Planet Middle School is told in poems that show moments in Joylin’s life during her first year of middle school. Although spare in words, it’s full of emotion and insight. My daughter identified with the things Joy is going through even though the specific details of their lives are different. Typically I’m not a huge […]
What Came from the Stars
February 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Review written by Jocelyn Koehler. It would it be too high of praise to say that Gary D. Schmidt’s What Came from the Stars is a solid block of crazy cool braised in awesome sauce. It would not be too high of praise, however, to say that this book is special. In the town of […]
Walk Two Moons
February 12, 2013 by 6 Comments
I’ve heard wonderful things about Sharon Creech so I picked up her Newbery Award winning book Walk Two Moons. I’ll definitely try some other books of hers because people had such glowing things to say, but I didn’t particularly like this book and I certainly won’t be recommending it to my daughter—she would find it […]
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette
February 8, 2013 by 1 Comment
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette is the third book about the Penderwick Family. It assumes, as I will, that you’ve read the other two. (In fact, I accidentally picked up this one when I meant to read the second one and by the first paragraph knew I was missing part of the story—and honestly, if […]
The Candymakers
January 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
My daughter desperately wanted me to read The Candymakers—having finally gotten to it in my queue, I can see why she was so excited. It’s the book that would result if you mashed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with The Westing Game, and it was possibly the most surprising book I’ve read in years. I […]
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 […]
Miri Attwater and the Ocean’s Secret
December 29, 2012 by 3 Comments
Miri Attwater and the Ocean’s Secret is a cute story about a girl who learns she’s actually a mermaid princess. She’s going to spend her summer in the merworld and she has so many things to learn, all while keeping it secret that she grew up among the “leggers.” I know this is a terrible […]
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. […]
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 […]
