80. 365 Days to Alaska by Cathy Carr

read the book, borrowed from the library

2021
272 pgs.
Mid Grade CRF
Finished  7/27/2021
Goodreads rating: 4.29 - 243 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary CT, with a small part at the beginning in the wilderness/boonies of AK

First line/s:  "Rigel put the tip of the hunting knife into the hare's belly and made a careful slit." 

My comments: After spending her entire life in the middle-of-nowhere "bush" in Alaska, 11 year-old Rigel - pronounced RYE/JILL, is forced to move to Connecticut with her mom and two sister, five and 14 years old, leaving her dad, Bear, in Alaska.  She doesn't want to go, she's never left her home in the middle of nowhere and really, really loves it there.  So this story is the story of the following year in Connecticut, all the changes she has to adapt to, bullies and no friends and not enough nature and coming to love a crow she names Blueberry.  And of course she ends up making wonderful friends, finding the nature she needs, and adapting.  We get to know the diverse personalities of her  wonderful family member, too.  This is a wonderful story with lots and lots to sink your teeth into.

Goodreads synopsis:  A thoughtful middle-grade debut about a girl from off-the-grid Alaska adjusting to suburban life
        Eleven-year-old Rigel Harman loves her life in off-the-grid Alaska. She hunts rabbits, takes correspondence classes through the mail, and plays dominoes with her family in their two-room cabin. She doesn’t mind not having electricity or running water—instead, she’s got tall trees, fresh streams, and endless sky.
        But then her parents divorce, and Rigel and her sisters have to move with their mom to the Connecticut suburbs to live with a grandmother they’ve never met. Rigel hates it in Connecticut. It’s noisy, and crowded, and there’s no real nature. Her only hope is a secret pact that she made with her father: If she can stick it out in Connecticut for one year, he’ll bring her back home.
        At first, surviving the year feels impossible. Middle school is nothing like the wilderness, and she doesn’t connect with anyone . . . until she befriends a crow living behind her school. And if this wild creature has made a life for itself in the suburbs, then, just maybe, Rigel can too.
365 Days to Alaska is a wise and funny debut novel about finding beauty, hope, and connection in the world no matter where you are—even Connecticut.

Picture Book - Laxmi's Mooch by Shelly Anand

Illustrated by Nabi H. Ali
Endpapers:  Pale simple drawings on solid orange that explain nine Hindi words used in the story

found at Ellsworth Public Library

2021, Kokila/Penguin Random House

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:   4.42 - 820 ratings

My rating:  4.5

Illustrations:  big, bold, brightly colored

Text:  Just 1 -2 sentences per page.

1^st line/s:  "Hi!  I'm Laxmi.  Come here.  Closer.  You see that?  That's my mooch."

My comments:  After a young Indian-American gets noticed for the tiny dark hairs on her upper lips (mustache = mooch), she has a talk with her parents and is made to realize that this is a normal - and good - thing.  References are made to Frida Kahlo.  Then she returns to school and has kids examine their own upper lips - and on those that are completely hairless she draws on a mooch for them.

    Acceptance for all!  Everyone's different!

Goodreads:  A joyful, body-positive picture book about a young Indian American girl's journey to accept her body hair and celebrate her heritage after being teased about her mustache.

          Laxmi never paid much attention to the tiny hairs above her lip. But one day while playing farm animals at recess, her friends point out that her whiskers would make her the perfect cat. She starts to notice body hair all over--on her arms, legs, and even between her eyebrows.
        With her parents' help, Laxmi learns that hair isn't just for heads, but that it grows everywhere, regardless of gender. Featuring affirming text by Shelly Anand and exuberant, endearing illustrations by Nabi H. Ali, Laxmi's Mooch is a celebration of our bodies and our body hair, in whichever way they grow.

46. Starfish by Lisa Fipps

read the BOOK

2021

244 pgs.
Middle Grade CRF in Verse
Finished 5/5/2021
Goodreads rating: 4.56 - 1954 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: contemporary Texas

First line/s:  "I step down into the pool.

The water is bathwater warm

but feels cool

compared to the blistering hot air.

Kick.  Gliiiiiiide.

Stroke.  Gliiiiiiide.

Side to side

and back again.

Dive under the surface.

Soar to the top.

Arch my back.

Flip. Flop.

As soon as I slip into the pool,

I am weightless.

Limitless.

For just a while."

My comments: The book is written in verse, beautiful verse, so it reads fast.  It tugs on the heart.  Ellie is an extremely large young girl, and has been bullied for being fat for as long as she can remember.  She is bullied horribly at school, but she is bullied even more horrendously at home by her mother and older brother.  Her father does the best he can to make her feel better, but it's not until he takes her for weekly visits to a therapist that she stops blaming herself and figures out how to stand up for herself.  She's a swimmer, and, luckily, has a pool and lives in Texas so she can swim every day.  I got so mad in places while reading this book ... do people really say super insulting things to peers, to strangers, to people that they see on the bus or in a restaurant?  Definitely a book to be read by middle schoolers and even better, to be used as a whole class book or read aloud.

Goodreads synopsis:  Ellie is tired of being fat-shamed and does something about it in this poignant debut novel-in-verse.

          Ever since Ellie wore a whale swimsuit and made a big splash at her fifth birthday party, she’s been bullied about her weight. To cope, she tries to live by the Fat Girl Rules–like “no making waves,” “avoid eating in public,” and “don’t move so fast that your body jiggles.” And she’s found her safe space–her swimming pool–where she feels weightless in a fat-obsessed world. In the water, she can stretch herself out like a starfish and take up all the room she wants. It’s also where she can get away from her pushy mom, who thinks criticizing Ellie’s weight will motivate her to diet. Fortunately, Ellie has allies in her dad, her therapist, and her new neighbor, Catalina, who loves Ellie for who she is. With this support buoying her, Ellie might finally be able to cast aside the Fat Girl Rules and starfish in real life–by unapologetically being her own fabulous self.

82. The Boy From the Woods by Harlan Coben

listened on my Audible, purchased
narrated by Steven Weber!!
Unabridged audio (
2020 Grand Central Publishing
384 pgs.
Adult Mystery/Suspense
Finished 5/21/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.07 - 16,725 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary upstate NY

First line/s:  "How does she survive?  How does she manage to get through this torment every day?"

My comments :  Another excellent mystery from Harlan Coben.  The protagonist is a man who, as a boy, was found living by himself at seven or eight years old, in the middle of the woods in New York state, with no memory of his past, his name, or even how he knew how to read.  As an adult he is somewhat of a super-guy: smart, fearless, military background and loyal to a local family that became HIS family of a sort.  The 70ish year old matriarch of that family, a female lawyer, is investigating a perplexing mystery with all sorts of twists and turns involving a wealthy family, a spoiled teenage son, a bullied girl, and a shady guy in politics.  Read brilliantly by Steven Weber, this was super enjoyable.

Goodreads synopsis:  In the shocking new thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Run Away, a man whose past is shrouded in mystery must find a missing teenage girl before her disappearance brings about disastrous consequences for her community . . . and the world.
          The man known as Wilde is a mystery to everyone, including himself. Decades ago, he was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. After the police concluded an exhaustive hunt for the child's family, which was never found, he was turned over to the foster system.
          Now, thirty years later, Wilde still doesn't know where he comes from, and he's back living in the woods on the outskirts of town, content to be an outcast, comfortable only outdoors, preferably alone, and with few deep connections to other people.
          When a local girl goes missing, famous TV lawyer Hester Crimstein--with whom Wilde shares a tragic connection--asks him to use his unique skills to help find her. Meanwhile, a group of ex-military security experts arrive in town, and when another teen disappears, the case's impact expands far beyond the borders of the peaceful suburb. Wilde must return to the community where he has never fit in, and where the powerful are protected even when they harbor secrets that could destroy the lives of millions . . . secrets that Wilde must uncover before it's too late.

44. The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

read on my iPhone/Kindle/Book/Audible
2016, Crown Books for Young Readers
384 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished 8/1/2017
Goodreads rating:  4.21 - 8280 ratings
My rating:  5 Top-notch fiction
Setting: Contemporary rural Tennessee, somewhat near Nashville

First line/s:  "There were things that Dillard Wayne Early Jr. dreaded more than the first day of school at Forrestville High.  Not many, but a few."

My comments:  This wonderful book is about so many things.  It's about rising above the atrocities of horrible parenting.  It's about friendship, real friendship that touches your core.  It's about grief and about withstanding the hundreds of little pushes in the wrong direction that it might bring.  It's about perseverance and resilience.  It's about living your life for yourself, and finding the little things that matter the most and can sustain you, no matter what. Not only was this a fantastic book for young adults, fut for old adults, too.

Goodreads synopsis: Dill has had to wrestle with vipers his whole life—at home, as the only son of a Pentecostal minister who urges him to handle poisonous rattlesnakes, and at school, where he faces down bullies who target him for his father’s extreme faith and very public fall from grace.
          The only antidote to all this venom is his friendship with fellow outcasts Travis and Lydia. But as they are starting their senior year, Dill feels the coils of his future tightening around him. The end of high school will lead to new beginnings for Lydia, whose edgy fashion blog is her ticket out of their rural Tennessee town. And Travis is happy wherever he is thanks to his obsession with the epic book series Bloodfall and the fangirl who may be turning his harsh reality into real-life fantasy. Dill’s only escapes are his music and his secret feelings for Lydia—neither of which he is brave enough to share. Graduation feels more like an ending to Dill than a beginning. But even before then, he must cope with another ending—one that will rock his life to the core.
          Debut novelist Jeff Zentner provides an unblinking and at times comic view of the hard realities of growing up in the Bible Belt, and an intimate look at the struggles to find one’s true self in the wreckage of the past.

35. Posted by John David Anderson

Read on my iPhone
2017, Walden Pond Press
384 pgs.
Middle Grades CRF
Finished 6-27-17
Goodreads rating:  4.34 - 254 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting:  Contemporary small town Michigan

First line/s:  "I push my way through the buzzing mob and freeze, heart - struck, dizzy."

My comments: This book looks bullying right in the eye and takes it on.  It doesn't give answers.  The writing is beautifully crafted, taking a few major themes and weaving them around and together, the unifying link being  friendship, where it comes from and where it goes.  Quite a book.

Goodreads synopsis:  From John David Anderson, author of the acclaimed Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, comes a humorous, poignant, and original contemporary story about bullying, broken friendships, and the failures of communication between kids.

In middle school, words aren’t just words. They can be weapons. They can be gifts. The right words can win you friends or make you enemies. They can come back to haunt you. Sometimes they can change things forever.          

     When cell phones are banned at Branton Middle School, Frost and his friends Deedee, Wolf, and Bench come up with a new way to communicate: leaving sticky notes for each other all around the school. It catches on, and soon all the kids in school are leaving notes—though for every kind and friendly one, there is a cutting and cruel one as well.

     In the middle of this, a new girl named Rose arrives at school and sits at Frost’s lunch table. Rose is not like anyone else at Branton Middle School, and it’s clear that the close circle of friends Frost has made for himself won’t easily hold another. As the sticky-note war escalates, and the pressure to choose sides mounts, Frost soon realizes that after this year, nothing will ever be the same.

13. Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

listened to an unabridged cd in the car
read by Emily Rankin - superb
6 unabridged cds, 7 hrs.
2016, Dutton Book for Young Readers
304 pgs.
Historical fiction for upper middle grades (and up)
Finished 3-2-17
Goodreads rating: 4.3 - 4695 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: rural Pennsylvania, just after World War II
Newbery Honor Award

First line/s:  "The year I turned twelve, I learned how to lie.  I don't mean the small fibs that children tell.  I mean real lies fed by real fears - things I said and did that took me out of the life I'd always known and put me down hard in a new one."

My comments:  Well.  This was an exceptionally heavy story, particularly for middle grade students of younger ages. That's not bad at all, though I think it might be a little tough for third or fourth graders until they're a little older - why force kids to grow up earlier than need be? It is an exceptionally well written story that will stay with me for a long, long while.  More and more in my life I wonder why people enjoy being mean, why a bully becomes a bully, and how easy it is for some people to lie.  Rural Pennsylvania in the after-World War II years is the perfect setting for this extraordinary story.

Goodreads synopsis:  Growing up in the shadows cast by two world wars, Annabelle has lived a mostly quiet, steady life in her small Pennsylvania town. Until the day new student Betty Glengarry walks into her class. Betty quickly reveals herself to be cruel and manipulative, and while her bullying seems isolated at first, things quickly escalate, and reclusive World War I veteran Toby becomes a target of her attacks. While others have always seen Toby’s strangeness, Annabelle knows only kindness. She will soon need to find the courage to stand as a lone voice of justice as tensions mount.
          Brilliantly crafted, Wolf Hollow is a haunting tale of America at a crossroads and a time when one girl’s resilience, strength, and compassion help to illuminate the darkest corners of our history.

MOVIE - Moonlight

R (1:50)

Limited release 10/21/16

Viewed 11/29/16 at the Loft with Sheila

RT Critic: 98   Audience:  91
Critic's Consensus:   Moonlightuses one man's story to offer a remarkable and brilliantly crafted look at lives too rarely seen in cinema.

Cag: 4.5 - for the most part, I liked this movie a whole lot

Directed by Barry Jenkins (who also wrote it)

Plan B Entertainment

My comments:  I loved parts one and two.  A lot. But part three threw me off a bit.  The physical change in the main character is too extreme.  He was intensely skinny in the first two parts, and even though he'd bulked up incredibly, he didn't have the leanness that I felt he still would have had.  So it was hard to relate to him as the same character.  And this third part went at what seemed to me like a slower pace.  The story, as a whole, was so sad and so well told - my heart breaks for kids who are brought up in drug-addicted households and poverty, and for kids who have to deal with intense bullying, mentally and physically.  Our world.....or at least some parts of it.  Horrible.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man's struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.

55. Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

Listened to on audible
2016, Knopf Books for Young Readers
400 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished 10/9/2016
Goodreads rating: 4.04 - 2571 ratings
My rating: 3
Setting: Contemporary America

First line/s: (From Libby's POV)  "If a genie popped out of my bedside lamp, I would wish for these three things:  my mom to be alive, nothing bad or sad to ever happen again, and to be a member of the Martin VanBuren High School Damsels, the best drill team in the tristate area."

My comments:  This has been a difficult one for me to rate.  I listened to it being read by two wonderful readers, and that wa a highlight for me.  They made the characters become more than real.  I wonder how I would have felt if I had read it without the expression they used ... I feel like the characters would've been flatter.  Libby, particularly, just didn't seem real to me.  I know what it's like being big.  And she's a high schooler, hasn't been around a single peer in five years...and she's got this great positive attitude?  She lets very little bother her, including the incredible bullying that's being constantly thrown at her?  She doesn't seem to suffer at all (or at least a believable amount).  She has a fantastic sense of humor.  She's incredibly articulate.  In spite of her bulk she's a graceful, energetic dancer.  All super positive stuff.  AND she gets the hot guy.  I would love to feel that a girl like her - one who had to be cut out of her house because she weighed 600 pounds (!) - with no friends, not one - would and could go on with life the way she did.  But I can't.
     The bullying was totally believable.  But so many other parts of the book were not.  I'm a sucker for everything working out well, and this one did - which made me happy, of course.  But it just wasn't real enough for me.  And that's even without considering the impossibility of Jack going through life without anyone ever realizing he had such an incredible neurological problem...
     I did enjoy listening, and I think, considering my personal reaction the average of 5 and 1 is 3....

Goodreads synopsis:  Everyone thinks they know Libby Strout, the girl once dubbed “America’s Fattest Teen.” But no one’s taken the time to look past her weight to get to know who she really is. Following her mom’s death, she’s been picking up the pieces in the privacy of her home, dealing with her heartbroken father and her own grief. Now, Libby’s ready: for high school, for new friends, for love, and for every possibility life has to offer. In that moment, I know the part I want to play here at MVB High. I want to be the girl who can do anything. 
     Everyone thinks they know Jack Masselin, too. Yes, he’s got swagger, but he’s also mastered the impossible art of giving people what they want, of fitting in. What no one knows is that Jack has a newly acquired secret: he can’t recognize faces. Even his own brothers are strangers to him. He’s the guy who can re-engineer and rebuild anything, but he can’t understand what’s going on with the inner workings of his brain. So he tells himself to play it cool: Be charming. Be hilarious. Don’t get too close to anyone.
     Until he meets Libby. When the two get tangled up in a cruel high school game—which lands them in group counseling and community service—Libby and Jack are both pissed, and then surprised. Because the more time they spend together, the less alone they feel. Because sometimes when you meet someone, it changes the world, theirs and yours.