Bookblog28

Hunger Games

2012-04-18T17:16:00.000-06:00

http://threadless.com/submission/418526/be_love

I haven't written on Hunger Games, I mean it probably does not need more press. However, I am a huge fan and read the books a few years ago. Christmas of 2010 I think I single handed-ly boosted its stats by giving it to a ba-jillion people. I was concerned that the movie would ruin it, but then the movie was quite well done. I designed a Hunger Games / Saint Francis inspired shirt that is in the running to be printed on Threadless right now, and would love it if you have a second to take a look at it. I remain immensely impressed by Peeta, and think his dedication to staying himself and refusing to play the game for his own gain make him one of my favorite characters in literature. I think he would like this shirt, follow the link above and let me know if you agree:).

The Jamie-cott Awards AKA Some Really Beautiful Books

2012-03-03T21:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I am shelving books at the library,or tidying up after a hurricane of children has come through, and a picture book will just refuse to get back on the shelf because its illustrations are so amazing I cannot leave it alone. Here are a fifteen of those amazingly beautiful books, in no particular order, and from no particular publishing year. I am awarding them the not-so-prestigious Jamie-cott award, because only one book gets the Caldecott every year and there are soooo many more that deserve it!

A few of them should also earn the amazingly-smart-wow-that's-crazy-award. You will know them when you see them.


Saint Francis and the Nativity is by Myrna A. Strasse with amazing illustrations by Fausto Binachi. These pictures practically glow. They are like portable stained glass. I would love to put them on my walls. The story tells about the first live nativity, and involves my favorite saint.

The Bear Who Shared by Catherine Rayner is about, yes a bear who shared. The pictures are beautiful, the thing they share is a magical imaginary fruit, and friends are made. Great fun all around.


The Rabbit Problem, by Emily Gravett explains the Fibonacci sequence using a bunch of rabbits. Not ordinary rabbits either, pop up rabbits with little mini-books and calendars and cut-outs. It enthralled several of us in the work room while the book sorter puffed and putted away. It also makes you want to learn about math, and could lead to a desire for more pet rabbits. Here is a quick fix for those of you saying fibo-who: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number.

Spells, also by Emily Gravett, is a twist on the princess and the frog with her trademark quirky sketches and non-traditional page formats that allow you to change the book every time you read it. Her prince may not be so charming, but her book is!

Tumble Me Tumbily is written by Karen Baicker and illustrated by Sam Williams. This is a beautiful bed-time style book with soft illustrations that look like they were sketched with a fat soft pencil and then water-colored. The rhythm and rhymes are great for very early listeners, and the animals and babies could extract awws from even the hardest heart-ed picture book readers.


Sisters and Brothers: sibling relationships in the animal world

is by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. You may have seen other books by Jenkins, he has a bunch of awesome nonfiction animal books like Actual Size, and What do You do With a Tail Like This? Some are on his own and others, like this one are with his wife, Page. Different animals gallop and crawl across the pages with large print to be read to really young children and accompanying nonfiction text about the different animals and their behavior for the older reader. the pictures look like stop action photos of collage pieces. You will want to pick them up off the white background and run your fingers over their textures.


Wonder Bear by Tao Nyeu is composed only of pictures. I don't normally like that, frankly, words are pretty cool. However, the blues, oranges, yellows and greens combined with thick black lines create such a distinctive look I really can't help but include Nyeu's world in this list. She has one other book with a similar color scheme, starring the same huggable bear. It is called Bunny Days.


Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku, is by Lee Wardlaw with illustrations by Eugene Yelchin. the format is obviously interesting and the pictures remind me of a cartoon form the 60's or 70's. This would be great for a poetry unit, or just for a kid who likes cats!

Posy by Linda Newberry has illustrations you just want to scoop right off the page. They are done by Catherine Rayner, who lives and works in Edinburough where they clearly have the world's most adorable cats! She won the Book Trust Early Years Award for Best New illustrator in 2006, so she probably doesn't really care about her Jamie-cott award, but still. the text is simple and little kids will love it. My cat, Opie, is in love with Posy and wants to write her a letter!


Mortimer's First Garden by Karma Wilson is illustrated by Dan Andreasen. Mortimer is a cheerful and enthusiastic little mouse who ends the books curled up in a delicious pile of sunflower seeds. You will want a pet mouse after meeting him.

Princess Hyacinth: the Surprising Tale of a Girl who Floated is a modern fairy tale of a bored princess and a kite flying boy. The boy and the kite may get frowns from the more feministic, as there is a bit of rescuing involved, but come on people lighten up. The pictures are whimsical and remind me a little of the angular style used in Disney's Sleeping beauty, with some added twists. It was written by Florence Parry Heide, with pictures by lane Smith. The multi-colored text is silly and has the semi-sarcastic tone of the Stinky Cheese Man stories by Jon Scieszka which are also illustrated by Lane Smith. I think the princess would be glad that I had fun reading it.

I Spy With my Little Eye is by Edward Gibbs. It's one of those guess-what's-on-the-next-page books that is sure to delight. The pictures are painterly and sketchy; reminiscent of children's books from the fifties. The pages have delightful peek-throughs, and it is a pretty big format, making for a perfect group read-aloud.

Swirl By Swirl: Spirals in Nature is by Joyce Sidman with pictures by Beth Krommes. Krommes has won the Caldecott for The House in the Night, and all i can say is wow about her work here. It looks almost like it was done on scratch boards. Each page is covered with fine, richly colored cross hatching over a white and black background. The illustrations crawl with specifically named creatures from around the world in a celebration of nature you will not soon forget.

The Dog Who Belonged to No One, by Amy Hest with pictures by Amy Bates, is a must for any dog-lover in your life. The title dog wiggles right off the page and into your lap. He is rakish and fuzzy and in need of some love, which he of course finds after some stressful rainy nights.


Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan is a beautiful retro-looking trip through, obviously, one little owl's night. It's done with simple shapes and colors and ends with the sun-rise and bed-time for the owl. The dark background is different for a kids book. I like it.

The History of Love

2012-02-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

I just finished The History of Love by Nicole Krause and it was beautiful.

It is a book within a book written by rotating narrators with entwining story lines that lead you down the crowded sidewalks of today's New York, through the darkened woods of Nazi-occupied Poland, and into a quiet coffee house in post-war Chile. The worlds Krauss builds are hazy and real at once, like the dream you can't be sure you weren't awake for. I felt like I should go looking for the book from inside the book by the time I had finished reading!

One of the narrators is Leopold Gursky, an aging holocaust survivor living in New York. Also in New York we meet Alma, the young daughter of a widowed academic. Her mother lives her life in a haze of depression, recreating her dead husband over and over while her children tumble up on their own. Alma's brother, Bird, takes his turn at narrating as well from his point of view as one of 36 mystical lamed vovnik - he thinks he may be on the JV messiah team basically. While he and Alma are trying to figure out their world with an emotionally absent mother, Leo Gursky is trying to prove to himself that he is still alive. In Chile, Leo's old friend Litvinoff, who escaped before the Nazi invasion, spends years climbing around his lost life only to eventually make the decision that gives us our title. The tangle of characters range from South America to Manhattan in independent stories that seem unrelated, and can even be slightly disorienting at first. Everything comes together beautifully in the very last page, however, and we realize that everyone has been telling the same story from the start.

Krauss's prose is succinct and carefully layered so that I suspect even more connections would become clear on a second reading. She puts together a world that somehow leaves the taste of hope behind, even when so many things have veered away from happy in the lives of her lovable yet bruised characters. I highly recommend The History of Love!

OK, OK, so I love Meg Cabot

2011-10-11T22:00:00.000-06:00

I have been slightly disparaging of Chik-Lit in the past...if only in my head....really almost snobby I would say. This was really hypocritical when you consider my absolute delight in really bad romantic comedies on the silver screen.

Then one day I half-heartedly picked up Meg Cabot's Queen Of Babble. It was like a package of M&M's and a Saundra Bullock movie in book form. I read it...in barely more time than it takes to devour a bad rom-com on film, and moved onto the sequel...and the last book in the trilogy...and then The Boy Next Door. the thing is, the lady can really write some very engaging characters, and while the plot line is totally While You Were Sleeping sans soundtrack, the actual writing is completely enjoyable! I mean it, I felt guilty for the first three books, but I have come to terms with the fact that I absolutely adore Meg Cabot.

OK so the plots are not earth shattering, like my friend Liz has said of many things, it's not going to change your life... but you will be entertained and you will laugh and every time you close her book you will have a goofy grin. Can't be helped. Also, she CAN write people. Even the Boy Next Door Series, all told through emails, which sounded horrid to me upon first thought, flows just fine. She can bring a story to life and successfully suspend any disbelief you might like to have in the face of French chateaus or millionaires in disguise mixed together with small-town mid-western girls or secret princesses from the bay area.

Some authors do all plot, no style. Some do all style, no plot. Ms. Cabot does lovable characters, fun dialogue, and grin-inducing stream-of-consciousness with a great eye for the dynamics of friendship all tied up in lighthearted plots that you are pretty certain will turn out OK. Pick one up. You won't regret it. You read it not because you don't really know what's going to happen, but because the trip to the end is so much fun and the characters who take that trip with you are delightfully entertaining.

Disclaimer: If you have a Y chromosome, and this is not painfully obvious already, you should probably skip Cabot. It might make you want to stab your eyes out, I mean come on, it is called chick-lit for a reason. Signature Meg Cabot is best approached by one who can watch Mansfield Park twice in a 24 hour period, and quote Dirty Dancing or Drive Me Crazy without any intentional irony.

A Discovery of Witches

2011-10-08T10:08:00.000-06:00

Amazon,com When I see the words "Bodleian Library" on the book flap I am sold. But A Discovery of Witches is not just for crazy academic-philes like me, in fact much of the action takes place outside of one of Oxford's most famous libraries.

I have heard people who are fed up with vampires and supernatural kitsch who still love this novel. That says a lot. The protagonists, Diana and Matthew are a witch and a vampire respectively. There are also creatures called Daemons, and regular humans running around Oxford, a French castle, and upstate New York. Diana is a History professor, specializing in the history of Science, and she is pretty pissed off about her witch blood, trying hard to ignore any magic she might posses. Matthew is a science professor as well, working to unravel the genetic secrets of humans, witches, vampires, and daemons. Are they four separate species, or merely different breeds born of selective mating? He has been working on these questions since he discussed Origin with his good old pal, Charles, fresh from his tour on the SMS Beagle.

The world Harkness builds straddles the line between science and magic as it snakes through time. History buffs will enjoy the historical details that pepper the plot and dialogue while the entirely new layers that have come out of Harkness's imagination help to create a world that is ours with a twist.

The only problem I can find with this sprint through magic and time is that it is the first of a planned trilogy, and the second one isn't coming out until summer 2012. Grrr. To bad I don't have the DNA marker for Time-walking.

A Completely Different Book

2011-09-14T10:48:00.001-06:00

So a couple weeks ago I responded to a request for reviewers on Bookbloggers, a site where a bunch of authors, readers and book bloggers connect and read each other's stuff. A few days later I got an email, and then a book in the mailbox to review! It's like the magical book fairy visited!

The book that I received is called Seven Point Eight. It is Marie Harbon's first book in a planned series. You can see her web-site at: http://www.marieharbon.com/, along with more reviews, and information about her and her work.

Seven Point Eight has been compared to Dan Brown's style of adventure writing, with a more fantastical spin.. It is a fantasy / sci-fi adventure told from several different characters' perspectives. The cast of characters is sprawling, as are the various settings, jumping between England, New York, and outer-space while also springing between the minds of the main characters: Tahra, Max, and Paul. It can be a bit confusing to follow all the leaps from mind to mind and non-linear year to year. However, this confusion can also add to the sci-fi mystique and the feeling that perhaps the experiments the characters are undertaking are not quite in their control.

The independently wealthy Max Richardson is the sponsor for the research that anchors the characters together. It begins with an interest in quantifying the human soul using elector-magnetic fields, dabbles in psychic powers and their sources, and culminates in consciousness projection into other worlds. Many different characters jump in and out of the narrative around the mane trio, who form a bit of a love triangle. Max is the womanizing playboy with an interest in science. Paul is the scientist and scholar whom Max has pulled into the world of big money and research sans consequences. Tahra is a younger woman with psychic powers who is destined to become the lynchpin of the project.

Seven Point Eight is a sci-fi soap-opera of sex, tangled into a wild plot line that may remind you at various times of Sliders, Avatar, Flat-liners, X-men, and Star Trek style inter-dimensional space travel, all wrapped up in a research saga. It ends in classic sci-fi style, with perhaps more questions than answers. If you fall in love with Harbon's world, you will no doubt want to follow the whole series to chase down the missing answers.

The Help, Race, Southern Authors, and Popular Opinion

2011-08-24T11:54:00.002-06:00

I was recently attempting to look up books "like The Help" with the idea of reviewing a couple here, and was sad to discover that many sights were just listing other book that are being made into movies at the moment.

The help has been fairly big in Denver for a while now, as it was chosen as the 2011 One Book One Denver. It was a bit controversial at the Library. It had already been heavily circulated and the general opinion was that too many people had already read it, and too recently, for it to be chosen. Even more interestingly, most of the African American women who work at the library, and can remember the 60's, seemed to be of the opinion that the subject had been talked to death. They didn't like the book, they didn't want to talk about it. They didn't want to read about another black maid.

I am a guerita, a white girl that is, and being from Arizona I rather infamously thought we were all Mexican for a length of time only possible for a white girl. I wasn't born in the 60's, and had been raised on Disney Sunday Movies and children's literature that solidly demonized racism as a conquered thing of the past, a strange reality which seemed to have existed, if at all, only in the deep South at a comfortable distance in the past.

I later went on to join Teach For America in the Houston projects and then earned a MA in Sociology which began with an interest in stratification and segregation. I consider myself better educated on the subject of racism and race relations in America now, but I still remember being surprised by the reaction elicited by The Help in the Black women of the library. The book was receiving almost unanimous ravings by white patrons and workers of all ages, and I don't remember hearing anything either way from younger black women. I began to wonder about the racial and generational divide with respect to readers of The Help, and what this divide says about our national collective understanding on the subject.

Perhaps some people in the blog-o-verse would be interested in discussing the subject? Comments are welcome! What does it say about our collective consciousness with respect to race relations if the appetite for civil rights era literature is a mainly white phenomenon? Or is that even an accurate statement? Perhaps the women of Denver Public Library are an anomaly? Is there also a generational divide? It seems to me that white America practically runs from discussions of race in our own time, yet has a fairly healthy appetite for stories about the racial tensions of the past. Meanwhile black Americans are much more likely in my experience, to discuss current events without running from race.

What other southern writers would you recommend to readers of The Help? I was thinking these might be some good author/book suggestions. Some of them are fairly obvious, but still. I would love to hear from you, what do you recommend for readers who loved or hated The Help?

Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)
Flannery O'Conner (Everything that rises Must Converge)
Rebecca Wells (Little Alters Everywhere)
Twain (Huckfinn)
Eudora Welty (Optimists Daughter)
Kaye Gibbons (Ellen Foster)
Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)
Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes)
Minrose Gwin (The Queen of Palmayra)
Mildred D. Taylor (Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry)
Jennifer Lynn Baszile (The Black Girl Next Door)
Maya Angelou (I know Why The Caged Bird Sings)
John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me)

Book Lovers Trivia Pursuit

2011-08-19T00:25:00.002-06:00

This is not actually about a book, but about a game about books.
I would like everyone who ever reads this or other book blogs, those who consider themselves true novel aficionados, lovers of books, libraries and all things type-faced, to try this game.

I got Book Lovers' Edition several years ago from my sister, Kim, for Christmas, because I wanted to buy it for my brother-in-law, and it turned out in the course of the shopping trip that I found out Bill does not actually read. (He is literate, but he does not really align himself with the fiction aficionados aforementioned. This was a disconcerting revelation in the aisles of Toys R US after giving him approximately two decades of Christmas and Birthday books. It was decided that this particular game was probably not his cup of tea, and Kim bought it for me instead)

I was cleaning the hall closet this week, and I ran across the game. It brought back memories of the last time it got played, the same holiday season we got it. It seems that neither my brilliant bibliophilic (mostly) family nor my eclectic and generally genius level friends could get more than one or two out of a zillion questions right. Every game turned into a massive giggle-fest punctuated with copious amounts of sangria and box wine, along with ungodly quantities of homemade holiday treats.

I was wondering if the broader audiance of book-a-hollics (non-recovering) would have better luck. I am going to post some of the questions here for your perusal. Let us see how many out of 12 each of us can get, sans google. The answers are down under the picture, typed backwards. (I swear I am picking them at random, 2 from each category)

Children's - What children's author chronicled the menagerie living at her Chappaqua, New York home in The Tarantula in my Purse: and 172 Other Wild Pets?
Classics - What's the name of the young boar who ousts Snowball to gain power in Animal Farm?
Nonfiction - What morning radio host does Kathleen Tracy bill as "America's Cowboy," in a 1999 biography?
Book Club Favorites - Who presented Any Woman's Blues, a faux autobiography of painter Leila Sand, as if her recurring character Isadora Wing had written it?
Favorite Authors - What was Henry David Thoreau's name, until he pulled the old switcharoo at age 16?
Book Bag Surprise - What runaway bestseller did John Grisham admit he wrote by following Writer's Digest guidelines for a suspense novel?
Children's -What Jez Alborough book tells the tale of a lost baby chimp longing to be cuddled by his mum?
Classics - What title character lived in West Egg, across the bay from the Buchanans?
Nonfiction - What magician explains why he stood atop an 83-foot pillar for 36 hours, in Mysterious Stranger?
Book Club Favorites - What 20th century American schooled herself on fourth-century Egypt , 18th-century Haiti and 19th-century France to write The Salt Roads?
Favorite Authors - What up-and-coming author died in a plane crash on the book tour for her first novel, Wonder When You'll Miss Me?
Book Bag - What 1996 book did Candace Bushnell base on her columns for the New York Observer? Sex and the City

I got 4/12. 30%? Perhaps I will do better after library school? How did you do?

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2.   noelopaN
3.   sumI noD
4. gnoJ acirE
5.   uaerohT yrneH divsD
6. mriF ehT
7. guH
8. ybstaG yaJ
9. enialB divaD
10.   nosnikpoH olaN
11. sivaD adnamA
12. ytiC eht dna xeS

Bossypants

2011-08-15T22:19:00.000-06:00

I am reading Tina Fey's Bossypants right now, and I will warn you it could lead to laughing out loud in the gym. I read a free excerpt on Brian's kindle earlier this summer on the train in Germany. I cackled down the tracks not so quietly to myself while Oscar and Brian shrugged off our fellow passengers' questions about my sanity.

People will look at you funny while you chortle your way through the varied and disparate chapters of Fey's life. If you had an akward decade you will be used to these stares and will also fully appreciate the multiple nerd photos scattered about the book.

"Growing up and liking It" will make anyone laugh who had to sit through the florescent pink film-strip about periods that don't go at the end of a sentence. At least it was a filmstrip in Prince William County Virginia in the late 80's. Tina's mom gave her a kit that would explain the facts of life in a sort of independent study fashion. The kit mostly scared the begesis out of her, and haunted her closet for most of fourth grade. When the information would have come in handy it missed its mark. To quote, "I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day, but I knew from commercials that one's menstrual period was a blue liquid that you poured like laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency. This wasn't blue, so ... I ignored it for a few hours."

If you are laughing you should pick up the book. If you are not you may have the wrong set of chromosomes for full enjoyment. Personally I found Tina Fey's TMI style of humor, in which she is almost always the butt of her own joke, a lot like hanging out with the girls on one of those road trips or slumber parties where you have to rush to the bathroom to avoid humor induced bladder malfunction.

Historical Fiction - My World War II Habit

2011-08-13T09:46:00.001-06:00

I love almost any historical fiction, but I have been especially fascinated with the World War II era since sometime around fourth grade. I am not sure what inspired this interest, but just mention 1940 something and hand me a book and I will read it. Here are some of my old and new favorites from that time period.

For kids there is Lois Lowry's fabulous Number the Stars, which takes place in Denmark. It is a Newberry winner, and stars a young girl who ends up helping smuggle family friends and neighbors out of the country. While the nine-year-old protagonist does get to actively participate in the resistance, the book is realistic about her level of understanding, without being condescending to young readers. Lowry includes historically accurate information about the resistance in Denmark, where the majority of the Jewish population amazingly escaped Hitler's final solution. It's a good read even for adults, although perfect for upper elementary or middle school readers.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak also stars a young girl, although this much more complex story is written for older teens and adults. Zusak's writing style has been compared to that of Kurt Vonnegut, and the chapters veer back and fourth between various protagonists and the book's narrator, Death with a capital D. You will cry...maybe even weep...while reading about his Leisel's life in Nazi controlled Germany, you will be really glad you read it. Its focus on life from inside a Germany highjacked by a fringe movement that many or most felt powerless to resist is enlightening and fascinating. The fictional Katniss Everdeen from Susan Collins's The Hunger Games would identify with Zusak's story perfectly. You should really read both, although Katniss is factually out of place in a discussion of WWII period pieces.

For a mix of time-traveling sci-fi and historical fiction, Connie Willis is alwasy a sure bet. Her most recent novels, Blackout and All Clear chronicle the adventures of Oxford time-traveling historians in a time-travel paradox circling around the streets of London during the Blitz. The tow books really add up to one massive narrative, and while some connections between the characters who appear in Willis's other novels can be a bit slippery, the final story is a very enjoyable tangle of events with just enough questions answered to leave you wanting a little bit more about her universe. The history, as far as I have heard or read, is meticulously researched and presented.

For another look at Britain during the War, Alexander McCall Smith has La's Orchestra Saves the World. It's a quick read and while slightly more suspenseful and nerve wracking than his normal offerings, continues to demonstrate his great ear for dialogue and ability to represent many different slices of society simultaneously. While many books about or during WWII can leave a taste of horror, La's Orchestra focuses overwhelmingly on the ability for humans to rise above evil circumstances to create community and beauty. You might want to read it after The Book Thief, just to remind yourself that everyone doesn't always get the shaft.

This post is already too long I am sure, although I did warn you in the beginning taht we are talking WWII here. How can I hold it down to less than a kajillion titles? I will restrain myself by mentioning just a couple more briefly. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows also takes place in Great Britain, although this time on an island off the coast that was actually occupied by the Nazis. This is another book that seems to protect the reader form the worst points of the period and instead focus's on the everyday heroes. Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, provides slices of the everyday as well as episodes and seasons of horrific violence. It is based on the journals of the Warsaw Zookeeper's Wife from just before the invasion of Poland until the Allied liberation of Poland. It is very interesting in conjunction with La's Orchestra, if you don't know about Poland's place in the history of both Nazi-controlled Europe and the post-war years.

Of course, there are many more WWII era books that should go on this list. If you have a favorite, please add a comment so that I can read it too!

Alexander Mccall Smith - Cozy and Prolific, Yet Intelligent

2011-08-12T00:04:00.000-06:00

Alexander McCall Smith is probably best known for the Number One Ladies Detective Agency series. While I haven't actually read that series, I feel safe in recommending it just knowing how very homey and well written his Sunday Philosophy Club, and Corduroy Mansion books are.

His characters span the generations, from children to middle aged folks, which I find to be unusual in modern books. We live in a society divided by class, race and age and we tend to create stories and experiences with one point of view in mind rather than the tangle of variously aged and situated folks that really exist. Mr. Smith's ability to appreciate the tangle may be what makes his worlds seem both both textured and nostalgic.

Reading a McCall Smith novel is like slipping into a chapter of the early 1900's, in which the world has become more liberal and technologically advanced, yet retained old-world manners and traditions. Smith creates a network of characters linked organically into settings that are integral to the story rather than a background for random plot. A visit with his Isabel Dalhousie is a trip to Edinburgh, a walk through life that could not exist elsewhere without drastic reconstruction and a personality transplant.

Craving some heavy action and suspense? Well, don't look between these comforting covers. Rather, curl up with Smith when you are feeling like a walk in different shoes after a hard day at work or a harried day with the family. Your blood-pressure will plummet with every word, and your smile will creep right back out from under your nose.

Read-Alouds with Rhythm

2011-08-11T00:02:00.000-06:00

We were all raised with the rhyme and rhythm of Dr. Seuss. Here are some more recent additions to the world of cats in hats and red and blue fishes.

I Ain't Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont is sure to get your young story-time attendees giggling. Encourage them to paint with their imaginations while a naughty boy creates a mess between the pages. The pictures are delightful and the cadence and rhymes will have the kids bouncing on the rug. Beaumont's Baby Danced the Polka is great for smaller crowds as well, with lift-up flaps, dancing stuffed animals, and lines that make you bob your head involuntarily. Both books are ALA Notable Children's Books for Young Readers. If you like these glossy, colorful romps try out Louella Mae, She's Run Away, which has all the charm of the first two titles along with a surprise ending that will have the kids gasping.

The Ravenous Beast, by Niamh Sharkey chronicles a group of hungry hungry animals as they one-up each other with their hyperbolic claims of impending starvation and their lists of rhyming, rhythmical items that they wish to consume. I have seen this whimsically illustrated book inspire precocious vocabulary growth, with kindergarteners begging their parents for dinner because they are just soooooo ravenous they can hardly stand it!

Iza Trapani's song storybooks are a big hit, with multiple verses of I'm a Little Teapot, The Itsy-Bitsy Spider and Jinglebells always ready to rock your classroom or library.
Happy reading! I can barely keep my foot from tapping as I consider your future read-aloud fun.

Women's fiction - Fun New Release

2011-08-10T00:25:00.000-06:00

Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series re-imagines Queen Victoria's England into a light and grin-able kingdom in which steam-punk collides with the supernatural. Her fourth installment, Heartless, is hot off the presses; number five, Timeless, is coming at us in March of 2012.

The books center on Alexia, an unfortunate Lady of good breeding who was born without the usually requisite soul. She makes up for her soullessness by carefully attending to manors and decorum like a manic junior league version of Buffy, introductions just so while ensuing that all supernatural threats to the British Empire are neatly sidestepped. Her soullessness supports a character that will remind you of TV's Tempe Brennan, translated from Kathy Reich's semi-autobiographical mysteries.

Carriger creates romance that mocks the swooners and supernatural protagonists whom live through the afterlife permanently tongue in cheek, surrounded by wacky steam driven contraptions of torture and entertainment. Take the protectorate with you on your next dirigible float for some witty entertainment and well-manored foolishness.