threatens to do the same, but they haven't yet. Atlas's are slowly being replaced by GPS. When was the last time you looked in a print dictionary for how to spell a word? But is the book really going the way of the dinosaur?

When I read a good book, it ALL READY IS a full sensory experience for me. I no longer am aware that I am turning pages. The story flows forth, and the passage of time no longer has meaning (have you ever looked up from a book, and realized that hours have passed by, and you hardly noticed). I have never experienced this with an electronic reader. I am usually fidgeting with font size, and dealing with eyestrain. I don't need a reader to show me characters on the screen, I all ready have them in my head when I read a book. I know what they look like. I can hear their voices. I love the way a new book smells. I love that paperbacks leave black ink on my fingers. I love that I can tell how much more a story is left, by the thickness of the book from where I stopped. How sad my world would be if print books left it all together.

This Christmas break I brought my children to see my parents in Maine. One night, while looking for a bedtime story, my daughter choose a book from the small stack of Christmas stories that my mother keeps on an end table during the holidays. The book is an illustrated version of the poem "A Christmas Party." My mother read this book to us every Christmas eve when I was a child. It had been a gift from my grandmother to me for my first Christmas, when I was only 8 weeks old. As my daughter went to open the book, the stiching gave way and all the pages fell out. Two of my three sisters happened to be there that night, and as we picked up the pages to put them back, we all recited the poem, from memory together. We were able to put the pages back in order in no time. On the first page, in her distictive looping cursive, is the note that my grandmother wrote to me to wish me a Merry Christmas that year. My grandmother is now 92, with hands so crippled from arthritis that they are no longer able to hold a pen, but I would recognise her hand writing any where. On one page of the book there is a yellow stain where my sister Sarah spilled juice on it one year. On the back cover there are a few scribbles, the result of my youngest sister Amanda's artistic expression. It occured to me, that this little book had left a lasting impression on all of us, and, as it turned out, we had left an impression on it. It was no longer a book that told only a small Christmas poem, but it also told stories of our family as well. I doubt that I will ever have such an experience with my Kindle.

What is the future of reading and books? Time will tell. I am encouraged to know that so many of you are out there reading, and let me know that you have read some of the books that I have reccommended, and disagree with me on what I had to say about some of them. But to loose books in print to electronic delivery would sadden me greatly. Not only will we lose the books, but maybe we will lose some of our own stories as well. Let me know what you think...

Twilight Saga

So right up front, I should probably say that I am not a big fan of the Twilight Saga books. Up until this winter break I had only read Twilight and New Moon. After those two, I just stopped reading them, because...well frankly, I didn't like them. Perhaps this will cause some shock among those of you that are big fans, but I just can't seem to bring myself to love the books. As a result I have not seen the movies, I can't see how they would change my opinion. Now, onto the point of all this. I have several friends that have read all the books, seen the movies, and follow all the fan sites. They find my lack of enthusiasm to be disappointing, and they launched a campaign to get me to read more of the books. After months of their relentless pestering, I finally caved and read Eclipse. Sorry folks, still not a fan. It is difficult for me to pin point why I don't care for them. It may have something to do with my not being a huge fan of the whole "vampire genre" in general. However, I can see why others love these books. They are entertaining, if not particularly well written. The characters are appealing, in a romantic tragedy sort of way. They hold a certain amount of suspense, but I find the endings of all 3 books that I have read so far to be sadly predictable. Below you will find a summary of Eclipse, so I would encourage you to check the book out and decide for yourself. A bit of advice, read Twilight and New Moon first, or the story will not make a lot of sense.

Give me your opinion by clicking on "comment" below, write your opinion, then select either "name/url" or "anonymous" in the "comment as" drop down menu. Let me, and others know what you think. Keep Reading!

From the book description:

Readers captivated by Twilight and New Moon will eagerly devour Eclipse, the much anticipated third book in Stephenie Meyer's riveting vampire love saga. As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob --- knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which?