Keeping Corner is told from the point of view of Leela, a young widow living in a small town in 1918 India. It’s a compelling story. Leela was engaged at 3, married at 9, widowed at 12 before she even moved in with her husband’s family. Now, according to tradition, she will spend the rest […]
How to Speak Dragonese
January 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
How to Speak Dragonese is the third book in the How to Train Your Dragon series. I’m just going to assume you’ve read the other reviews, so this won’t be repetitive. This book is in keeping with the others—humor aimed squarely at middle grader readers, funny drawings throughout, etc. Hiccup and Fishlegs are learning pirating […]
Divergent
January 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Review written by Jonathan Lavallee. The world of Divergent is a very fragmentedly ordered world. There are five official factions that govern the life of everyone based upon their personality. There are the selfless Abnegation who are the governors, the intelligent Erudite who develop the technology, the truthful Candor who are the investigators, the fearless […]
How NOT to Spend Your Senior Year
January 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
I decided to give the Romantic Comedies line one last chance by reading How NOT to Spend Your Senior Year by Cameron Dokey, since she’s one of my favorite authors. While the writing was better—I appreciate Dokey’s tendency to have her narrators tell the story directly to the reader—the plot was still convoluted to the […]
The Penderwicks on Gardam Street
January 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, the sequel to the delightful The Penderwicks, gives us some insight into what life is like for the lovely Penderwick family when they’re at home. We get more insight into Martin Penderwick (always called “Mr. Penderwick in the text, like the reader is friends with the girls and he’s very […]
The Great Good Thing
December 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review written by Jonathan Lavallee. The Great Good Thing tells the story of Sylvie; she’s a 12 year old princess and has been for the last 80 years. When you’re a character in a book, you say your lines in the appropriate places and you get to where you need to go in order to […]
Tuesdays at the Castle
December 12, 2012 by 1 Comment
In Tuesdays at the Castle, 11 year old Celie and two of her older siblings, Lilah and Rolf, must protect themselves and their magic castle from the evil adults who are plotting to take over the kingdom. Celie, the youngest, is the main character. She has a special relationship with the castle—a living thing that […]
My Sister the Vampire 9, 10, &11
December 6, 2012 by 3 Comments
We managed to get the next three My Sister the Vampire books through Scholastic, so we’re all caught up now! Rather than write three separate reviews, I’m going to do them all together. I’m just going to assume you’re familiar with the series. If not, you can read about the earlier books here and here. […]
Belle
December 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Belle is Cameron Dokey’s retelling of “Beauty and the Beast.” Like all of Dokey’s work, it’s very readable and is an interesting take on the story that inspires it. I’ve read a lot of retellings of “Beauty and the Beast.” This one doesn’t really break any new ground, but it was enjoyable to read. Like […]
The Sound & The Echoes
November 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The Sound and the Echoes tells the story of Will who learns that each person in our world (we’re called Sounds) has an Echo in a world that exists beneath ours. An Echo is born every time a Sound is born and it looks like a transparent version of the Sound. It turns out that Will’s […]
