| Summer Reading |
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Turtle Summer: A Journal for My Daughter by Mary Alice Monroe, illustratedy by Barbara J. Bergwerf Sylvan Dell Publishing ISBN: 978-0-9777423-5-6 Ages 3+ In her novel, Swimming Lessons, Mary Alice Monroe writes about a mother and daughter who spend a summer tending seaturtles. The mother in the novel creates a journal of their special summer for her daughter. This book is the journal depicted in the novel, complete with actual photos of loggerhead seaturtles, beautiful beaches, and the turtle team in action, plus illustrations and photos of artifacts from the summer - shells, sea stars, birds, flowers, and other treasures. I highly recommend this one for its artful depiction of seaturtle nesting, and the elegant text that goes along with it, the loving message from mother to child, to not only learn about nature, but to really appreciate it and be a part of it on a deep, personal level. Kenya's Word by Linda Trice, illustrated by Pamela Johnson Charlesbridge ISBN: 1570918880 Ages 3+ Kenya has a lot of favorite things, and sometimes she's a little distracted in class, so she doesn't hear the teacher's instructions, but this little girl is as endearing as characters in books for emergent readers come, and younger children reading with a little help from an adult will identify with Kenya's quest to follow her teacher's instructions, especially after messing up twice. She really wants to find a special word, a describing word, and she pays close attention to the things she and her family do in the course of their day, trying out many wonderful words, but in the end, she chooses her favorite, best word of all. A nice addtion to classroom libraries, and sure to inspire a few lesson plans. FOR OLDER KIDS... Dreamquest: Tales of Slumberia by Brent Hartinger Starscape: A Tom Doherty Associates Book ISBN: 0765313979 Ages 10+ Julie Fray is a kid in a very common situation. Her parents fight all the time and are headed for divorce, and as the only child, she's being torn between them. It's affecting everything in her life, including her sleep. She's suffering nightmares where her parents are sucking her up with dueling vacuum cleaners, or carving her up on a dinner table - terrifying stuff. Hartinger gave us a real mind twister with his last book, Grand & Humble, and this one is going to send young adults on another serious mind trip as Julie wakes up inside her own dream - or rather, the studio where her dreams are filmed and broadcast into her sleeping head, and where the inhabitants don't think of her as a real person. Julie chooses not to ignore the man behind the curtain, to borrow from Baum, and instead goes on a quest to stop the nightmares and get her life back. This one has Hartinger's usual dry humor and clever dialog - he paints real characters, even immersed in a fantasy world. This one's for more advanced readers, and highly recommended. Sandpiper by Ellen Wittlinger Simon Pulse ISBN: 1416936513 Ages 12+ With an opening scene that will make every parent of a tween-age girl cringe and look over at their baby and wonder, Ellen Wittlinger's Sandpiper is an authentic teenage girl who has made some bad decisions, survived, and is ready to move on with her life, only she lives in a pretty small town and a lot of her classmates know about those bad decisions, and a few of those people, a trio of boys in particular, aren't ready to let her forget. She's dealing with her single father who can't handle the fact that his baby girl is so obviously not a little girl anymore, her mother who is embarking on a new marriage of her own and a new stepdaughter to boot, and a younger sister who excels at pretty much everything Sandpiper does not. But there is The Walker, a mysterious boy who walks all over town, and for some strange reason, doesn't care about Sandpiper's past, and helps her claim a new, empowered identity, and a new future, and during a terrifying climax, helps save her from a very brutal reminder of just how far she's come. Extraordinary writing - powerful, emotional stuff. For more mature readers, 12 and up. Bad Girls Club by Judy Gregerson Blooming Tree Press ISBN: 1933831014 "No one loves bad girls, Destiny. You of all people should know that!" Just a hint of the emotional trauma inflicted on teenage Destiny, the anchor holding her family together in the face of her mother's mental illness, her father's ignoring it, and her five-year-old sister's growing up as the brunt of it. Gregerson's first novel is sure to garner lots of attention. Des is all that is keeping young Cassidy alive and her mother's illness and the dark shadows hautning her house at bay, but she's got a support system in her best friend, Chloe, and her grandmother, Gina, who comes to help for a short time. Upon seeing Destiny's too-thin frame and dark circles under her eyes, who says she's fine when her grandmother asks, her grandmother replies that fine is relative. "It's all about what you get used to." Destiny's gotten used to a lot, and it's all here, poured out in powerful language describing the ongoing hell that mental illness can bring to a family, but here, too, is a portrait of incredible strength and perseverence in a young woman pushed to her limits in order to survive. Recommended for mature readers 12+ due to some frightening scenes of domestic violence. |
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