PICTURE BOOK - National Wildlife Federation's World of Birds: A Beginner's Guide - Kim Kurki

2014 Black Dog - Leventhal Publishing

HC $15.95

80 pgs.
Nonfiction picture book - dense with information

Goodreads rating: 4.53

My rating: 5 Stars - This is a grand book!

Endpapers:  green with simple, faint bird's footprints

This book is divided into four sections:
     Woodlands & Forests
     Wetlands, Shores, & Bodies of Water
     Fields, Thickets, & Backyards
     Deserts, Scrublands, & Rocky Slopes

My comments:  I can't say enough glowing things about this top-notch book.  As an adult who has only recently enjoyed watching birds, its useful information and fun, interesting facts are MUCH more  accessible than guidebooks or handbooks geared toward adults.  The illustrations are lovely and colorful, the occasional photo just enough, the quatrains written for each major bird are unforced and cleverly rhymed.  Usually I'm a little put off by a large mixture of fonts, but the many used inthis text are melded well and therefore avoid overwhelming jumble.  A really fine book!

Goodreads:  From the National Wildlife Federation, publishers of Ranger Rick, the popular nature magazine for kids, comes this exciting, dynamic, and wonderfully illustrated guide for young naturalists.
          National Wildlife Federation's World of Birds is arranged by habitat and identifies more than 100 birds. Kim Kurki¹s engaging and highly accurate illustrations give kids a true and close-up appreciation of each bird species, such as its size, shape, color, and markings, as well as its habitat, call, and behavior. Kids will learn to recognize the birds by their individual characteristics, such as the male cardinal¹s distinctive crest, the kestrel¹s helicopter hover, and the goldfinch¹s enchanting song. You¹ll also discover what makes each bird amazing, including which is the fastest flier, which lays the biggest egg, and which spends years of its life in the water, never touching land.
          The excellent illustrations, nontechnical language, and fascinating facts throughout make this an ideal guide for beginner bird-watchers—of any age!

PICTURE BOOK - The Farmer and the Clown - Marla Frazee

Illustrated by the author

2014 Beach Lane Books

HC $17.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.32

My rating: 4

Endpapers:  red

Title Page: browns and yellow: sunrise: farmer heading for the fields, walking away from his small house

Wordless picture book

My comments:  A farmer (who lives alone way out in the country) rescues a baby clown who falls off a circus train. Through days and nights they bond and become very attached to one another - until the train returns and the farmer gets to reunite baby clown to his family. 
Happy? Yes. Sad? Yes! Perhaps my current loneliness makes me feel extra, ultra sorry for the poor farmer, but I'm left with such a sad feeling after reading this story!

Goodreads:  Whimsical and touching images tell the story of an unexpected friendship and the revelations it inspires in this moving, wordless picture book from two-time Caldecott Honor medalist Marla Frazee.
          A baby clown is separated from his family when he accidentally bounces off their circus train and lands in a lonely farmer’s vast, empty field. The farmer reluctantly rescues the little clown, and over the course of one day together, the two of them make some surprising discoveries about themselves—and about life!
          Sweet, funny, and moving, this wordless picture book from a master of the form and the creator of The Boss Baby speaks volumes and will delight story lovers of all ages. 

PICTURE BOOK - All Different Now - Angela Johnson

Juneteenth; the First Day of Freedom
Illustrated by E. B. Lewis

2014, Simon & Schuster

32 pgs.
HC $17.99

Goodreads rating:

My rating:

Endpapers: mottled light green
Very little white on pages!

1^st line/s:   "A June morning breeze off the port blew the smell of honeysuckle past the fields, across the yard, and into our room to wake us up."

My comments:  As usual, E. B. Lewis's illustrations are breathtaking.  He tells about their creation in an Illustrator's Note at the back of the book.  The first 24 pages tell the story of Juneteenth - June 19th - the emancipation of slavery - with simple verse and these incredible paintings.  The last five pages are more information - resources, reminisces, timeline, history, glossary.  Wow.  A huge piece of US history, simply and beautifully told and referenced.

Goodreads:  Through the eyes of one little girl, All Different Now tells the story of the first Juneteenth, the day freedom finally came to the last of the slaves in the South. Since then, the observance of June 19 as African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond. This stunning picture book includes notes from the author and illustrator, a timeline of important dates, and a glossary of relevant terms.

SHORT STORIES - Triple Time - Anne Sanow

Drue Heniz Literature Prize 2009
2009 University of Pittsburgh Press

151 pgs.

Adult Fiction - 1980's Saudi Arabia

Finished

Goodreads rating: 3.87

My rating:    (5) Awesome  (4) Loved it  (3) Liked it   (2) It was okay  (1) Yuck

TPPL found it in Sedona

1st story:  "Pioneer" pgs. 1 -19
     A nine-year-old has accompanied his construction-worker dad and pregnant mom to a hot, boring village in the Saudi desert where they will spend at least two years.  It's still summer, he has nothing to do (their possessions have not yet arrived), and none of his family is happy.  The baby arrives - early.  The story gives a feel for this hot, depressing place with little going for it and seems somewhat pointless other than that.

Goodreads book summary:  For Jill, a young American living in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, life is in “a holding pattern” of long days in a restrictive place-“sandlocked nowhere,” as another expat calls it.  Others don't know how to leave, and try to adopt the country as their own.  And to those who were born there, the changes seem to come at warp speed: Thurayya, the daughter of a Bedouin chief, later finds herself living in a Riyadh high-rise where, she says, there are “worlds wound together with years.”
           The characters in the linked stories in Triple Time are living an uneasy mesh of two divergent cultures, in a place where tradition and progress are continually in flux. These are tales of confliction-of old and new, rich and poor, sexual repression and personal freedom. We experience a barren yet strangely beautiful landscape jolted by sleek glass apartment towers and opulent fountains. On the fringes of urbanity, Bedouins traverse the desert in search of the next watering hole.
           Beneath a surface of cultural upheaval, the stories hold deeper, more personal meanings. They tell of yearnings-for a time lost, for a homeland, for belonging, and for love. Anne Sanow reveals much about the culture, psyche, and essence of life in modern Saudi Arabia, where Saudis struggle to keep their traditions and foreigners muddle through in search of a quick buck or a last chance at making a life for themselves in a world that is quickly running out of hiding places.

1. Grounded - Heather Ordover

Supposedly #1 in a series (called The Seven) ....

Read on my iPhone

2013, Crafting a Life Books

482 (endless) pgs.

YA fantasy-ish

Finished 1/1/2014

Goodreads rating: 4.19 (this is very hard for me to believe)

My rating:  (1) Yuck

1st sixth - Tucson, AZ, the rest in Brooklyn NY and Stockbridge, MA

1st sentence/s: "This all started because I lit my boyfriend on fire."

My comments:  Holy catfish, this book was NOT for me.  It was endless, but I had no other book on my phone so this was it. I so badly wanted to like it, particularly for the parts that described Tucson so beautifully, but this was a definite DRONE....on and on and on and on with very little meat. Sketchy, too.  There are so few books that I flat out don't like, and my apologies to the author, but....

Goodreads book summary:  Hannah Rose was able to convince herself that she was a normal teenager, even though she usually knew exactly what was about to happen next. Until one day when she set her jerk of an ex-boyfriend on fire-from 15 feet away-propelling herself into a world of weirdness.       
          Rosie is sent to live with her aunt in Brooklyn. There, Rosie discovers a family legacy of strange abilities and dangerous talents. Her training tests her gifts-and her patience-but over the summer she does begin to learn to control her unique skills and meets a boy with equally dangerous strengths. Together, they find a sort of peace that neither has ever experienced, and it looks like it will last-until disaster breaks them apart in a way neither saw coming.

78. The Devil's Hour - J. Carson Black

#3 Laura Cardinal, Tucson Police

Read on my iPhone

2007, Breakaway Media

287 pgs.

Adult Murder Mystery

Finished 12/26//2014

Goodreads rating:  3.72

My rating:    4 - Loved it

Contemporary Tucson, AZ

1st sentence/s:  "Steve Lawson was on his way back to the cabin when he met the little girl.  It was a beautiful morning, the kind Steve loved.  As he hiked, his eye automatically cataloged the glittery trail of schist mixed in with the dirt along the dry creek bed, the granitic boulders flecked with biotite flakes and garnet.  But this morning, he wasn't thinking about the geological events that had shaped these mountains.  He was preoccupied with the message someone had left on his cell phone.  He wondered if the message had anything to do with the break-ins."

My comments:  When I read the first two books in the series, I loved tracing the story in, around, and through the Tucson I know and love.  I've hunted for years for more in the series, to no avail, until I stumbled across a reference to the series here on Goodreads.  Apparently there ARE more in the series, but they're in ebook form.  Fine with me!  I flew through this installment, and loved it.  The story was well told (although I wish there had been a few more surprises), but the descriptions of many places where action took place (up on Mt. Lemmon and out on the Pinal Highway going towards Florence, particularly) were so right on -- I really love this!  Laura Cardinal is smart but not as savvy as she should be, despite some of the training she still reviews from her now-dead mentor, Frank Entwhistle.  Ah well, without goof-ups there'd really be no story, right?

Goodreads book summary:  “J. Carson Black's THE DEVIL'S HOUR is a superior mystery novel in all respects. Fine prose, terrific suspense, believable characters, and one of the most unexpected and satisfying conclusions I've read in a long time. Highly recommended." — John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author of DAMAGE 
     Laura Cardinal: Packs a SIG Sauer P226 9mm. Investigates homicides in small towns that have limited resources. Brings justice to murder victims—and to their killers. Laura’s job description: Criminal Investigator with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. But maybe it should just say “Troubleshooter.” 
     In 1997, the disappearance of three young girls rocked the city of Tucson, Arizona. Eleven years later, one of those girls, Micaela Brashear, comes home—alive. 
     Laura Cardinal worked homicide for Arizona DPS, but now she's been moved to the Open-Unsolved Unit. With a new job and a new partner who questions her every move, Laura pieces together Micaela's fragmented memories in the hope she will learn the whereabouts of the other two children. 
     When a man walking his dog finds the bones of a child in a shallow grave on the mountain above town, it becomes clear to Laura that Micaela was the lucky one. 
     But the killer isn't through yet, and after the fiery death of someone close to Laura, she realizes she faces an implacable enemy.

77. Snow Angels - James Thompson

#1 Kari Vaara, Finnish (Lapland) chief police inspector

Read on my iPhone

2010, G. P. Putnam

264 pgs.

Adult Murder Mystery

Finished 12/20/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.70

My rating:   4.5 Top-notch

Contemporary Finland

1st sentence/s:  "I'm in Hullu Poro, the Crazy Reindeer, the biggest bar and restaurant in this part of the Arctic Circle.  It was remodeled nolong ago, but pine boards line the walls and ceiling, like an old Finnish farmhouse.  Nouveau rustic decor."

My comments:  I've always been fascinated with the "idea" of Lapland - the Scandinavian winter (not the cold, harsh, DARK realities, but the pristine white ones), and complimentary artistry of Jan Brett.  This story takes us into the Arctic Circle at the very darkest time of year and gives it all the twist of a brutal murder from the point-of-view of the cop that has to solve it.  The twists and turns in the story are believable and were well appreciated. Believable characters, particularly the protagonists.  Kari Vaara's wife, Kate, an American expat who happens to be pregnant, is beginning to feel the depression of the 24-hours nights, which adds to the tension of the crime-solving. Searching for more information on American James Thompson in anticipation of more in the series, I discovered that he died suddenly a few months ago. Bummer.

Goodreads book summary:  Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the darkest time of the year in Lapland, above the Arctic Circle. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold cause everyone to go just a little bit insane, whether or not they’ve just killed someone… 
          A beautiful Somalian refugee-turned-actress is found murdered on a reindeer farm, gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Inspector Kari Vaara, head of the rural police force, is under great pressure not only to solve this crime himself, without the help of the big-city cops from Helsinki, but also to keep the potentially explosive case out of the news. Sufia Elmi had become a tabloid fixture, and her death—not to mention the awful way she met it—is sure to send shock waves across this insular, secretly racist country. Was this murder a hate crime, a sex crime—or both?
          Kari is dealing with culture shock at home, too. His wife, Kate, is a young American woman, newly pregnant with their first child. She doesn’t understand much about Finnish customs or the Finns themselves and is struggling to come to terms with her new home. Kari himself is haunted by his rough childhood and his past, and even as he tries to shape a new life with Kate, the past keeps biting at his heels: the rich man his ex-wife left him for years ago may be Sufia’s killer. 

76. Cape Perdido - Marcia Muller

Audio read by Dick Hill & Joyce Bean

6 unabridged cds (7:00)

2005 Brilliance Audio

336 pgs.

Adult Murder Mystery

Finished 12/16/14

Goodreads rating: 3.50

My rating:    2 - It was okay

Contemporary Soledad County, northern California

My comments:  Short chapters from the point-of-view of four different people didn't pull the story together for me.  I couldn't seem to become embroiled in the mystery, or care about any of the characters. Also, I'm so used to Dick Hill's reading other books that I couldn't relate to him as the two male voices in this one. Nothing seemed to work real well for me in this one.

Goodreads book summary:  Cape Perdido is a small town in Northern California which has a clear, cold water river held in Public Trust. The town's main industry once was lumber, but when Timothy McNear closed the mill, tourism became the income source. Now a group wants to siphon off a large percentage of Perdido's water every year to ship to Southern California. To combat this, the town has brought in ecologists and environmentalist Joseph Openshaw, a native of Perdido. But the strife leads to a murder and awakens secrets from the past.
*** This is a true ensemble cast with each chapter focused on one of the four main characters, each a native of the town. Although they are interesting, it's one of the secondary characters, Jessie Domingo, a young environmentalist from New York, who really captured my interest. The story is well written and involving with good suspense at the end. 

75. Grasshopper Jungle - Andrew Smith

2014, Dutton Juvenile

388 pgs.

YA - very graphic 

Finished 12/13/14

Goodreads rating:  3.79

My rating:  4.5 Loved it

TPPL

Setting:   Contemporary Ealy, Iowa

1st line/s:  "I read somewhere that human beings are genetically predisposed to record history.  We believe it will prevent us from doing stupid things in the future.  But even though we dutifully archived elaboate records of everything we've ever done, we also managed to keep on doing dumber and dumber shit.  This is my history.  There are things in here: babies with two heads, insects as big as refrigerators, God, the devil, limbless warriors, rocket ships, sex, diving bells, theft, wars, monsters, internal combustion engines, love, cigarettes, joy, bomb shelters, pizza, and cruelty.  Just like it's always been."

My comments:  4.5 Definitely quite the story! This felt like the story of a 16-year old from a 16-year-old's actual point of view, complete with testosterone...a great deal of testosterone. Family history, friendship, questioning sexuality, midwestern America, private school vs. public, Lutherans and Catholics, excessive horniness, 6-foot tall indestructable preying mantises, shades of "Lost", underground bunkers that can sustain lives for years....stories and histories and his-stories ... and a bit more testosterone.  Many layers, written in a style that's just a little different than the norm, and completely refreshing.  It took me a bit to get into it, but once I did, it swallowed me up!

Goodreads book summary:  Sixteen-year-old Austin Szerba interweaves the story of his Polish legacy with the story of how he and his best friend , Robby, brought about the end of humanity and the rise of an army of unstoppable, six-foot tall praying mantises in small-town Iowa.
          To make matters worse, Austin's hormones are totally oblivious; they don't care that the world is in utter chaos: Austin is in love with his girlfriend, Shann, but remains confused about his sexual orientation. He's stewing in a self-professed constant state of maximum horniness, directed at both Robby and Shann. Ultimately, it's up to Austin to save the world and propagate the species in this sci-fright journey of survival, sex, and the complex realities of the human condition.

74. Chill of the Night - James Hayman

#2 McCabe & Savage, Portland, Maine

2010 Minotaur Books

340 pgs.

Adult Murder Mystery

Finished 12/9/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.85

My rating: 4

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Portland, Maine

1st line/s:  Portland, Maine/ Friday, December 23:  "Had Number Ten Monument Square been set among the skyscrapers of New York, or even Boston, no one would have noticed it.  In a town like Portland it stood as one of the defining features of the skyline.  Twelve stories of reddish brown granite with black windows set between vertical piers, Number Ten towered arrogantly over the east side of the square, a big player in a small town.  At its top, large white letters proclaimed to anyone who cared to look that the building was the headquarters of Palmer Milliken, the city's largest and most prestigious law firm."

My comments:  I think I liked this one better than the first!  The major part of the setting is Portland, Maine; this time it forayed off onto an island just five minutes by ferry from the Portland dock.  This one had to do with the murder of a gorgeous, young lawyer, and included a schizophrenic 20-something, and a sanctuary for teenagers that have been sexually abused.  I particularly like that the lives of the police officers - mainly Mike McCabe and Maggie Savage (ah...a good Maine name.....) are so nicely intertwined with the story, their foibles, their insecurities, their characters.  Good mystery.  Very good.  I'm looking forward to more.

Goodreads book summary:  Glamorous young Portland attorney Lainie Goff thought she had it all—brains, beauty, and a fast-track to a partnership in a top-ranked firm that was going to make her rich. But then one cold winter night she pushed things too far, and her naked frozen body is found in the sub-zero temperatures at the end of the Portland Fish Pier.
          The only witness to the crime: a mentally disturbed young woman named Abby Quinn who mysteriously disappears the very same night.
          With the discovery of Lainie Goff ’s body and the disappearance of Abby Quinn, Portland homicide detective Michael McCabe finds himself on the trail of a relentless and clever killer. A killer he must find before another life is lost.

73. The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman

Audio read by the author!

5 unabridged discs

2013 William Morrow Books

181 pgs.

Adult Fantasy

Finished 12/6/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.99

My rating:    3.5 Liked it quite a bit, eventually

TPPL

Contemporary Sussex, England (I guess....)

1st sentence/s:  "It was only a duck pond out at the back of the farm.  It wasn't very big.  Lettie Hempstock said it was an ocean, but I knew that was silly.  She said they'd come here, across the ocean from the old country.  Her mother said that Lettie didn't remember properly and it was a long time ago and anyway the old country had sunk."

My comments:    At first I thought this book just wasn't going to be my cuppa tea.  But, as intricate and odd as the story was, it pulled me in.  I've never finished a Neil Gaiman book before - other than a picture book - although I love his writing  and the way he puts words together.  I'm glad I completed this book - it's the kind of story that will stay with me for awhile.  I'm particularly glad that I listened to the version that Neil Gaiman read himself.  The story is about what happened to a seven-year-old-boy, but told 30-plus years later as an adult.  A big element of creepy -- and a huge imagination needed, which I was able to access after the first disc or so....

Goodreads book summary:  Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
          Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.
          A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Laneis told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

72. The Girl Who Stopped Swimming - Joshilyn Jackson

Audio read by the author

Unabridged cds (9:24)

2008

311 pgs.

Adult CRF/Mystery

Finished 11/30/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.43

My rating:   3.5 Liked it a lot

Contemporary Florida

1st sentence/s: "Until the drowned girl came to Laurel's bedroom, ghosts had never walked in Victoriana.  The houses were only twenty years old with no accumulated history to put creaks in the hardwood floors or rattle at the pipes."

My comments:  I really love Joshilyn Jackson's writing.  Her descriptions are .... elegant.
The way she writes her characters make it seem as if you know them, or someone like them.  Her plots are always interesting, woven in fascinating ways.  This one had an element of "ghosts" that were not real, just in the protagonist's head, much like they could be in anyone's head, whether we'd like to admit it or not.  But the icing on the cake?  Jackson, herself, was the reader of this audio book.  And she was just plain terrific.  She has become one of my very favorite writers.

Goodreads book summary:  Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty. Coming from a family with a literal skeleton in their closet, she's developed this talent all her life, whether helping her willful mother to smooth over the reality of her family's ugly past, or elevating humble scraps of unwanted fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts. 
          Her sister Thalia, an impoverished "Actress" with a capital A, is her opposite, and prides herself in exposing the lurid truth lurking behind life's everyday niceties. And while Laurel's life was neatly on track, a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in lovely suburban Victorianna, everything she holds dear is thrown into question the night she is visited by an apparition in her bedroom. The ghost appears to be her 14-year-old neighbor Molly Dufresne, and when Laurel follows this ghost , she finds the real Molly floating lifeless in her swimming pool. While the community writes the tragedy off as a suicide, Laurel can't. Reluctantly enlisting Thalia's aid, Laurel sets out on a life-altering investigation that triggers startling revelations about her own guarded past, the truth about her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming.

71. Generation Loss - Elizabeth Hand

#1 Cassandra Neary series

Read on my iPhone through Kindle

2007 Small Beer Press

265 pgs.

Adult .... Mystery/CRF

Finished Thanksgiving, 2014

Goodreads rating: 3.79

My rating:    3 (Liked It)

Setting:  Fictional Burnt Harbor, Maine (Downeast) and its outer islands

1st sentence/s:  "There's always a moment where everything changes.  A great photographer -- someone like Diane Arbus, or me during that fraction of a second when I was great -- she sees that moment coming, and presses the shutter release an instant before the change hits. If you don't see it coming, if you blink or you're drunk or just looking the other way -- well, everything changes anyway, it's not like things would have been different."

My comments:  There were parts of this book that were hard from me to imagine....because there are a lot of references to photography and processing film, that sort of thing. The setting, in downeast Maine in winter, I can imagine.  It's dreary, poor, bleak.  The protagonist, Cassandra Neary, is one of the most unlikable characters I've come across.  But that makes her incredibly interesting, actually.  I'm guessing she's around 40, friendless, a kleptomaniac, hardly eats, survives on Jim Beam and speed. A real downer.  This was quite a story, somewhat of a mystery, but more of a contemporary realistic fiction that skirts the edge of a really dark, somewhat bizarre (though real, unfortunately) world. (And I will go on to read another, because I liked it more than I didn't....)

Goodreads book summary:  Cass Neary made her name in the 1970s as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and hangers on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, got her into art galleries and a book deal. But thirty years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out. Then an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Downeast, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and into one final shot at redemption.

PICTURE BOOK - Here Comes Santa Cat by Deborah Underwood

Illustrated by Claudia Rueda

2014 Dial Books for Young Readers

HC $16.99

88 pgs. - but minimal words and lots of priceless pictures to peruse - similar in text length )or shorter) than a 32-page picture book

Goodreads rating: 4.34

My rating: 4

Endpapers: red

My comments: Very, very cute!  Cat, being a cat, can't talk ... so he draws picture messages back and forth to the invisible, omnipotent speaker/owner/friend.  He'd like a Christmas gift from Santa - but has been naughty most of the year.  "Speaker" suggests that he do something nice, even if it's last minute - it's better than never.  The outcome is gently funny and fun.  I'd love to read this to my grandkids.

Goodreads:  Cat took on a bunny in Here Comes the Easter Cat, but now Christmas is coming, and Cat has a hunch he's not on Santa's "nice" list. Which means? No presents for Cat. So he tries to be good, but children, it seems, aren't wild for his brand of gift-giving. Still, Cat might surprise himself, and best of all, he may just get to meet the man in the red suit himself—and receive a holiday surprise of his own. Fans of Pete the Cat, Splat the Cat, and Bad Kitty will delight in this holiday treat.

PICTURE BOOK - Desmond and the Very Mean Word by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Douglas Carlton Abrams

Illustrated by A. G Ford

2013, Candlewick Press

HC $15.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.13

My rating: 4.5

Endpapers:  Musty peach

Illustrations: Gorgeous, full-paged; big and real.  Love 'em.

1^st line/s:  "Desmond was very proud of his new bicycle.  He was the only child in the whole township who had one, and he couldn't wait to show it to Father Trevor."

My comments: This is a visually inspriring story of an incident in Desmond Tutu's youth.  It is a story of forgiveness - how very difficult it is to do, but how rewqrding it can also be.

Goodreads:  Based on a true story from Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s childhood in South Africa, Desmond and the Very Mean Word reveals the power of words and the secret of forgiveness.    
     When Desmond takes his new bicycle out for a ride through his neighborhood, his pride and joy turn to hurt and anger when a group of boys shout a very mean word at him. He first responds by shouting an insult, but soon discovers that fighting back with mean words doesn’t make him feel any better. With the help of kindly Father Trevor, Desmond comes to understand his conflicted feelings and see that all people deserve compassion, whether or not they say they are sorry. Brought to vivid life in A. G. Ford’s energetic illustrations, this heartfelt, relatable story conveys timeless wisdom about how to handle bullying and angry feelings, while seeing the good in everyone.

70. U is for Undertow - Sue Grafton

#21 Kinsey Milhone, Santa Teresa, CA

Audio read by Judy Kaye

11 unabridged cds  (14;00)

2009 Random House

403 pgs.

Genre/Audience

Finished 11/16/2014

Goodreads rating: 3.88

My rating:    4 - It was very good

Acquired PBS

1988 Southern California with flashbacks in the story to 1967

1st sentence/s:  April 6, 1988:  "When the past rises up and declares itself.  Afterward, a sequence of events seems inevitable, but only because cause and effect have been aligned in advance.  It's like a pattern of dominoes arranged upright on a tabletop."

My comments:  I got a good start on this about a year ago and for some reason never finished it. Listened to much of it on my trip back and forth to San Diego this weekend and it certainly helped wile away the hours-on-the-road.  Much like Eric Conger becoming the voice of Virgil Flowers, Judy Kaye has definitely become the voice of Kinsey Milhone for me - almost like having company as I drove.  Good story, very Kinsey Milhone.

Goodreads book summary:       It's April 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth birthday, and she's alone in her office catching up on paperwork when a young man arrives unannounced. He has a preppy air about him and looks as if he'd be carded if he tried to buy a beer, but Michael Sutton is twenty-seven, an unemployed college dropout. More than two decades ago, a four-year-old girl disappeared, and a recent newspaper story about her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories. Sutton now believes he stumbled on her lonely burial and could identify the killers if he saw them again. He wants Kinsey's help in locating the grave and finding the men. It's way more than a long shot, but he's persistent and willing to pay cash up front. Reluctantly, Kinsey agrees to give him one day of her time.
          But it isn't long before she discovers Sutton has an uneasy relationship with the truth. In essence, he's the boy who cried wolf. Is his story true, or simply one more in a long line of fabrications?
          Moving effortlessly between the 1980s and the 1960s, and changing points of view as Kinsey pursues witnesses whose accounts often clash, Grafton builds multiple subplots and memorable characters. Gradually we see how everything connects in this twisting, complex, surprise-filled thriller. And as always, at the beating heart of her fiction is Kinsey Millhone, a sharp-tongued, observant loner who never forgets that under the thin veneer of civility is a roiling dark side to the soul.

PICTURE BOOK - The Noisy Paint Box by Barb Rosenstock

The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art
Illustrated by Mary Grandpre (of the Harry Potter series!)

2014, Alfred A. Knopf
HC  $17.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.29

My rating: 5-stars

Endpapers: Yellowed-out foggy impressions of a Kandinsky painting with colorful (what looks like) dabs of paint
Can I tell you how much I love the double-page-spread title page?  (big sigh)...gorgeous!

Author's Note at end of book

"I could hear this hiss of colors as they mingled." - VK

My comments:  Ever since I started looking at paintings and appreciating art, Vasily Kandinsky - and his gorgeously colorful abstract art - have been my very favorites.  I'll never forget standing in the Guggenheim Museum with the "real thing" in front of me.  This story was an eye-opening mini-biography that drew me into Kandinsky's world.  It also introduced me to the idea of synesthesia. Cool book.

Goodreads:  In this exuberant celebration of creativity, Barb Rosenstock and Mary Grandpre tell the fascinating story of Vasily Kandinsky, one of the very first painters of abstract art. Throughout his life, Kandinsky experienced colors as sounds, and sounds as colors--and bold, groundbreaking works burst forth from his noisy paint box.

PICTURE BOOK - The Shortest Day by Wendy Pfeffer

Celebrating the Winter Solstice
Illustrated by Jesse Reisch

2003 Dutton Children's Books
HC $16.99 when first published....  **must add this to my collection, love it

40 pgs.
TPPL 394.261P

Goodreads rating: 3.78

My rating: 5 - gorgeous - words and illustrations

Endpapers: purple

Title Page: Dark aqua with winter illustrations in an oval mid-page

1^st line/s: 
"In late autumn
in the northern part of the world
squirrels hide nuts,
foxes grow thick fur coats,
and flocks of birds fly to warmer places."

My comments:  Use in class....last day of school before winter break this year is 12/19/14.
          This is a wonderful book on many levels. The illustrations are delicious, full of rich purples, golds, blues.  The kind of loveliness I'd like to frame and put on my walls.  The book explains the "shortest day" - the winter solstice - clearly and simply.  It tells of several ancient cultures' discoveries about the solstices. The book ends with two pages of facts and six wonderful activities:  Making a sunrise/sunset chart, measuring shadows, using a compass, creating a sun and earth demo and having a winter solstice party - for kids AND for the birds!  There's a short list of resources at the very end.  I bet there are some cool books written in the ten years since this list that could be added to it (research time!)

Goodreads:  The beginning of winter is marked by the solstice, the shortest day of the year. Long ago, people grew afraid when each day had fewer hours of sunshine than the day before. Over time, they realized that one day each year the sun started moving toward them again. In lyrical prose and cozy illustrations, this book explains what the winter solstice is and how it has been observed by various cultures throughout history. Many contemporary holiday traditions were borrowed from ancient solstice celebrations. Simple science activities, ideas for celebrating the day in school and at home, and a further-reading list are included.

PICTURE BOOK - The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus by Jen Bryant

Illustrated by Melissa Sweet

2014, Eerdmans

HC $17.50

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.53

My rating: 5 FOR SURE! My 2nd favorite book of 2014!

Title Page:  double-page spread, blocks of wood with alphabet prints

Endpapers:: vertical strips of vintage papers collaged in thin stripes

At the end of the book there's a two-page detailed, really interesting timeline, a page-long author's note and a page-long illustrator's note, followed by a page of resources and other sorts of information.

1^st line/s:  (the book begins with this glorious quote) "The man is not wholly evil - he has a thesaurus in his cabin." (J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan; about Captain Hook....)

My comments: This is much more than a biography of Peter Roget.  As an altered book artist and journaler I find the illustrations just magnificent.  They include words as part of the illustrations.  Lists of words; wallpaper of words; thinking boxes and journal pages - different fonts, paining and collage - wonderful, whimsical words, delicious words....it's almost overwhelming.  I've poured over each page, finding all sorts of inspiration for my own journal-making, writing and art.                   WONDERFUL BOOK!  Roget is my new hero (Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet are already on that list)!
     I want a literature circle set of this book for my classroom!

69. Storm Front - John Sandford

#7 Virgil Flowers

Audio read by Eric Conger

8 unabridged discs (9.5 hrs)

2013 Penguin audio

384 pgs. (HC edition)

Adult mystery

Finished 11/4/2014

Goodreads rating:  3.81

My rating:   3-I liked it

TPPL

Mostly in and around Mankato, MN...but the beginning and ending took place in Israel

1st sentence/s: "His bags were packed and sitting by the door.  Nobody thought that was strange because four diggers were jammed into each small living suite.  With two tiny bedrooms feeding into a tiny kitchen area and even tinier bathroom there was hardly any place to keep clothing, so they kept it in their bags."

My comments:  This installment DID seem different. I listen to these read so well by Eric Conger, who has become the "voice" of Virgil for me, but the story seemed disjointed and even appeared to have some small parts missing. I liked the mystery - a lot - but the plot jumped so quickly from character to character and locale to location that at times I didn't even try to follow it, just went with the flow. Virgil's quick humor was present and very much appreciated. His lust for "Ma" was SO Virgil, but it never quite fully went into why he was so taken with her, other than she was ... built ... and perhaps because she had an IQ of 151? Of course, that was just slipped in, and I'm thinking this would matter to our Mr. Flowers. Okay, so maybe not on par with other Virgil Flowers books, but since I want them to keep on comin', I won't complain too loudly..... (And 3-stars means I DID like it.)

Goodreads book summary:  In Israel, a man clutching a backpack searches desperately for a boat. In Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a message from Lucas Davenport: You’re about to get a visitor. It’s an Israeli cop, and she’s tailing a man who’s smuggled out an extraordinary relic—an inscribed stone revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon.
          Wait a minute, laughs Virgil. Is this one of those Da Vinci Code deals? The secret scroll, the blockbuster revelation, the teams of murderous bad guys? Should I be boning up on my Bible verses?
          He looks at the cop. She’s not laughing. As it turns out, there are very bad men chasing the relic, and they don’t care who’s in the way or what they have to do to get it. Maybe Virgil should start praying.