A Week in the Woods

A Week in the Woods by Andrew Clements

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I bought this book for my stepson for Christmas last year, and it turned out to be one of his favorites (hooray!). Both he and my husband recommended I read it, and I can see why. Andrew Clements does such an excellent job of creating multi-dimensional characters, both children and adults. In fact, there is so much to this story, it's hard to know how to describe it. It's a story about a kid and some adults who make some snap judgments that turn out to be wrong. It's a story about a lonely kid finding and home and something (the outdoors) to love. It's a story about being prepared (and an excellent advertisement for REI!).

Ultimately it's a story about getting lost and finding your way back home.

For readers' advisors: character and story doorways, and a great pick for elementary school boys.



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No Talking

No Talking by Andrew Clements

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Loved it! This book cracked me up, and I love how both the kids AND adults grew up a little over the course of the book. My 9-year-old stepson (and my husband) loved it, too, which is always a good sign. :)


Here is the book talk I just gave for it:

Who talks more?

Boys...or girls?

Do you know?

Could you stop?

Laketon Elementary experimented.

With a contest

Boys vs. Girls

Two silent days

Penalties for speaking

Except to teachers

(Three-word answers)

Kids counted goofs.

Teachers were confused.

And the winners?

Can you guess?

No Talking

by Andrew Clements



For readers' advisors: story and character doorways



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It Happened One Knife

It Happened One Knife by Jeffrey Cohen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the second Jeffrey Cohen mystery I read (the first was Some Like It Hot Buttered), and I enjoyed it just as much. Cohen's sense of humor and turn of phrase--especially in his narration--cracks me up.

Elliot Freed's Comedy Tonight movie theater has just reopened after the renovations made necessary in the end of the first book. He agreed to screen his projectionist's ultra-violent Western, despite the theater's comedy-only theme, but afterward, someone stole the only copy of Anthony's gory bloodfest of a student film. That's mystery #1.

Mystery #2 begins after Elliot meets two of his heroes, the legendary comedy team of Harry Lillis and Les Townes. Lillis believes that 50 years ago, Townes murdered his (Townes') wife, actress/comedienne Vivian Reynolds. Elliot sets out to find out if this is true.

I had my suspicions throughout the book as to who did what to whom, but I did not actually figure it all out in advance. :)

For readers' advisors: story and character doorways

Take the Cannoli

Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I heard Sarah Vowell speak at the closing session of PLA in March 2010, and she was so hilarious, I added her books to my to-read list. This is the first of her books I have read, and overall I enjoyed it. She has a fabulously sarcastic sense of humor, although I think she's funnier in person than in parts of this book. I generally agree with her politics, so I usually got a kick out of her take on things, but she lost me in the chapter on the Chelsea Hotel. I just couldn't make myself finish that essay, maybe because I had never heard of it before picking up her book, but, yeah, a hotel that's filthy on purpose?! Some famous people stayed there at one time, and that's supposed to make squalor exciting or interesting to read about? Um, not so much.

For readers' advisors: character doorway



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Never Less Than a Lady

Never Less Than A Lady by Mary Jo Putney

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I started reading this book before I knew it was #2 in the Lost Lords series, and I kept feeling like I was missing something, so I put it down and went in search of the first one. Once I finished that one (Loving a Lost Lord), this one made much more sense!

Never Less Than a Lady is the story of Julia Bancroft, abducted by her dead first husband's buddies and rescued by Major Alexander Russell. To protect her--and because there is a reluctant attraction between them--they get married. Then they have to learn how to build a life together.

Mary Jo Putney is one of my favorite romance authors, but this book--like the one before it--left me a little dissatisfied at times. I just felt like it was too easy for Julia to get over her abusive past. Admittedly, I've never been abused (hooray!!), but from everything I've read or heard, that level of torture and abuse doesn't simply melt away over the course of a few months just because you've met Mr. Fabulous. Even though her physical scars are years old, the complexity of her emotional scars should have taken more time, patient work, and pages to heal. The same is true for Benjamin--not even children learn to trust again that quickly. It was just unrealistic.

For Reader's Advisors: story and character doorways



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How Do You Tuck in a Superhero?

How Do You Tuck In a Superhero?: And Other Delightful Mysteries of Raising Boys by Rachel Balducci

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I started reading this while waiting at the Social Security office & DMV. Excellent choice! Short chapters, funny, and easy to put down when my number was called. It's not the parenting book I thought it would be when I checked it out, but it was an entertaining series of nearly random vignettes about the author, her husband, and their 5 sons.



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Loving a Lost Lord

Loving A Lost Lord by Mary Jo Putney

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Mary Jo Putney is one of my favorite romance authors, but this is not one of her best books. It has great potential, despite the gag-inducing cover (WHY do publishers do that?!), but the end really felt a little too rushed, and the survival rate of the characters was improbably high. Still, I'll probably read the rest of the series as it comes out, and I'd give the first 80% or so of the book 3 1/2 to 4 stars if I could.

The premise of the book is that Mariah Clarke's father won an estate in a card game, and after he sets off for London to visit his estranged family, the former owner returns to persuade Mariah to marry him, telling her that her father has been killed. He is persistent, and she tells him she already has a husband who is off fighting in the Peninsula. Not long afterward, Mariah rescues a nearly drowned man with amnesia. On impulse, she tells him he's her husband, which does get her unwanted suitor to leave, but proves a complicated lie to maintain.

For reader's advisors: story and character doorways.



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