Bruce's Big Storm

Bruce's Big Storm by Ryan T. Higgins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like all the other Bruce books, this one is absolutely delightful--funny for kids and for their grown-ups. This time around, Bruce is the reluctant host of all the neighborhood animals during a big storm. When a tree crashes through the roof and slices the house in two, the neighbors rally to fix up the house even better than before--adding a "rumpus room" (It's for rumpusing!) where everyone can hang out and play cards. My kids ask for this as a bedtime story over and over and can now recite pretty much the entire book. Or at least sections of it before dissolving in giggles. We love Bruce books so much!

View all my reviews

I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track

I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track by Joshua Prince
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book to my daughter's kindergarten class in honor of the Transportation unit they were working on. The kids were really into it--caught up in the suspense of whether the ant was going to be smashed by the train. However, even these 5 & 6-year-olds were savvy enough to point out that an ant would most assuredly feel the vibrations of an enormous train barreling ever closer and would have gotten off the rail WAY before the train posed any kind of mortal danger. In fact, they blurted this fact out right in the middle of the story, which gave me an opportunity to respond with, "True, but you can pretend anything you want in fiction!" and then quickly move on before anyone thought about all the ways that *isn't* quite true or realized the switchman should have just picked up the ant instead of trying to redirect a TRAIN from its appointed route.

The illustrations in the book are beautiful--sort of a soft-focus photo-realism...aside from the ant who walks on two legs and carries a stick with a bag of belongings hanging from it. That part's pure "photo-fantasy," you might say.

There are some great vocabulary words in the text, and loads of rhyming words, which the kids were having fun listening for. The rhythm of the text flows along well in all but a few spots, so practicing out loud in advance is a must. The stutter-spots can be overcome if you learn which syllables to emphasize, but that's nigh impossible in the moment.

View all my reviews

The Women with Silver Wings: the inspiring true story of the women airforce service pilots of World War II

The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II by Katherine Sharp Landdeck


Katherine Sharp Landdeck's detailed account of the day-to-day experiences of the women who flew for the Army Air Forces and the long-term machinations and political maneuvering involved in the evolving alphabet soup of acronyms is riveting. Her extensive research included years of interviewing and becoming friends with dozens of the women; reading their letters, diaries, memoirs, and speeches; combing through newspaper archives, photos, accident reports, and government documents; and triple-checking everything. My husband is an air force officer and military history buff, so I enjoyed the opportunity to read about one of his favorite subjects but from a female perspective.

It's endlessly astonishing to me how sexist (and racist) beliefs can persist when they are so demonstrably false and utterly ridiculous. Still more astonishing is that they persisted during WWII when sheer practicality should have rendered them moot: women not only could fly anything and everything, they NEEDED to do so in order to maximize the number of men able to fight. (Never mind that women could have also done an excellent job of fighting.) Landdeck's meticulously researched "The Women with Silver Wings" brings this absurdity into sharp focus.

Since I'm reading an advance reader's edition (ARC), the endnotes haven't yet been numbered, nor are they marked within the text, but once that happens for the final published version, they will be beneficial, although in some cases it would be nicer if they were footnotes and more easily read without flipping back and forth. Also, the extensive number of women featured in the book makes me wish for some sort of Cast of Characters list with a sentence or two to remind me who's who & has which background. But that's a minor quibble in an otherwise fascinating book.

Many thanks to Bookbrowse.com and the publisher for the ARC they sent me in exchange for my honest review.

View all my reviews

Quiet

Quiet by Tomie dePaola
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I love the concept: how everyone is hurrying, even in nature, and how essential it is to take time to be quiet and still. Unfortunately, Tomie dePaola's style of artwork isn't my cup of tea, and in this case that mattered more than with many of his other books. I didn't find it restful, as it really should be for maximum impact. And my kids, who usually ask me to read books over and over (and over and over...), never requested this one beyond the first time, which tells me it didn't resonate with them either. But other reviewers have had the opposite opinion, so I'm glad they liked it!

View all my reviews

A Bad Day for Sunshine

A Bad Day for Sunshine by Darynda Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's Sunshine Vicram's first day on the job as Sheriff of Del Sol County, New Mexico. She got elected despite being unaware she was even running, thanks to her parents, who were determined to both bring her back to Del Sol and get rid of the corrupt, inept incumbent. Within minutes of her arrival, homemade muffins are delivered, horrifying her staff, who have long since learned that the size of the muffin basket portends the scope of the crazy or catastrophic cases coming their way. Today's basket is huge, and sure enough, a short time later a Mercedes crashes through the front of the sheriff station, driven by a desperate mother whose teenage daughter has just been kidnapped--an event the daughter has been predicting since she was a little girl. Sunshine and her deputies have only three days to find Sybil before her captor kills her.

I stayed up WAY past bedtime because I couldn't stop reading until I finished this book. The writing style is very witty (quite similar to Jones' Charley Davidson series) and just as fast-paced as the plot. In fact, the relationship between Sunshine Vicram and her daughter Auri reminded me a lot of Lorelei & Rory Gilmore of Gilmore Girls. Well, except that Lorelei knows from the beginning who Rory's father is, and Sunshine doesn't figure out Auri's until WAY WAY WAY after the reader catches on.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, language is secondary. The closest genre this book/series fits into at the moment is humorous mystery/suspense. There is a strong romantic subplot, (well, two, actually, and a bit of a third) but it will probably take another book or two (or 5, at the rate Sun's going) to develop into anything like a real relationship. There is one dream sequence that counts as a sex scene and some sexual references. Since the plot of the book focuses on a current and a past abduction, there is also reference to rape, in case that is a trigger for anyone. Also some off-screen violence, a bit of profanity sprinkled throughout, and on-screen teen bullying of Auri by a Mean Girl & her lackeys.

The diverse, quirky characters include many with brown skin in various shades and from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, chiefly Latino, African, and Apache. The father of one character is deaf, and another character is on the autism spectrum, so ASL is mentioned semi-frequently. Unlike with Jones' Charley Davidson series, there is only a hint of anything possibly beyond normal human experience. It's not urban fantasy. A minor character from the Charley series has a small cameo, however, and that was fun!

I read a free ebook ARC courtesy of NetGalley and St. Martins Press in exchange for my honest review. The only bad thing about that is that now I have to WAIT for the next book in the series to be written. Waiting is HARD.

View all my reviews

Father of Lions: the remarkable true story of the Mosul Zoo rescue

Father of Lions: The Remarkable True Story of the Mosul Zoo Rescue by Louise Callaghan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Father of Lions is a fascinating glimpse into life in Mosul before, during, and after ISIS (Daesh) control. Until the last quarter of the book or so, it focused far less on the zoo and the few animals struggling to survive than it did on the humans, however. I hadn't expected this, so it seemed almost like reading a civilian survival story and its animal-rescue-themed sequel. Louise Callaghan has done an amazing job of evoking the tense, dusty, waiting and mortar-driven hiding inherent in an urban battlefield. Her pacing intensifies throughout, although sometimes the timeline gets a bit confusing with seasons apparently passing during the span of days, and at times she dwells a bit too much on the pre-ISIS backstory of the participants. For a Western reader many thousands of miles from the fighting, however, Callaghan's portrayal brings the conflict down to a comprehensible human (and feline/ursine) level. It should appeal to anyone interested in either animal welfare or the fight against ISIS.

My thanks to Bookbrowse.com for the ARC they provided in exchange for my honest review.

View all my reviews

Highfire

Highfire by Eoin Colfer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I finished reading the ARC from NetGalley a couple of weeks ago, and even with that amount of time to ponder, I still am not quite sure what I thought/think of the book. It is definitely unlike anything I have ever read before! From the description, I was expecting something much less dark and violent. Yes, there is a great deal of humor, but it's not a lighthearted read. Characters die, nearly die, and lose body parts. The vast quantity of profanity starts on page one, the crude sexual references and jokes not long after.

You can't help but root for teenage (Everett) Squib Moreau, and I grew fond of Vern, the depressed curmudgeon of an ancient dragon, as time went on, too. Constable Hooke freaked me out--he's a ruthless psychopath who has been getting away with murdering people for years, beginning with his cruel zealot of a father.

On balance, I think I'm glad I read the book because it was so unusual and kept me reading to find out what would happen. But it's not one I'll re-read. I prefer my escapist fiction to be more laugh-out-loud and less dark. I'm sure other people with different reading tastes will love this, though.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is perhaps primary? Readers will need an incredibly high tolerance for bad language, sexual references, and on-screen violence. Vern is, he believes, the last of his kind--a fire-breathing dragon ("Vern" is short for "Wyvern"). The closest genre it fits into is contemporary fantasy because the story revolves around a dragon living/hiding in a swamp in a modern-day Louisiana bayou.

View all my reviews