Strange Times

Well, the recent hurricane and snow storm have thrown me off my game a little and it has been a long time since my last post.  That doesn't mean I haven't been reading some great books!  Museum of Thieves is the first installment of a new series, and those of you that enjoyed the book City of Ember are going to love this book.  I often get the question, "I loved the Harry Potter books, do you have anything like that?"  This book is going on my list of responses to that question, too.  Great characters, amazing suspense, and characters discovering that they are so much more then "normal."  Enjoy!
From Booklist
The children of Jewel are well protected. Each wears a silver guard chain that links them to their parents or the Blessed Guardians. Goldie Roth sometimes also wears the brass punishment chain for her willfulness in both action and attitude. On the day of her separation ceremony, when 12-year-olds are to be freed from their chains, things go terribly wrong. A bomb goes off, and it looks like the children won’t be separated after all. That doesn’t work for Goldie, who runs away, putting herself in danger and her parents in prison. She winds up at a mysterious museum, where she learns that she may have an important part in saving her city and the danger coming at it from many sides. 

Breadcrums

Welcome back to another great year of reading at Peck Reads!  Over the summer I had a chance to read a lot of great new books, and I am hoping to share some of them here with you this year.  My first book choice is the new novel by Anne Ursu (author of the Cronus Chronicles), Breadcrumbs.  I was a little worried, because the book got off to a rather slow start.  Keep reading! This book is a wonderful mix of adventure and fantasy, with a little fairytale thrown in!  You might even recognize some parts as being inspired by The Snow Queen.  See a complete synopsis of the plot below.  Feel free to offer you thoughts in the comment section below, and check back next month for another great book!

From Booklist - Nov. 2011
Hazel, a fifth-grader who lives with her divorced mother, isn’t adjusting well to her new school. Worse, her one dependable friendship, with her next-door-neighbor Jack, has become unstable. When glass falls from the sky and into Jack’s eye, its source is a mystery, but readers are told that a shard of magic mirror, shattered by a goblin high above the earth, caused the injury. Soon afterward, a white witch lures him to a frozen pond, where he lives while Hazel braves the terrors of the magic woods to rescue him. Mixing realistic and fantastic realms is a chancy endeavor, but Ursu draws readers into lonely Hazel’s world and makes her quest a compelling story. 

 

Summer Reading

I like that the summer gives me more time to read than the school year does, so I am sure that I will be posting about books that I read over the summer.  In the meantime, I wanted to let you see my top choices for books to read this summer.  You can see the complete lists by clicking on the links to the right of this page, under "Lists".  You can also find information on participating in the "Postcards to the Library Program."  Remember each postcard will be entered for a chance to win a gift certificate to the Fall Book Sale.  Enjoy the last few weeks of school, and have a wonderful summer!

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

In 1984 Chris van Allsburg (Jumanji, The Polar Express, The Wreck of the Zephyr, and many more) published a collection of pencil and ink drawings with short captions. The premise of the book was the creator of the drawings, Harris Burdick, left the pictures with a publisher with the promise to return with the companion stories the next day. He never returns. Over the years these drawings have been used by teachers as starting points for creative writing assignments. Now some of the best authors for young adults have put their creative talents to work and created this collection of 14 short stories, with an introduction by Lemony Snicket, inspired by the van Allsburg drawings. Each story has its own "feel" some being sweet, others creepy, others indescribably sad. I encourage you to pick this up and discover the mysteries behind Harris Burdick.

Authors include: Sherman Alexie, Kate DiCamillo, M.T. Anderson, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Lois Lowry, Gregory Maguire, Walter Dean Myers, Linda Sue Park, Lois Sachar, Jon Scieszka, and Chris van Allsburg.

And the Winner is...

It is that time of year again, award season! Just as the acting community is celebrating the best actors/actresses/movies of the year, the literary world is recognizing the best books published in the last year. Here are some for your future reading:

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
2012 Newbery Award Winner
Dead End in Norvelt is the winner of the 2012 Newbery Medal for the year's best contribution to children's literature and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction! Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is "grounded for life" by his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack's way once his mom loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual chore - typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his utopian town. As one obituary leads to another, Jack is launced on a strange adventure involving molten wax, Eleanor Roosevelt, twisted promises, a homemade airplane, Girl Scout cookies, a man on a trike, a dancing plague, voices from the past, Hells Angels... and possibly murder. Endlessly surprising, this sly, sharp-edged narrative is the author at his very best, making readers laugh out loud at the most unexpected things in a dead-funny depiction of growing up in a slightly off-kilter place where the past is present, the present is confusing, and the future is completely up in the air. (From the publisher)

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
2012 Printz Award Winner
In the remarkable, bizarre, and heart-wrenching summer before Cullen Witter's senior year of high school, everything he thinks he understands about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town vanishes. His cousin overdoses; his town becomes absurdly obsessed with the alleged reappearance of an extinct woodpecker; and most troubling of all, his sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother, Gabriel, suddenly and inexplicably disappears. As Cullen navigates a summer of finding and losing love, holding his fragile family together, and muddling his way into adulthood, a young, disillusioned missionary in Africa searches for meaning wherever he can find it. Through masterful plotting, these two stories are brought face-to-face in a surprising and harrowing climax that is tinged with melancholy and regret, comedy and absurdity, and above all, hope. (From the publisher)

Hunger Games Triology

It has been a LONG time since I stayed awake most of the night because I didn't want to stop reading. Not since the final book of the Harry Potter series, have I put aside things I should have been doing, so I could finish a book. The Hunger Games books did this to me. My husband gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas, and I decided to purchase the first book sort of on a whim to figure out how it worked. Once I started reading, there was not stopping. With in 2 weeks I had read all three books, and it took me another week to just process the whole experience. Many of you have read the books, and are recommending them to friends, and I will add my voice to that recommendation. Before you decide to read these books however, there are a couple of things you should know. The themes are upsetting. There is a tremendous amount of violence. The dystopian future that Suzanne Collins has created is full of suffering and oppression. It becomes clear while you are reading that the story is going to reach an ultimate climax, but that the ending may not be the happy one that you are hoping for. Below are full story descriptions. I truly enjoyed these books, and I am looking forward to the movie being released in the fall. Feel free to offer you comments in the comment section of this entry.

Reader beware...if you decide to start reading these, you won't be able to stop until you find out how they end!

Hunger Games
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the other districts in line by forcing them to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight-to-the-death on live TV. One boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and sixteen are selected by lottery to play. The winner brings riches and favor to his or her district. But that is nothing compared to what the Capitol wins: one more year of fearful compliance with its rule. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her impoverished district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before - and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Catching Fire
(SPOILER ALERT - do not read the description of this book before you read the first book!!!)
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

Mockingjay
(SPOILER ALERT #2)
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena alive, she's still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what's worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss's family, not her friends, not the people of District 12.

Toys Come Home

The "Toy" series of books are proving to be one of my favorite of all time. Toys Come
Home : being the early experiences of an intelligent stingray, a brave buffalo, and a brand-new someone called Plastic is the prequel to Toys Go Out and Toy Dance Party. Emily Jenkins answers the age old question of what our toys do while we are not there. Toys Come Home tells the back story of how StingRay, Lumphy, and Plastic come to live with the "Little Girl" (whose name we never learn). It also answers many questions, like what happened to One Eared Sheep's other ear? Told from the point of view of the toys, we learn about humans and our behavior, some of which is very funny and odd to the toys. At the heart of all the books however, is the love of the toys for the girl and for each other. Come check out any of the books in this series from the library!

School Library Journal (October 1, 2011)

In this follow-up to Toys Go Out (2006) and Toy Dance Party (2008, both Random), readers discover how the toys came to live with the Girl. StingRay arrives as a birthday gift and soon after meets Bobby Dot, a disagreeable stuffed walrus that makes her feel unwelcome. When the Girl becomes ill and vomits on him, Bobby Dot is thoroughly disgusted while StingRay feels it would be an honor to be "puked on" by the Girl. (The author devotes a whole chapter to this episode titled, "You Can Puke on Me.") An attempt to channel a common childhood anxiety about the dark through the toys may have adults answering some questions. StingRay loses her way in the dark (basement) and hears a scary rumbling noise (the clothes dryer); she imagines ghosts that "eat marine animals" or take them and make them slaves or an "axe murderer" who jumps around chopping things. The demise of the unpleasant Bobby Dot (he is accidently shredded in the dryer after the vomit incident) is taken in stride by most of the toys in the Girl's room, but StingRay is thoughtful about how quickly a life can be over. How Sheep came to lose her ear and the arrival of Lumphy and Plastic are also addressed in this story that shines with a message about the value of friendship.