Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech

This book was on a list of Mayor's Book Club books from Kuna library for older elementary grades. As you can see, it's also a medal winner.

I LOVED this book. It was beautiful and sad and comforting all at the same time. The bulk of this story is told as Salamanca (Sal) tells a story to her grandparents on a long road trip to Idaho. She is 13 and cannot accept that her Mother left her Father years ago. So her grandparents bring her on this road trip. They ask her to tell a story, so she tells the story of her new friend Pheobe (who gran keeps calling Peeby) and how her life with her parents was incredibly prim and proper and full of only the best healthy things. Their house is always in order and they don't eat cholesterol. They also always act in a proper way, like civilized people. Then they start getting notes about things on the door which shakes up the whole family.

There's also Sal's dad who has become really good friends with a Mrs. Cadaver, who Pheobe is certain killed her first husband (with a name like that, who wouldn't suspect a thing?), who lives with her mother who is blind but tends to see more than most sighted people.

One thing I absolutely LOVED was the take on race. Sal's mother is Native American. Although she (and apparently others of that lineage according to this book) actually really don't like that term. Her mom liked American Indian better because she thought it felt more exotic. She talks about how in school they want you to say "Native American". Ah, good old political correctness! On the road trip, Sal goes to the Black Hills and sees Native American's (or whatever you want to call them) mining. She asks one "Are you Native American?" and he response "I'm a person." And she says, "Well, are you a Native American person?" because she is, by heritage Native as well. But in that short interchange you realize that maybe we shouldn't be so hell bent on classifying people. Obviously, it's wonderful to celebrate different cultures and different ancestry, but if we can see people first as PEOPLE, maybe we can make things better. But of course, not every person of native descent prefers the term Indian, some DO want to be known as Native American, it's very hard. I know I've caught myself trying to be more respectful and end up overly cautious and politically correct. It's a sticky situation we've got these days.

It's hard to tell much more about this book without giving away plot details, so if you haven't read it and don't want anything spoiled, then stop reading right here!







There were several times when I wondered if Sal's mom was dead or if she really had left them. I was definitely kept guessing. She had experienced a horrible miscarriage/still birth that Sal felt was her fault because she had fallen out of a tree and her mother had to carry her while very pregnant for a good distance. But because of this uncertainty, it really felt like you were inside Sal, because SHE herself had not accepted reality yet, so you can see her indecision of whether or not her mom was still around, but toying with the idea of death as an option. But not one she would accept until she saw things for herself. We also deal with new fresh grief towards the end of the book as well. I feel that it was handled really well, and would make for a really good discussion. I'm not sure this is a book that I'd let my 9 year old read yet, maybe I'd wait until she was closer in age to Sal.

Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

This was a book that I had on a list to read and my older daughter is reading them too.

Artemis is a rich, spoiled Irish boy whose father went missing nearly two years before in an exploit that was ironically perfectly legal (as opposed to all previous business ventures being of the illegal, yet more profitable variety). His mother had nearly gone mad, retreating inwardly rather than dealing with reality. So Artemis has himself and his body guard protector Butler to launch all sorts of schemes.

In this one he goes about attempting to prove the existence of Fairy People in order to exploit them for monetary gain. To get the "gold at the end of the rainbow" as it were (although it is definitely not at the end of a rainbow).

It's a split narrative between Artemis and his ventures and a fairy by the name of Holly Short. The only female member of the LEP, a policing body of the People.

What ensues is a tale that is highly entertaining. It's a series, so there are MANY facets of Artemis that are hidden, which I hope are revealed further down the road. He is highly intelligent, yet rather unfeeling. He thinks through MOST things; because he is so well researched, he can usually find a way around things or out of things and doesn't tend to go rushing into things. Although he usually leaves room for improvisation in sticky situations, he usually doesn't need to.

I'm definitely looking forward to reading more!

The Book of Ivy, Amy Engel

Wow. Ok, so I found out about this book by reading a little blip...I can't remember where I found it, but since it's published by Entangled Teen (the publishing company who published by friend Renee Collin's first novel) maybe it was an email they had sent out. But it was titled "How I almost didn't read The Book of Ivy" because it is another teen girl narrated dystopian future book. But it said it had such a sweet love story in it, and it intrigued me just enough. So I got it from my library in about a week or so and devoured it in a few days.

Ivy lives in the not too far distant future. In a world largely destroyed by nuclear bombs and EMPs which have rendered most modern technology things useless. There are no cars or transportation, phones, etc. They have solar panels that manage to help heat water and power electric stoves for cooking. She also happens to be a Westfall. Their "nation" or more like city of around 10,000 people was founded by her grandfather for whom the city is named after. Her grandfather wanted a democracy. However, when a smaller, persuasive group shows up, headed by a Lattimer, more war breaks out and Lattimer comes out ahead, creating a position called "President" which acts more like a monarchy as power can only be passed down generationally through blood line. One way to keep the peace strategically was the instigation of arranged marriages. Throughout the few generations of this population, they city has remained separate and distinct with the "winning" side and its supporters living on one side of the town and the "losing" side and its supporters on the other. These marriages are not randomly chosen. When a child reaches 16, their names are put into the marriage selection pool. They participate in personality tests and other things to help create the best possible match (think Matched without all their life long data trackers). The reason they marry so young is because life expectancy has dropped and because of residual radiation levels, the younger children are conceived, the better chance of a normal healthy child being born is. They have 2 years to become matched in a marriage. If they don't get matched, they may choose to remain single or marry someone else who was not matched. But it goes even further. ALL the girls on the "losing" side must first submit to being matched to a boy from the "winning" side. This ceremony happens in the spring in May. In November, ALL the girls of the "winning" side are married off to the boys of the "losing" side.

This year, the President's son, Bishop, is getting matched to be married. He was supposed to be married 2 years ago, but for some reason told his father he wanted to wait. This year, the first year the Westfall line has had girls in the same age bracket as the President's sons. This year, Ivy will cement the bond between Founder and President by being part of an arranged marriage to Bishop Lattimer. She is 16. Her mother died when she was young. Her father has known this day would come and has been coaching his girls (Ivy has an older sister, Callie) their whole lives about how to restore democracy to their town. It involves assassination. And Bishop's wife must be the one to first kill him. So Ivy has a mission. To kill her husband. (This is not a spoiler, it's on the back cover).

This book has so many interesting things about it (Yay for no direct love triangle!). It explores family loyalty, thinking for yourself, how to recognize incongruences with what you've been taught vs. what is real. Ivy and her sister were home schooled because their father didn't trust the President's curriculum. I see that today. I don't fully trust our government with educational curriculum, however, my choice is not to opt out of it, but to continue to teach my personal beliefs about things to my children so that hopefully they will be able to see through traps, pit falls, and logical fallacies when they see them. Of course, I hope they agree with me on many things, because I am very passionate about what I believe and feel I have good logic behind it not motivated by fear or hatred. HOWEVER, this book has also made me think hard about asking myself "How am I teaching my children to think for themselves? To have a conscious to make decisions that would help humanity and not hurt them?" Hatred and bigotry are largely taught-usually by example-generationally from parent to child. The only way you break that is to CHOOSE not to follow what you were taught. And it takes a VERY strong person to take something that they were taught by someone they love, who loves them, and say "You know, I don't think that's the best view to take." And as a parent, I know I need to not take anything like that in the future as disrespect, because it's not. If my children grow up to be able to listen to opposing views in a respectful manner and articulate in an educated way why they disagree, even if it's with me, I think that would be a good thing. Even if it's a hard thing.

This book also shows how blinding people's causes can be. Some people are willing to have innocent casualties because the end result is better. I understand that there are times when innocent casualties are unavoidable. Take WWII for example. Before bombing Japan, we sent bombers over there to drop pamphlets stating which cities we were targeting and encouraged civilian evacuation (I learned this reading "Unbroken") however, Japanese government confiscated this and many people were either not allowed or not able to evacuate and unfortunately, many innocent lives were lost at our country's hand for the greater good. Ending the war was a good thing. And I'm sure the powers that were at the time felt they had exhausted every other potentially possibility before dropping that bomb-even though I don't think we fully understood what that bomb would do. Now that we know, the ENTIRE WORLD I think (aside from maybe N. Korea) is pretty darn hesitant to drop another. Which is good. As a humanity, we learned. We decided that it's not worth it to use that particular tactic. But if an innocent casualty can be prevented, people should NOT be blinded by their singular quest. It makes you no different from the people who conquered you to begin with.

It also addresses manipulation and what it does to your mind. Once you realize you've been manipulated once, you start to wonder if EVERYONE is manipulating you and you wonder if you would know what it feels like to NOT be manipulated. How you second guess your judgement about just about everything.The conflict of interest you have within yourself that makes you guarded and almost paralyzes your ability to connect with other people. I think this is a useful aspect of the book in a little less emotionally charged way than Hunger Games or other books in which the character feels manipulated by people or situations. I think that many teens will face a manipulative person in their life-and even in their relationships-so it would be good for this to be a reference in the back of their mind.

It also talks about abuse in relationships and what causes it (is it the arranged marriage? or does it have more to do with the people in the relationship than how the relationship came about?), the sharing of daily work, respecting women (even in a society that doesn't value them even the way we are valued now),

Anyhow, I loved it. It was fun, it was easy, it made me think, it made my heart race, melt, and completely break. Luckily there was *just* enough information for me about the sequel (coming Nov. 2015 in case you want to be smarter than me and wait until it's out to read this one. for me not feel despair for Ivy. It did have a lot of elements from other similar books (Matched and The Selection most notably), but not so much that it was annoying.

Here's an official blip: http://amyengel.net/books/

The Blood of Olympus, Rick Riordan

Ok, so I totally thought I already wrote the post for this one, but I hadn't! And I've read a couple books since finishing this one....so it's not as fresh as I'd prefer for writing.

I did REALLY enjoy this one! Only a few questions left, more so for the characters than the reader, but that's still not completely fair!

I really respect the way things played out with Nico, for sure, with this same gender attraction. VERY age appropriate for the target audience. No glorifying of that type of lifestyle, but a healthy hope for someone who feels similarly and chooses to live the lifestyle (I do know some people who have an inclination to same gender attraction but because of deeply held religious beliefs or some other reason choose NOT to live a lifestyle in accordance with their feelings, and that decision should be as respected as someone's choice to live otherwise). I admire an author who can help a generation build sympathy for a group of people who have been shunned, made fun of, or otherwise ostracized, without saying it's right or wrong, without heroizing it or demonizing it. I think it was a great feat. Especially with how as other people found out, they didn't love him less, they loved him MORE because they knew of some of the pain he was going through. Nico learned that sometimes, it IS better to open up instead of keeping everything inside. Also, I find it slightly ironic how his godly father, Hades, seems to be the BEST godly parent out of them all. How maybe his circumstance of being eternally slighted has given him the ability to understand demigods better than anyone else and dare I say more capable of loving his demigod children? I guess it's also a lesson not to judge too soon, either. How just because someone doesn't fit "the mold" doesn't mean we shouldn't stretch "the mold" to look more like him/her.

I also like how just like in other books, there are many different ways to interpret things and you have to look at problems from multiple angels.

There were happy endings for *most* of the characters. Riordan is quoted saying " There will be no cliffhangers, meaning no one will be left in imminent danger with no clear way out. But that does not mean you will know every single thing that happens to all the characters for the rest of their lives. I don’t do epilogues. I hate epilogues. It’s like nailing the coffin shut on the story, allowing for no further growth and leaving no room for the readers’ imaginations.”" you can read more here: http://www.hypable.com/2014/06/12/rick-riordan-updates-fans-on-current-projects-begins-norse-mythology-series/

However, ALL characters grow in many, many different ways. And all are admirable. While there are no epilogues, there IS a "glimpse into the possible future" as a scene is told in a reminiscent fashion, as the character imagines what it would be like to tell their children/grandchildren about what happened. That was definitely a fun twist of perspective!

And his next book is coming out in the fall, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book One: The Sword of Summer

He says he doesn't know if there will be any other Percy Jackson books, but WHY oh WHY would this new character share a LAST NAME with Annabeth?? Is there a connection? Is he just TOYING with is fans as if we wouldn't notice this oh so tiny detail?? 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

This was the January book for book club. I'm still not sure of my opinion! It was fairly short, a quick and easy read, but so full of fantasy. Nothing fully explained, but very well written with descriptions and good vs evil.

A few interesting things is that I wonder if a part of the book was to bring attention to child abuse and how a lot of times children are not believed, but the adults are believed and sometimes the adults can be the bad guy? Another idea is that even though there is great evil, some get referred to as "fleas". And if we view our temptations as fleas-things so small that want to live off of us but that we have power to get rid of, we could be better off.

Anyhow, most of the book is told by memories, of a young boy. He starts the story middle aged, back in his home town for a funeral service, finding himself driving past where his childhood home once stood and then continuing on down to the house at the end of the lane where he made friends with a girl named Lettie Hempstock. You never figure out exactly what Lettie, her mom, Ginny, and her grandmother are. At first you think they are witches of some sort, but then you find out they aren't. But they are older than time itself and have incredible knowledge of the way things work. A port of the book, where knowledge completely flows and it's as easy as taking a breath made me think of what it must be like once we get to Heaven and in the presence of God have all things made known to us. How it will just be natural to know how the world came into being, how God created everything and we won't be overwhelmed. It will just be there, in our minds, fully comprehendable.

Anyway, when I finished, I was left somewhat bewildered....wondering what I was supposed to get out of it....I'll have to see if my friend who suggested it has any thoughts to further my opinion.

Wonder, RJ Palacio

What a beautiful book!!!! Auggie is an 11 year old boy who is about to enter public school for the first time. He's been home schooled his entire life because most of his early childhood was spent getting many, many surgeries and recovering from them. He's had so many surgeries because of a cranio-facial abnormality. In laymen's terms, his face is severely deformed. He was born that way.

This story is told by many different perspectives. I had a little trouble following which point of view it was coming from, since there are a few different peers of Auggie's that get a section as well as his sister, her boyfriend, and another friend. Out of all of them, I felt the voice of the boyfriend was the weakest, although the type set was different which gave constant reminder who was narrating. It wasn't like that for anyone else.

Anyhow, this story takes you through Auggie's first year in public school, 5th grade, which where he's at happens to be the first year of middle school. Crazy! The earliest I've seen/experienced/taught, middle school was 6th grade, sometimes not even until 7th. But regardless, that age, 10-12 is a rough age. There are many, many mean and horrible things that kids do to each other. But along side that, there are many, many good and wonderful things kids do for each other. Sometimes they do them out of obligations-or at least that's how it starts-and some do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Some kids put on a great face in front of adults, but turn 180 when adults aren't around. And some kids learn their hateful-or at least hurtful behavior from their parents. I particularly loved the section that Auggie's sister told. How she grapples with labels of her past that she is trying to ditch as her first year of high school unfolds. How she's always been known as "The girl who has a deformed little brother" and has had friends too scared of his face to come over for play dates. She loves her brother so fiercely it's almost motherly, yet she has conflicted feelings about being associated with him. She's angry with herself for feeling this way, but can't seem to dismiss them as easily as she'd like.

I also appreciated how Auggie described things, such as people "not staring" or "smiling too wide" or "trying to hide their shock at seeing my face for the first time". As a person, it's sometimes near impossible to NOT have some sort of knee-jerk response to seeing something outside of the norm. And Auggie gets that. He knows people are not trying to be mean or rude, that it's just a normal reaction and he doesn't take offense. It's what happens AFTER that, that counts. It's hard sometimes not to overdo it and treat someone like that in a "special" way-they don't want that-they want to be treated normal. And the person in this book who shows the most perfect example of this is Summer. This character has a heart of gold and I just love her to death! She is not caught up in who's who, she's not caught up in what "crowd" she ought to be a part of. She does her own thing. She's friendly to everyone. She is the ONE person who goes out of her way to be friends with the kid who has "the plague" because she WANTS to. Not because she has some guilty conscious telling her that this is the right thing to do, or this is probably what she should do-although she probably did have an inner voice telling her it would be the right thing to do-the motivation was that she just wanted to be his friend. No ulterior motive. And it wasn't after she got to know him that she even breached the subject of why his face was the way it is. And Auggie knows those questions are innocent curiosity. And having people ask and him telling at least might stop the whispered assumptions that probably go on. I wish we could all be more like Summer-who can treat everyone the same-and that people who are classified as "different" were all like Auggie-not take offense to the tiny things that some people do-especially when they don't mean to offend and are obviously trying to do the right thing. I don't know a ton of "Auggie's" but a overwhelming majority have been a LOT like Auggie. There's just a few who have become bitter and have made it hard to be pleasant towards them and it has absolutely NOTHING to do with outward appearance!

Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell

This was my first Rainbow Rowell novel. I have friends for whom this is one of their favorite authors. I had seen several recommendations, from friends whom I've NEVER been disappointed when taking a recommendation from them. *sigh* Until now. I was NOT a big fan of this book.

There are several things I DID like. The characters were very real, likable, believable, and captivating. Cather (Cath)-our protagonist-has some quirks that are extremely endearing. And Levi is personifies someone everyone knows, the guy who is always smiling and friendly and optimistic. You are just as oblivious to certain things as Cath is, so you do get surprised by a few things just because you, as the reader, are ignorant of anything Cath is ignorant of (most of the time). There was a sweet story line. There is also a lot of baggage because Cath and her twin, Wren (Cather-Wren, their mom wasn't counting on twins and apparently didn't want to think of a second name for the second twin) were left by their mom when they were 8, the day after Sept. 11, 2001.

It was also interesting because Cath is a fanfiction writer. There are really 3 stories going on at once, which is clever and I give Rowell props for that. There's Cath's real life story, the Simon Snow and the Mage's Heir books in canon by "Gemma T. Leslie", and Cath's fanfaction version of Simon Snow. But this, for me was where I started to get a little annoyed. Simon Snow is so OBVIOUSLY a parallel of Harry Potter and that, for some reason REALLY bothered me. Simon Snow goes to a school to learn to be a magician. He has a super smart female friend. He has an enemy at the school (who happens to also be his roommate). He is an orphan. He is supposed to be the hero of the magic world. There are 8 books and the cultural following of Simon Snow with midnight release parties for the books as well as the movies could easily describe the cultural phenomenon of Harry Potter. To me, it seemed weak for this made up fictional series to parallell HP so much. I kept saying "Really?" when I'd read more of this fictional story within this book. You can't help but compare everything Simon Snow to HP and try to convert things. Like the Hare's Snow is supposed to find to the Horcrux's in HP. I also had a hard time telling apart the "real" Simon Snow excerpts from the "fanfiction" excerpts of Simon Snow. There wasn't enough writing difference between Cath and Gemma T Leslie for me to just tell. Unless you go by content.

The other thing I didn't like was Cath's obession with men being gay. In HER version of Simon Snow, Simon and his arch nemesis, Baz fall in love and have a relationship. There are some scenes that are almost love scenes. Now, even though I don't agree with some things about being gay, I *usually* don't have a problem with gay characters. But for me, this just felt like it was thrown in just to be thrown in. To prove some kind of point. It was NOTHING like Kate Morton's character in "The Distant Hours" or even like William in "Downton Abbey", where there is definitely a struggling point with the character and their orientation that taught a lesson or brought about sympathy for their situation. And it wasn't just Simon and Baz with Cath either. When she writes with a guy named Nick for a partner assignment, she turns one of their characters into a gay guy with a secret boyfriend. But why? What is her fascination? She herself, is straight. Maybe the whole point was that there shouldn't need to be a specific reason to write things of this nature. But it was just presented in a way that I thought was too blatant. It was meant to be nonchalant, but for me it didn't come off like that. It felt too forced-as if Rowell, via Cath, HAD to prove a point.

And then there was the language-which I HAD been given fair warning about from BOTH friends who recommended this author. You could tell from the acknowledgement section that the author is the kind of person who drops the "F-bomb" in normal conversation and in places that swear words are starting to become mainstream. For instance, in describing someone she says they are just "f-ing awesome". And if you were a normal run-of-the-mill-every-day-college-student, the language is probably true-to-life and wouldn't be alarming to anyone. For me, I tried to skim over any of it because frankly, after awhile, it got old.

Also, the story, while sweet, wasn't very captivating for me. It was enjoyable, but not if I had something better around. I checked it out and started reading it, but before finishing it, I read the last two books in the Ember series and the 4th Michael Vey book as they got to me through library holds.

So, I'm sorry to those who love Rowell, but this one just didn't do it for me. I might give her one more chance with a different novel, but not for awhile.