2014-2015 Reading Lists

Individual book reviews are also tagged by grade level and year, so you can search for reviews.  For example, if you want to see my reviews for all the 6th grade books, just click on 6th Reading List 2014-2015 in the labels on the right side of the screen.  Happy reading! :)

Sasquatch in the Paint

Theo's sudden growth spurt has left him feeling awkward and clumsy, but his middle school basketball coach sees potential.  For a kid whose best friend is a chubby Jewish dude from the Brain Train team, this is a big adjustment.  He may be tall, but he's never played basketball or even talked to the guys from the team before.  Plus, all that time spent on basketball is jeopardizing his place on Brain Train!

There's a new girl in school named Rain who is driving him crazy, but he's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  When he sees some guy on a motorcycle hit her at the park, Theo knows he has to do something.

Don't forget about his crazy cousin Gavin who'd rather put Theo in a headlock than look at him.

To make matters worse, he's pretty sure his dad has started online dating!  What?!

Things are getting pretty complicated for Theo.  Will he be able to figure out what he really wants and make it happen?  Read the book by former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to find out!

Rump

Did you ever wonder why Rumplestiltskin wanted that girl's baby or how he managed to spin straw into gold?  If so, you should read Leisl Shurtliff's book to find out the truth!

Rump was born into a land and time where your name is your destiny.  Too bad for him since his mother died before she could finish saying his.  "Rump" seems like a terrible destiny to him.  He lives on the mountain with his gran where he joins the other mountain people mining for gold to give to their gold-obsessed king.  But the gold in the mountain is running out, and the miller never makes a fair trade when the people bring in their gold to exchange for food.

Everything changes one night when a desperate Rump discovers if he puts straw through a spinning wheel it turns into gold!  Sounds like a dream come true, right?  Wrong!  This is only the beginning of a journey that will get Rump into more and more trouble.

Rump decides to go on a journey that is part hiding from his abilities and part quest to find out who he really is.  Will he find a way to free himself from the curse?


Here is a video of a lady using a spinning wheel to make yarn.

A Snicker of Magic

Felicity's mother has a wandering heart.  That's why they never stay in one place long enough to make friends, but now that they're back in Mama's hometown of Midnight Gulch, Tennessee, maybe things will be different.

Midnight Gulch used to filled with magic, and folks would come from miles around to visit the town and hear its most famous residents, The Brothers Threadbare, play music that made everybody's feet light and hearts happy.  The day those two brothers had a duel was the day magic left Midnight Gulch, and things haven't been the same since.  That was the day Midnight Gulch and its inhabitants were cursed. There's still a snicker of magic left to make life interesting.

Felicity has a little magic herself.  She sees words everywhere--floating in the air, crawling on someone's arm, sliding across the cafeteria table.  Felicity loves words, but she's too shy and tongue-tied to share them with anyone until she meets a spiky-haired do-gooder named Jonah Pickett on her first day in Midnight Gulch.  Felicity's never had a best friend before, but Jonah claims her for his own on her first day at school.  Felicity makes other friends, too, and she's getting to know her family, too.

It seems like everybody in Midnight Gulch is being held back by the curse, and Felicity is convinced if she can break it, magic will come back to town, and her mama's wandering heart will finally find home.

I love this book!  It's a wonderful story about words, creativity, magic, and love.  I got to meet Natalie Lloyd last week, and she was so cute and sweet just like you would imagine.  You should all read this book!

The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond

Violet Diamond loves her family, but she is tired of the strange looks she always gets when she meets new people.  Violet's mother, sister, and grandparents are blond and blue-eyed, but Violet's father was African American, and she stands out with her brown skin and curly hair.  To make this worse, there aren't even very many African-American people in her small hometown.

Violet's father died before she was born, and she's never even met his side of the family because of anger between them and her mother.  She knows their names, and she knows what her grandmother looks like because she's kind of a famous artist, and Violet has researched her on the internet.

When she discovers that her grandmother will have a showing at a gallery in nearby Seattle, Violet decides it's time to meet her father's side of the family whether they like it or not.

It's not always smooth getting to know new relatives, and Violet discovers that she doesn't just magically fit into this new world like she thought she would, but with time and effort, her universe of family and love will begin to expand.

Read Brenda Woods's new book about what it's like to be biracial in a world that is sometimes still divided into black and white.

The Laura Line

Laura Dyson loves three things in life:  fashion and modeling, baseball, and that chunky hunky Troy Bailey!  Kids at school make fun of her because she's a little overweight, Troy barely acknowledges her existence, and she's never told anyone outside of her family about loving baseball.  She doesn't want to give them any more ammunition to use against her--a girl pitching baseball.

Despite this, Laura is pretty happy.  She has her best friend, Sage, for support.  Everything goes wrong when she has to spend two weeks with her grandmother at the farm while her parents are away at their National Guard training.  Heck to the double no!  Laura knows her grandmother will bore her to tears with all her talk about the slave shack and the Laura Line.  She doesn't see why anyone would be proud of that symbol of injustice in her family.  Plus, her grandmother knows nothing about baseball!

But Laura doesn't have a choice, and with Sage making a play for the more popular kids(doesn't she see they're just using her?), and Troy and his dad taking care of her grandmother's yard (sweet mother of chunky hunkies!), and a class field trip to the slave shack (oh, heck to the double no), her life is about to be turned upside down.

Crystal Allen's new book is about staying true to yourself and finding strength and courage in those who came before.  Don't miss the author at the book festival this Saturday!

Doll Bones

Zach loves playing the game with Alice and Poppy.  Using dolls and action figures they create elaborate long running tales of adventure and intrigue, but when Zach's dad comes home after a long absence, he decides his son is too old for dolls.  With the action figures gone, Zach feels like his characters are dead.  How can the game go on?

That's when Poppy decides to liberate the queen from the glass case in her living room.  The queen is old and kind of creepy, and once she's out, she tells Poppy she is made from the bones of a dead child named Eleanor, and Eleanor isn't going to rest until her bones are returned to her grave.

Zach and Alice aren't sure they believe Poppy at first, but strange things keep happening, and soon the three friends are headed off on a quest to calm and angry ghost.

Read Holly Black's new tale of friendship, adventure, and a haunted doll!

Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library

When Kyle Keeley learns that the new public library was designed by his favorite game maker, Mr. Lemoncello, he knows he has to be there.  There is an essay contest for twelve twelve-year-olds to win a spot in a library lock in to try out all the awesome library features before anyone else.

What starts out as a normal lock in turns into the ultimate live action game with a fabulous prize.  The contestants have just 24 hours to solve a series of clues, be the first to escape the library, and become the spokesperson for Lemoncello's Games.

Using the library resources, Kyle quickly begins forming alliances and solving the clues.  He was born for this!  He's Mr. Lemoncello's biggest fan, and there's no way he's going to lose even with the annoying and entitled Charles Chiltington working against him.

With enough literary name dropping to stir the heart of any determined bibliophile, this puzzle mystery will keep readers on their toes as they work to solve the puzzles with Kyle and his friends.  It has a bit of a slow start, but once it gets going it's a fun mix of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wesitng Game!  Will Kyle and his friends solve the clues and learn to love the library in the process?  Read Chris Grabenstein's new book to find out!

The Thing About Luck

Cynthia Kadohata's new book just won the National Book Award, and it is well deserved.  This book made me feel like a 12 year old again.

Summer's family is having a year of bad luck.  She has just recovered from a deadly bout of malaria, her autistic brother's only friend moved away, and now her parents have been called back to Japan to care for ailing relatives right at harvest time.

Summer's parents and grandparents work as harvesters driving the combines that harvest wheat.  With her parents in Japan, her grandparents will have to earn enough money working alone to pay the mortgage.

Summer is a hard worker, too, helping her grandmother prepare the meals for the combine drivers.  As Obaachan's back pain increases, Summer takes on more of the cooking responsibility.  But Obaachan is still hard on her.  She criticizes everything Summer does including the crush she has on the boss's son, Robbie.

Jiichan, Summer's grandfather is a hard worker and a story teller.  He is also Summer's favorite person.  Most of the family's earning capacity falls on him, and there is no one to take up the slack if anything happens.

I love this wonderful book that seems to come straight out of the mind of a 12 year old girl about hard work, growing up, and figuring out who you really are.

A Black Hole Is Not a Hole

Black holes have always been one of those mysterious, too weird to be true, but really it is true kind of things.  As a fan of science fiction, black holes show up in storytelling fairly regularly, so I was excited to read this book and get to the truth of this mysterious phenomena.

This book is funny, informative, and highly readable.  Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano explains the science of black holes, how they are formed and how they work (as far as we know).  She also provides excellent source notes and links to websites with some amazing images!  I am going to put them here because you should go to some of them and be amazed!

Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Hubblesite:  Black Holes

NASA's Imagine the Universe!

StarDate's Black Hole Encyclopedia

Starship Asterisk*

The 9 Lives of Alexander Baddenfield

Alexander Baddenfield is the last in a long line of Baddenfields, each one worse than the one before.  This means Alexander is pretty terrible.  The Baddenfields always die young but appropriately.  For example, the Baddenfield trying to hunt wild and endangered animals was trampled to death by them.

The only reason the Baddenfields live as long as they do is the Winterbottoms.  Winterbottoms have be taking care of Baddenfields for as long as anyone can remember, and Alexander and his Winterbottom are no exception.

But Alexander has come up with a new plan to do all the terrible and dangerous things he's ever wanted to do with no consequences.  He just needs to find a mad scientist doctor to take his cat's extra eight lives and transfer them to him!  It's a brilliant plan really.  Shaddenfrood just lays around sleeping and purring all day.  Alexander could be those lives to much better use.

This book is the story of how Alexander stole and used those lives, but beware, this is not some touchy-feely-becoming-a-better-person book.  Alexander is definitely bad to the bitter end.  Make sure you keep reading past "The End" for a glimpse of what will happen in his tenth and final existence!

John Bemelmans Marciano's story is funny, sinister, and disgusting, and Sophie Blackall's illustrations really take this story from bad to worse!

Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

This is an amazing that all begins with a vacuum cleaner, the Ulysses Super-Suction, Multi-Terrain 2000X to be exact.  When this high powered machine gets loose in the back yard, one unsuspecting squirrel will be changed forever.  That's right, one squirrel will be sucked into the rampaging vacuum and come out with super powers (but very little hair)!

Flora and Ulysses (named after the vacuum) quickly bond, and Flora must do everything in her power to save the super squirrel for arch enemies and evil cats!

But that's not all, their adventures will change Flora forever.  She'll meet new friends, make startling discoveries and maybe discover that she isn't such a hard-hearted cynic after all.

This book was great fun to read, and K. G. Campbell's illustrations and panels are wonderful!  Kate DiCamillo is also the author of Because of Winn-Dixie, and her fans won't be dissappointed.  This is a fun loving book with a heart of gold!

Fortunately, the Milk

This short novel is just as clever and wonderful as all of Gaiman's work.  (I'm a fan.)  When the mother goes out of town leaving her children with their father, he forgets the milk for their breakfast cereal.  It takes longer than expected for him to return, and when his children demand to know where he has been, the father spins a tale of aliens, pirates, dinosaurs, cannibals, and just about everything else you can think of!

Fortunately, he manages to hold tight to the milk through all of this so he can save his children's breakfast!  I got a sneak peak of this one when I went to Neil Gaiman's reading/book signing in June.  He did a bonus reading because he loved the Majestic Theater so much!

The Hypnotists

Jackson Opus's life is about to go crazy.  Without warning the people around him begin to do crazy things.  Soon he discovers he has hypnotic ability.  He can bend people to do pretty much whatever he wants.  This is why he needs training at Sentia with Doctor Elias Mako.

But is Mako all he seems, and will Jax learn the truth and develop his hypnotic abilities in time?  Read Gordon Korman's newest book to find out!  This is the first book in a planned series, so look forward for more of Jax's adventures.

Also, don't forget Gordon Korman will be at the Book Festival on March 8!  Check out the Facebook page for more information!

Freakling

Taemon's world is divided.  Those with psi live in Deliverance where everything is done with telekinetic ability.  The duds, those without psi, live in the colony, ostracized from the city and all it's wonders.  Following an accident, Taemon loses his psi.

He is terrified that people will discover his secret.  Because they know he will be sent away if anyone discovers the truth, Taemon's parents try to cover for him when possible, but it's hard to live without psi in a world where no one uses their hands--not even to eat!  Even Taemon's bullying older brother tries to hide the truth because his doesn't want the stain of a dud brother.

It's not until Taemon is banished to the colony that he begins to see things in a new light.  Maybe being psiless isn't so bad, but maybe he isn't as psiless as he thinks.  Everything has always believed about his life and his people will come into question, and it will be up to him, a freakling, to prevent a war and countless deaths.

Can Taemon save himself and everyone else?  Read Lana Krumwiede's debut novel to find out!

The Templeton Twins Have an Idea

Are you a Lemony Snicket fan?  Do you like funny stories with lots of action?  If so, you will love this book!

When the Templeton Twins and their inventor father move to a new town and university for a new teaching position, they have no idea how crazy their lives are about to become.

As the professor's first speech, Dean D. Dean shows up protesting that Professor Templeton stole one of his ideas.  Professor Templeton tries to calm the man down, but Dean is insistent, and things are soon out of control!  With a strict nanny, a ridiculous dog, and nefarious identical twins bent on kidnapping and extortion, this is one adventure you won't be able to put down!

You'll love this first book in the serious by Ellis Weiner, illustrated by Jeremy Holmes. and narrated by a snarky and mysterious narrator!

The House of Secrets

Things are not going well for the Walker family.  Dr. Walker has lost his job due to "the incident" at work, and the family finances are suffering.  So when their real estate agent shows them a beautiful old, but recently renovated, Victorian home on the waterfront, it seems too good to be true.  The fact that the homes former owner, Denver Kristoff, was a writer, and the library is full of his books is a bonus for the oldest Walker child, Cordelia.

Almost immediately upon moving in, the Walker encounter the Wind Witch, an ancient hag with terrible powers whose father owned the house.  Dahlia Kristoff, AKA the Wind Witch, seriously injures the parents and send the kids into a dangerous fantasy world which the quickly discover is a strange combination of Denver Kristoff's books.

Not only do the Walker kids have to face off against the Wind Witch, but they are challenged by deadly pirates whose captain enjoys live dissections and a band of warriors who would rather kill first and ask questions later.  That's not to mention the sharks!

Will the Walkers stay true to themselves and their family, or will they lose this battle?  Read Chris Columbus's new book to find out.  FYI, this book has a blurb from J.K. Rowling on the cover!  Columbus is the director of Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets!

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Young Dorothy's life in Kansas is gray and boring until she is swept up in a cyclone that deposits her and her dog, Toto, in the wonderful land of Oz.  She lands among the munchkins who are grateful to her for killing their greatest enemy, the Wicked Witch of the East, even if it was just an accident.  Despite the excitement of this new land, Dorothy quickly begins to long for home, so she heads off to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard hoping he will have the power to send her back to Kansas.

Along the way, she will meet a scarecrow longing for brains, a tin man longing for a heart, and a lion who wishes for courage.  These companions will discover wonders and face dangers in the hopes of having their wishes granted.

I've seen the moving too many times to count, but I am a little embarrassed to admit this is the first time I've read the book.  It is of course similar to the movie, but there are some core differences that were startling.  For example, rather than the constant enemy and villain she is in the movie, the Wicked Witch of the West doesn't appear until about two thirds of the way through the book!  All in all, L. Frank Baum's classic tale is definitely worth a read in its own right and as the inspiration for all the popular culture that it inspired.

Just for kicks, here is the trailer created for the 75th anniversary of the film:

Serendipity and Me

Sara loves cats.  She has cat posters, cat slippers, stuffed animal cats, everything  but an actual cat.  Her dad's answer is always no.

They are both struggling with grief over her mother's death when Sara gets the flu.  She is home feeling sick and alone when a kitten appears at their front door.  Sara just knows she can convince her dad to fall in love with this sweet little kitten named Serendipity, but her dad doesn't want to budge.

Sara and her dad feel separated from the world and each other by their grief, and Serendipity is warm and soft.  The kitten comforts Sara in a ways she hasn't felt for a long time.  It will rip her heart out all over again if she has to give Serendipity up.

In her quest to find a way to keep Serendipity, Sara discovers some truths about her parents' past and the reason her dad refuses to get a cat.  Maybe Serendipity can help both of them to begin to heal after all these years.

Judith L. Roth's new book is a bittersweet little verse novel about the debilitating and isolating power of grief and the love and companionship we can find with our pets.