Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Options for May

Kirsten's choices for May!  Take a look:
 
False Prince by Jennifer A Nielsen 
 

Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore
 
 
Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
 

Monday, March 10, 2014

Choices for April

The theme:  books my 11-year-old might like to read.

Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls -- by the author of Where the Red Fern Grows.  I adore this book.  There is a review here.

Enchanted Runner, Kimberley Griffiths Little -- I have not read this one yet but it got great reviews and sounds really interesting.

Wonder, R.J. Palacio -- I recently read this one and am trying to get said 11-year-old to read it because it's really worth it.  Reviews here.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

For March: Carolyn's choice

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
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From Amazon.com:

     "It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time," Milo laments. "[T]here's nothing for me to do, nowhere I'd care to go, and hardly anything worth seeing." This bored, bored young protagonist who can't see the point to anything is knocked out of his glum humdrum by the sudden and curious appearance of a tollbooth in his bedroom. Since Milo has absolutely nothing better to do, he dusts off his toy car, pays the toll, and drives through. What ensues is a journey of mythic proportions, during which Milo encounters countless odd characters who are anything but dull.
     Norton Juster received (and continues to receive) enormous praise for this original, witty, and oftentimes hilarious novel, first published in 1961. In an introductory "Appreciation" written by Maurice Sendak for the 35th anniversary edition, he states, "The Phantom Tollbooth leaps, soars, and abounds in right notes all over the place, as any proper masterpiece must." Indeed.
     As Milo heads toward Dictionopolis he meets with the Whether Man ("for after all it's more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be"), passes through The Doldrums (populated by Lethargarians), and picks up a watchdog named Tock (who has a giant alarm clock for a body). The brilliant satire and double entendre intensifies in the Word Market, where after a brief scuffle with Officer Short Shrift, Milo and Tock set off toward the Mountains of Ignorance to rescue the twin Princesses, Rhyme and Reason. Anyone with an appreciation for language, irony, or Alice in Wonderland-style adventure will adore this book for years on end. (Ages 8 and up)

Friday, January 3, 2014

February Reading

Ashley's book choices for February:

* The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
 
* The Sword in the Stone T.H. White
 
* The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Book Choices for January

Here are Camille's choices for reading in January:

*  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

*  Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth
 
*  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Book Choices for Nov and Dec!

Two months in one!

From Sara for November:

The Distant Hours, Kate Morton
The Goose Girl, Shannon Hale
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles Mann

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And from Corinne for December:

The theme is books I haven't read yet that Disney made into life-action movies:

     Mary Poppins, P. L. Travers:  a magical nanny helps out a family that's disconnected (movie is being remade)
     Toby Tyler, or 10 Weeks With The Circus, James Otis (available on Kindle for free!): a boy runs away from home to join an old-time circus
     Pollyanna, Eleanor Porter: an orphaned girl with a sunshiny attitude changes her town

Saturday, August 24, 2013

September Choices

Make your selection from these options for September:

Flunking Sainthood, Jana Riess
Amazon.com blurb:  "This wry memoir tackles twelve different spiritual practices in a quest to become more saintly, including fasting, fixed-hour prayer, the Jesus Prayer, gratitude, Sabbath-keeping, and generosity. Although Riess begins with great plans for success ("Really, how hard could that be?" she asks blithely at the start of her saint-making year), she finds to her growing humiliation that she is failing--not just at some of the practices, but at every single one. What emerges is a funny yet vulnerable story of the quest for spiritual perfection and the reality of spiritual failure, which turns out to be a valuable practice in and of itself."


A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans
Another Amazon.com blurb: "Strong-willed and independent, Rachel Held Evans couldn’t sew a button on a blouse before she embarked on a radical life experiment—a year of biblical womanhood. Intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans decides to try it for herself, vowing to take all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible for a year." 

7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, Jen Hatmaker
Amazon.com again:  "American life can be excessive, to say the least. That’s what Jen Hatmaker had to admit after taking in hurricane victims who commented on the extravagance of her family’s upper middle class home. She once considered herself unmotivated by the lure of prosperity, but upon being called “rich” by an undeniably poor child, evidence to the contrary mounted, and a social experiment turned spiritual was born.

7 is the true story of how Jen (along with her husband and her children to varying degrees) took seven months, identified seven areas of excess, and made seven simple choices to fight back against the modern-day diseases of greed, materialism, and overindulgence."