I Am Rembrandt's Daughter

I was able to finish a book this week, to make up for my lack of reading during the Olympics (see the entry below). I have always admired books that take a real life subject, and intertwine it with fiction so well that it is hard to tell what is truth and what is fiction (Dan Brown is a great example of a writer that can do this beautifully). I think that this may be why I liked "I Am Rembrandt's Daughter" so much. Lynn Cullen writes the tale of what life would have been like for the illegitimate child of the painter Rembrandt van Rijn. One of my favorite books of all time is "The Girl With a Pearl Earring" and this book has many of the same qualities, well written characters, romance, emotional termoil, suspence, all set against a backdrop of great works of art. I would encourage all of you interested in well written, realistic fiction to check it out.

From the book:
With her mother dead of the plague and her brother newly married, Cornelia van Rijn finds herself without a friend or confidante—except her difficult father. Out of favor with Amsterdam’s elite, the once revered Rembrandt van Rijn is now teetering on the brink of madness. Cornelia alone must care for him, though she is haunted by secrets and scandal of her own. Her only happiness comes in a growing romance with Carel, the son of a wealthy shipping magnate, whose passion for art stirs her. And then there is Neel, her father’s last remaining pupil, a darkly brooding young man whose steadfast devotion to Rembrandt both baffles and touches her.

Based on real characters and filled with family dramas and a love triangle that would make Jane Austen proud, I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter is a powerful account of a young woman’s struggle to come of age within the shadow of one of the world’s most brilliant and complicated artists.

An Olympic Apology

All right, for those of you that have been following this blog and have asked me why I haven't posted in two weeks, here is my response...I have a confession to make...I am an Olympic fanatic. When the Olympic games are going on, either summer or winter, I stop all other activities to watch them. I find the whole thing totally engrossing. I watch from beginning to end, Opening to Closing Ceremonies. I find the sport and the drama the best entertainment around. I find the athletes achievements, both large and small, to be extraordinary. Therefore, I owe all of you seeking something new to read this week an Olympic apology. I have not picked up a new book in two weeks. Now that the Olympics are over, I have returned to my normal schedule, and I promise a new book next week!

Mad Cow and Evolution

So the extra days off last week, lead to 2 book reviews this week! I hope that everyone had a great long weekend+ On to the reviews...

I promised that I would read this year's Printz Award winning book for Young Adult Literature, "Going Bovine" by Libba Bray. I only made it about half way through before I stopped. I really did not like it, and I just did not want to spend anymore of my time trying to get through it. I will include a summary below, and you can read and then post your thoughts on it, but I just couldn't get into it. It started off really well, but as time went on, I simply lost interest in it. Here is the summary, read it, and post what you think.

In this ambitious novel, Cameron, a 16-year-old slacker whose somewhat dysfunctional family has just about given up on him, as perhaps he himself has, when his diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jacob, "mad cow" disease, reunites them, if too late. The heart of the story, though, is a hallucinatory—or is it?—quest with many parallels to the hopeless but inspirational efforts of Don Quixote, about whom Cameron had been reading before his illness. Just like the crazy—or was he?—Spaniard, Cam is motivated to go on a journey by a sort of Dulcinea. His pink-haired, white-winged version goes by Dulcie and leads him to take up arms against the Dark Wizard and fire giants that attack him intermittently, and to find a missing Dr. X, who can both help save the world and cure him. Cameron's Sancho is a Mexican-American dwarf, game-master hypochondriac he met in the pot smokers' bathroom at school who later turns up as his hospital roommate. Bray blends in a hearty dose of satire on the road trip as Cameron leaves his Texas deathbed—or does he?—to battle evil forces with a legendary jazz horn player, to escape the evil clutches of a happiness cult, to experiment with cloistered scientists trying to solve the mysteries of the universe, and to save a yard gnome embodying a Viking god from the clutches of the materialistic, fame-obsessed MTV-culture clones who shun individual thought. -From School Library Journal

Now onto a book that I thought was great, and didn't have high expectation of. "Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith" by Deborah Helligman. This non-fiction work about Charles and Emma Darwin, reads like a novel. You find yourself drawn into these "characters" and have to keep reminding yourself that they were real people. While I don't normally read non-fiction just for fun, this one is well worth the time, and it offers lots of interesting insight into this controversial scientist's personal life.

Beginning with Darwin's notorious chart listing reasons to wed and not to wed, Heiligman has created a unique, flowing, and meticulously researched picture of the controversial scientist and the effect of his marriage on his life and work. Using the couple's letters, diaries, and notebooks as well as documents and memoirs of their relatives, friends, and critics, the author lets her subjects speak for themselves while rounding out the story of their relationship with information about their time and place. She shows how Darwin's love for his intelligent, steadfast, and deeply religious cousin was an important factor in his scientific work—pushing him to document his theory of natural selection for decades before publishing it with great trepidation. Just as the pair embodied a marriage of science and religion, this book weaves together the chronicle of the development of a major scientific theory with a story of true love. -From School Library Journal.

Magic Thief

I was hoping to read the new Printz award book this week, but it wasn't delivered until Saturday, so I am not done yet. Look for my review next week. Instead this week I read "The Magic Thief" by Sarah Prineas. This is the first in a planned triology of books, and "The Magic Thief: Lost" is next. I am always hesitant to start a series, but I this one was so good, I am looking forward to reading the rest. The characters are well developed and likable. If you are a fan of Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson, you are going to like this fantasy series as well.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Young Conn opens the first volume of this new trilogy, noting “A thief is a lot like a wizard.” Conn is a thief but, through desire and inevitability, becomes a wizard by book’s end. This evolution begins when Conn picks the pocket of the wizard Nevery, who is startled that the nicked magical stone didn’t kill the boy. Nevery takes on Conn as a servant, but the boy’s inquisitiveness and talents move him to apprentice status. Nevery has recently returned to Willmet to save the city-state, which is faltering as its magic seeps away. As Conn becomes more enmeshed in his new life, he navigates through the intricate dealings of both the wizarding world and the political machinations of the Underlord.

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.