August 2013 - Page 2 of 3

Junie B. Jones Loves Handsome Warren

by Barbara Park

For a light read between the massive tomes that are Game of Thrones, I picked up a Junie B. Jones book my daughter brought home from the library. This one is about Junie B. and her friends squabbling over the attentions of a new boy at school. They each want him to be their \”boyfriend\” and to love them. Junie tries her hardest to get Warren\’s attention but he just thinks she\’s weird. So she tries to act more normal, but that doesn\’t work either. Finally her mother tells her that to make new friends she has to be herself, and to show she cares about other people\’s feelings. In the end, Junie shines all on her own. I did like that.

I also liked some parts of the story that showed Junie in a very realistic light, demanding that her parents take her shopping immediately to get something she wants, assuming that certain possessions and appearances will gain her popularity, and I really liked how she discovered she could find things around her house to dress up in, when her mother wouldn\’t buy her a princess dress (the results were hilarious, of course). Junie\’s frequent grammatical errors and use of phrases that seem beyond her years didn\’t bother me; kids are like that. But it wasn\’t as amusing as some of the other Junie books I\’ve read. And I did find the entire premise of kindergarten girls fighting over the attentions of a boy rather annoying. My daughter is going into second grade and is just now showing the kind of innocent interest in boys that Junie displays here. Back in kindergarten that was not the case. So it felt a little out of place to me. Might have been more appropriate as part of the \”Junie B. Jones: First Grader\” series, and even then I might question it.

Rating: 2/5 …….. 80 pages, 1996

more opinions:
Shine Up Your Library Card
Kelly\’s Journal
Banned Books

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic

A Storm of Swords

by George R.R. Martin

I realize that I never gave a good description of the structure of this series. It\’s large, sprawling, detailed, well-populated (lengthy character lists in the back, which I actually referred to a few times during this read!) and fascinatingly intricate. I do the best I can here, but it\’s mostly my impressions and many of the other reviews you can find will give you a fuller synopsis (see a few links below).

Well, here goes. The land is still divided. Several kings each claim their own portion in the south lands, Winterfell has been burned, Joffrey the sadistic puppet boy-king still holds the central seat although plenty of vying factions try to control what happens there regardless of who\’s supposed to be ruling. Denarys is travelling overland from across the sea through her own maze of war and betrayals to try and reclaim her birthright. In the far north, the real threat looms- hordes of barbarians are attacking the Wall that defends the lower kingdoms, and the diminshed numbers of the Night\’s Watch are hard-pressed to turn them back. But the Wildlings themselves are fleeing an even greater evil that might overrun all, a doom of which the southern squabbling kings are woefully ignorant (they\’ve been warned, but scoff at the very idea). I keep thinking that the dragons have returned just in time, because what else better to fight frozen demons than creatures breathing fire? I\’ll just have to wait and see, though, but I suspect that\’s where this is all going…

And why is there not more about the dragons? they and the direwolves are very interesting to me, but they always take a back seat to what the humans in these books are doing.

I continued to amuse myself by comparing the book to the tv series, although here that will end, as the final fifty pages or so of this book moved beyond the last episode of the third season. There were several major changes, like who Robb\’s bride was and where she went with him, but not any great shift in plot or character. I still felt for most of the same characters, becoming even more interested in the fates of Tyrion and Sansa, particularly. I was shocked at a few revelations; one of my favorite characters turned out to be a planted informer, betraying the very person he swore to protect- I actually jumped in my seat and shouted aloud at the book when I read that! And the author certainly has no qualms about killing off major characters, let\’s just say that without further spoilers. Some of those took me by surprise, too. I though I might be weary of this series by the end of this book; it\’s been slow reading. But the way characters speak to each other explains a great deal of the history of this invented world to me, so that certain things begin to make more sense, certain characters become even more sympathetic, motives are revealed, cause-and-effect more intricately linked, and I am even more invested. Well done.

(These books would certainly get rated one notch higher by me except that I\’m not completely enthralled by them. It\’s a darn good read, and I\’m interested in many of the characters, but it splits a bit too much between the eight or nine or ten -never really counted- points of view the chapters alternate around. So I haven\’t quite fallen in love with it yet, and not sure if I\’ll ever read the books again after this. I won\’t really know that until I\’ve completed the entire series, I think. But a three is a good rating, from me! A very solid recommendation).

Rating: 3/5 ……. 1,173 pages, 2000

more opinions:
Passport Books
Books Without Any Pictures
cuddlebuggery book blog
Ludwig\’s Library

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi

more for the list

Just a few titles this week. The first two are available at my library, the last two aren’t. Like to note that for future searches…

Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff- You’ve GOTTA Read This!
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell from Shelf Love

Heidegger’s Glasses by Thaisa Frank – Indextrious Reader
Turning Pages by Tristi Pinkston- It’s All About Books

Tags: TBR additions

Colors for Zena

by Monica Wellington

Zena is a little girl who loves colors. She wakes one day into a gray, black-and-white room and runs off with her puppy to find where the colors have gone. Each subsequent page features a prominant color- red fire truck and flowers, yellow bus and store fronts, blue sky and birds and so on. Zena wants more colors, so the primaries are introduced again and then mixed together to create pages of orange, green and purple. Along the way Zena collects new friends as well, who follow her on her discovery- an orange lion, a green frog, a purple dragon. At the end she mixes colors herself and paints a lively picture with a rainbow. It\’s a delightful little story introducing small children to the color wheel. My toddler was enchanted with the bright illustrations and cute characters.

Disclosure note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 32 pages, 2013

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Picture Books

The Beginning Place

by Ursula K. LeGuin

This is a book I wish I remembered better and feel I really ought to read again someday. It\’s a fantasy that begins in the real world, with two young people each from troubled families. The girl, Irene, has been visiting a hidden, alternate world where it is always twilight for many years. When the boy, Hugh, discovers it for the first time (he\’s twenty-one) she sees him as an intruder and outsider. The town of locals in the magic world are experiencing trouble; something is blocking roads and passages and in fact Irene and Hugh have different problems traveling to and from the magic place and their own mundane world. The townsfolk welcome Hugh as a hero when he arrives which angers Irene; but then she finds they must work together to save their secret world from the evil that threatens it. Of course they eventually become friends and perhaps something more…

Wow, does this modern cover sure look different! I found it while googling further information on the book. The older jacket illustration gave me a sense of an idyllic place when I read the story; the new one imbues it more with a sense of adventure. I wonder if I had first read the novel under the more exciting cover, would it have influenced my interpretation of the story? Have you ever felt like the cover of a book significantly affected how you imagined the story, beyond just what the characters look like?

Rating: 3/5 …….. 240 pages, 1980

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Past Reads

Potty Time

by Anne Civardi

This picture book about a two-year-old learning to use the potty is going through its second round in my house. I read it a lot when my first daughter was young, and am reading it to my second child now. It has bright, simple pictures that show the little girl Millie at home with her family (big sister, younger brother) and how she learns to potty. She sees her big sister\’s example in the bathroom, and then her mom gives her a potty of her own. Her friend tells her what it\’s for, Mom helps her sit on it (even though nothing happens at first) and she gets out of diapers into \”big girl pants\” (which I read as \”special panties\” because that\’s what I call them with my daughter). Millie has several accidents but is always gently reminded to use the potty instead. She finds that it\’s okay to potty in different places- taking it along in the car, using it right before bedtime, even occasionally going in the bushes with help from dad when at a picnic. By the end of the book she\’s using the toilet with some help, and learns to wash her hands afterwards. Then she gets to be the example and tries to sit her baby brother on the potty!

I think it\’s cute, as well as being a good sample for a child of different activities and experiences that surround toilet training. I also like the home atmosphere in the books; the floors are strewn with toys (just like my house looks most days), the mom always looks gentle and helpful, the family is shown doing things together like making cookies, playing outside with a hose in hot weather, going out on errands. My child is really fond of this book, and was even before we started helping her use the potty in earnest.

When I read it aloud, I do change the euphanisms \”Number One\” and \”Number Two\” to the more straightforward \”pee pee\” and \”poo\” we use in our house. But the book itself makes that suggestion; there\’s a brief forward that reminds parents to use whatever terminology they already have in place with their own kids. I don\’t know why this book seems to have fallen out of favor; the amazon review is rather critical, and nobody else seems to have made notice of it. Maybe some dislike how the pictures show clearly activities surrounding toileting habits, while the text itself doesn\’t go into great detail. But I think that works just fine; kids don\’t always need a ton of detailed verbal explanations, whereas they can look at a picture and identify with it clearly. It works for us.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 24 pages, 1988

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Parenting / Pregnancy, Picture Books

The Book on the Bookshelf

by Henry Petroski

A history of bookshelves, the physical design of books themselves, and to some extent the organizational systems for libraries. Might sound boring. But I think any book-lover, especially one interested in how things are organized, will find it engaging, as I did. Seeing books lined up vertically on shelves is so much the norm for us that it\’s hard to imagine finding books in other ways (although stacks on the floor are often a norm for me, too). Petroski looks in detail at all the ways throughout history that books have been kept safe, from the oldest scrolls stored in cubbyholes, to precious volumes safeguarded in locked chests, to various takes on shelving until arriving at the horizontal bookcases we are so familiar with today. He looks at library designs as well, and includes plenty of amusing anecdotes about book-lovers through the ages (I remember in particular Samuel Pepys, who was a book collector paramount to none; he had hundreds of books and apparently had to climb over the piles to reach his bed!) I found most intriguing the descriptions of heavy volumes so valuable (back when books were meticulously copied by hand and took scribes many years of their lives to create) they were actually chained to the shelves to thwart library visitors who might also be thieves. It led me to the title The Chained Library, a book that\’s been lingering on my TBR list forever now (mostly because my public library doesn\’t have a copy for me to read). As a little plus, the appendix has all sorts of suggestions on ways to organize your own library, from the usual subject or alphabetical arrangements to sorting by color and other whimsical methods. Overall intriguing and fun at times. The writing is pretty good, too. A lot of it is about engineering of shelving systems, but it\’s written in a friendly fashion that makes that easy to understand, open to the curious mind. Sure to interest any bibliophile who likes to mess with lists and shuffle their books every now and then (I rearrange my shelves every few years just for the fun of it).

Rating: 4/5 …….. 304 pages, 1999

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Books on Books, Nonfiction (general), Past Reads

The Loon

Voice of the Wilderness
by Joan Dunning

Beautiful book about a most interesting bird. I was introduced to Joan Dunning by coming across her book on bird nesting behavior while browsing library shelves; a search turned up this one as well. I clearly remember the calls of loons on a lake in Canada, where I went camping as a kid. It was nice to learn more about them. Dunning\’s book follows the birds through the four seasons, while describing their behavior and habits. It\’s a good combination of both scientific facts and lovely prose. The author\’s delightful black-and-white drawings and color paintings make it a book to treasure.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 143 pages, 1985

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Past Reads

Frank and the Tiger

by Dev Ross

This is an easy-reader book my toddler picked out at the library. It has a feature I haven\’t come across in picture books before; each spread has one side for the parent to read, and on the second page much simpler text for the child to read. My daughter isn\’t old enough to participate in this way, but I think it\’s a great idea to get kids involved. The book is about two little friends, a frog and a mouse, who hear a boy calling for his lost tiger. The frog wants to find the tiger and return it to the boy; the mouse is afraid to meet a tiger. It turns out the tiger is just a stuffed toy, but the mission of returning it isn\’t quite so easy. A dog snatches up the tiger and the pair of friends must try and get it back. When they finally return the toy to the boy, his reaction isn\’t quite what they expected! I like the story, but the pictures leave a little something to be desired. The boy is drawn a bit awkwardly and the frog\’s face looks odd to me as well. But that\’s a small complaint. My toddler certainly likes this book well enough. It\’s one of the longest storylines she\’ll sit through yet.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 41 pages, 2012

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Picture Books

A Dog\’s Life

by Peter Mayle

Humorous observations on the life of a suburban french dog. Well, he didn\’t start out as a suburban dog. He was abandoned by his first owner and lived some time as a stray, suffering kicks at worst, neglect at best. After fending for himself on the streets, he gets adopted by a writer and life is suddenly better, albeit confusing at first. The dog must learn to get along with his new human\’s many quirks, finding himself delighted (balls to chew on) puzzled (scoldings at rolling in smelly things) and appalled at turns (baths, particularly). He becomes adept at the art of appeasing angy or frustrated owners (whom he refers to as \”The Management\”), has constant run-ins with cats and handymen (or was it a plumber?) and repeatedly attempts to woo a female dog that lives next door. It\’s a funny little book stuffed with sarcastic humor and all sorts of witty little pokes at our own habits, as you would expect of a story told from the dog\’s viewpoint. I believe the author was portraying himself as the dog\’s owner. The scrawly illustrations add an extra bit of charm and amusement.

Rating: 3/5 …….. pages, 1995

more opinions:
prettymayleen
Reading Thots
finnfolk

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Past Reads

Month: August 2013

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