Audible Purchases

2023 Purchases

The Island Cottage (Lovering) AUDIO 7.94

The Shadows of Pike Place (#2 in series) (Black) AUDIO 7.94

The Taken Ones (Lourey) AUDIO 3.17

Lying Beside You (Robotham) (Unl) AUDIO

Hard by a Great Forest (Vardiashvili) (1 Credit) AUDIO

Gilded Cage (Jones) AUDIO 7.94

Blood Moon (Castillo) (2.78)

The Heiress (Unl) AUDIO

The Skull (1 credit) AUDIO

In a Jam (audio bk 7.94) 12/29 also on Kindle

Butcher and Blackbird #1  (1 Credit) 12/16  (audio book)

The Puppets of Spelhorst  (audio bk 7.35) 12/14

All the Small Wonderful Things (audio bk 12.97) 12/14

Ginny Off the Map (Kindle 10.59) 12/14

The Bones at Point No Point #1 Thomas Austin (audio bk 5.29) 12/2

A New Eden: Sci Fi Space Thriller (audio bk 3.17) 11/28

Where Peace is Lost: A Novel (Kindle .77) 11/25

Night Owl - A Trasker Thriller (Mayne) (Kindle free) 11/15

Black Sheep (Rachel Harrison) (1 Credit) (audio book) 10/1

The Hike (Lucy Clarke) (1 Credit) (audio bk) 9/17

Silence for the Dead (St. James) (1 credit) (audio bk) 9/17

The Lost Library (Stead/Mass) (audio bk 7.71)  9/15

Nearly Mine #1 Grace Ford (Molly Black) (Kindle 0.00) 8/26

Throwaway Jane (#1? Pantelli) (Scott Wm Carter) (audio bk 7.94) also on Kindle

Dead Man's Wake #14 Mike Bowditch (1 credit) (audio bk) 7/1

These Silent Woods (Grant) (audio bk 7.94) 6/18

The Last Remains (Griffiths) (1 credit) (audio bk) 6/17

Snakebit - Bowditch short story (Kindle 1.04) 6/9

Hallowed Ground - Burkholder Short story (Kindle 0.00) 6/9

Homecoming (Morton) (audio bk 9.91) 6/8

The Locked Room (Griffiths) (audio bk 13.45) 6/8

The Night Hawks #13 Ruth Galloway (audio bk 15.81) 5/31

The Next New Syrian Girl (1 credit) (audio bk) 5/14

Demon Copperhead (1 credit) (audio bk)

Warrior Girl Unearthed (audio bk w/$10 promo 8.33) 5/14

The Lantern Men (Griffiths) (1 credit) (audio bk) 5/4

Beyond Reason #1 Reese Link (Molly Black) (Kindle 0.00) 5/2

Simon Sort of Says (audio bk. 9.03) 4/22

A Girl Called Samson (Kindle 0.00) 3/17

The Swifts (Kindle 5.29) 3/15

Restart (Korman) (Kindle 2.11) 3/12

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus (Kindle 7.41) 3/12

Murder at Haven's Rock #8 Casey Duncan (audio bk 1 Credit) 2/25

The Last Runaway (Chevalier) (audio bk 9.00) also on Kindle 3.17  2/14

Fall from Grace (Weaver) (audio bk 1 credit) 2/3

The Midnight Children (audio bk 11.49) 1/28

Northern Lights (Roberts) (audio bk 1 credit) 1/25

Attack of the Black Rectangles (audio bk 9.86) 1/19

Ellie Jordan Ghost Trapper #1 (audio bk 7.94) 1/8 also on Kindle

The Dark Angel - Griffiths (audio bk 1 credit) 1/7

The Birchbark House (audio bk 6.31) 1/4

The Art of Loving Libby Green (Kindle 0.00) 1/3

Knitlandia (audio bk 12.23) 1/1

2022 Purchases

She's Up to No Good (Confino) (audio 4.23) 12/6

Things You Save in a Fire (Center) (audio 7.94) 12/2

  ....................to be continued

What's on Chirp

Chirp:  "New Deals on Audiobooks Every Day"

Waiting to read:

All Systems Red (Wells) (3:17)
An Heir to Thorns & Steel (Hogarth) Scholar w/chronic pain finds he's an elf (12:58)
Brain on Fire (Memoir) (Cahalen) (7:48)
Curiosity, The (Kiernan) Man thawed after 100 yrs in Arctic ice (15:38)
Dangerous in a Kilt (Durand)
The Diviners (Bray) (18:12)
Dovekeepers, The (Hoffman) (19:01)
Downstairs Girl (Bowling) YA (10:22)
The Familiars (Halls) (9:44)
Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus (Bowling) Mid/YA? (5:27)
The Library of Lost and Found (Phaedra Patrick) (10:29)
Life We Bury (Eskers) (8:24)
Little Comfort (Hill) (10:34)
Many-Colored Land, The (May) (16:00)
Northanger Abbey (Austen) (8:23)
Playing with Temptation (Wilde) (7:06)
Stillborn Armadillos (Russell) (8:18)

Crappy/Can't Get Into/Abandoned
Shaker Murders, The (Kuhns) (9:21) 2019

Finished:
Angels Burning (O'Dell)  (5)
Barbarian Prince- this was horrible, didn't finish, purchased in error...
Beyond the Night.
Blonde Hair Blue Eyes (Slaughter) prequel to Pretty Girls (4)
Bookshop on the Corner, The (Colgan) (9:13)
Borrowing of Bones, A (Munier) (11;58) (3.5)
Darkling Bride, The (Laura Anderson) (12:02)
Driven to Distraction (Foster) Steamy also on Kindle
Ghost Manuscript, The (Frieswick) AdMyst (2.5)
Hot as Puck (Valente) (6:39)
Hush Hush (Fitzpatrick) YA Fant (3)
Ice Planet Barbarians (Dixon) SciFiSteamy
Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating (Christina Lauren) (7:16)
Lessons from a One-Night Stand (Rayne) (3.5) Steam 2/4)
Line Between, The
Maneuver (Bliss) AdRom (1)
Once Gone (#1 Riley Paige) (Pierce) (7:34)
Open Season (Howard) Ad Rom/Myst (4)
Paradise Awakening (Burton) horrible!
Places No One Knows (Yovanoff)
Running from a Rock Star (Albright)
Sacrificed to the Dragon (Donovan) (6:30)
The Shunning (Lewis) AmishFict (1)
Starters (Price) YA Dystopia (4)
Steadfast (Davies) (5:43) Ad Steamy Romance (2.5)
The Substitution Order  (Clark) Mystery/Thriller  5
Take Me (Bella Andre) Steamy
Tamed by the Beast (Goodwin) Interstellar Brides (5:28)
There's Something About Sweetie (Menon) 2.5
Throttle Me  (Bliss) (8:19)
The Wish (Davids)
Worked Up (Bailey) 2
The Year of Saying Yes (Doyle) (12:02)

Home to Me - Lee Bennett Hopkins

POETRY
Poems Across America
Illustrator: Stephen Alcorn
For: Anyone (but written for kids)
Published:2002
Rating: 4/5
Endpapers: 12 illustrations (different ones on front and back) taken from the illustrations within the book.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRIAN AND ELLA. I have five birthdays in the year that are of the utmost importance to me, and TWO fall on the same day, this day. So I've been looking through my poetry collection this morning for a good poem. I decided NOT on a birthday poem, but on one that reminds me of my family. This book is a short anthology of "place" poems. Included is one called "Rez Road" by Joseph Bruchac that would be a great accompaniement to The True Diary of a Part-time Indian (Alexie, just reviewed). Also included is a favorite, "My Desert Home" by Lillian M. Fisher. But the one that's speaking to me today is:

ON MY ISLAND
by Patricia Hubbell

I watch sleek seals on wave-wet rocks,
rowboats bobbing at weathered docks.

I hear the buoy's lonely bell,
I touch a chalky oyster shell.

All about me, pines grow tall.
All about me, seagulls call.

I dream of sunken ships, dim caves,
mermaids floating on sunlit waves,

then wake to silver everywhere --
fog drifting through my island air.

I long, sometimes, to go away,
and other times, just want to stay

on my island far at sea,
this island -- home to me.

September in Maine. Crisp autumn air. The greeness beginning to be touched by reds and yellows. Indian summer days...the best. Happy birthday, Brian. Happy Birthday, Ella.

49. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie

Illustrator: Ellen Forney
For: Young Adults
Published: 2007
National Book Award
230 pgs.
Rating: 5/5
Finished Sept. 22, 2008

The first time I ever heard of Sherman Alexie was when I traveled cross-country in 2002 and stopped in a cool little bookshop on the southwestern coast of Washington, just before hitting Oregon. I'll have to try to figure out where that was. I purchased a really cool Alaskan painting in that little town. That's where I picked up Alexie's The Toughest Indian in the World, and I'd never heard of him before. In May, at the BEA convention, I heard him speak. I am now a fan.

This is Sherman Alexie's first YA book, and it's a doozy. It's autobiographical, seriously funny and incredibly sad. 14-year old Arnold "Junior" Spirit, born and raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation, just outside Spokane, Washington, decides to leave the rez school and attend the all-white school over 20 miles away in Reardan. He loves to read and he's very smart, and he knows this will be the only way to make something of himself. He becomes ostracized by the entire tribe other than his immediate family. However, he perserveres, transforming from the geeky Indian kid that everyone ignores to a well-liked basketball hero and smart student. During this year, many of the people he loves and admires die...his father's best friend, Eugene, who is always good to him, his grandmother, the smartest, kindest person he's ever know, and his older sister, who hid out in the basement of their house for years until she fled to Montana to get married and live in a trailer that looked like a TV dinner. His best friend, Rowdy, totally abandons him, his father is frequently drunk, he has little to eat and sometimes no way to get to school other than walk.

Junior is a budding cartoonist, and Ellen Forney's cartoons throughouot the book compliment the text well.

There are probably a hundred or more quotes that really hit me in this book. "I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats." "I wish I were magical, but I am really just a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane Indian Reservaton." "Like the coffin was settling down for a long, long nap, for a forever nap." And "Gordy gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote: 'Happy famiies are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians. And he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the fricking booze. Yep, so let me pour a drink for Tolstoy and let him think hard about the true definition of unhappy families."

Sherman Alexie is now an extremely successful author, husband, and father of two. A success story. Big lump in the throat. Real big lump. Real.

Impressive.

Stella, Unleashed - Linda Ashman

POETRY
Notes from the Doghouse
Illustrator: Paul Meisel
For: Kids of all ages
Pub: 2008
Rating: 5 ***A New Favorite
Read (and purchased!): Sept. 13, 2008
Endpapers: Full double-page illustration of a hole in a garden with a bone sticking out! A

I stumbled upon this in the kid's poetry section at Barnes and Noble last night - it must be new - and I read it twice. I wish I knew some little kids with a dog, because the poems are wonderful. They're full of clever rhyme and great rhythm, from Stella the dog's point-of-view. 29 poems like "Don't Blame Me," "Hollywood Dog," "Dispatch from the Front Lawns" and :

WATER!

I swim in the ocean,
no matter how rough.
In rivers and lakes --
I can't get enough!

When I see a pool,
I dive like a sub.
I LOVE the water --
but not in the tub.

THE (almost) PERFECT HOST

I welcome guests with friendliness
(unlike the snooty cat).
Trouble is, I greet so well,
I sometimes knock them flat.

Colorful, edge-to-edge illustrations are delightful, truly enhancing the poetry. My favorite picture book so far this year! ! !

I found an interesting review and interview with the author at http://wildrosereader.blogspot.com/2008/04/stella-unleashed-poetry-book-review.html

Linda Ashman's website includes teacher lesson plan ideas! http://www.lindaashman.com/work2.htm

46. The Rules of Survival - Nancy Werlin

For: Young Adult
Pub: 2006
273 pgs.
Rating: 5/5
Finished: Sept. 2, 2008
POWERFUL

Beautifully written, this heartbreaking story is in the form of a letter from 18-year old Matthew to his 9-year old sister, Emmy. Until three years previously, Matthew, Emmy, and his just-barely younger sister Callie have lived in a horrifying world with their mother. Nikki, in South Boston. She is crazy. It's never give it a name, but she's got to be some sort of schizophrenic, bi-polar, narcissitic crazy stalker woman. They never, EVER know what to expect from her: love, screams, violence, or even a knife to their neck...all in the name of "fun". The kids have coped, learning "how to survive" for years, until Matthew realizes that her demons have invaded her soul and someone's going to be hurt badly.

Supposedly these children come out emotionally unscathed. Their strength, their saviness, their instincts are all unbelievable, yet....believable. At the end of the letter, Matthew tells Emmy that he knows he'll never actually give her the letter. Perhaps it's been a catharsis for him.

Wow. Next Tuesday my Teacher Book Club will be discussing this. I'll write more then. I can't wait to hear their insights.

All the World's A Stage - Rebecca Piatt Davidson

Illustrator: Anita Lobel
For: Middle Grades
Pub: 2003
Rating: Cool
Read: Sept. 1, 2008

I stumbled upon this book while I was looking up aanother picture book about Shakespeare. Drawn immediately to Lobel's illustrations, I then realized that the verse is a take on the House that Jack Built...

This is young William,
His mind all ablaze,
Who stays up all night
Writing poems and plays.

This is the Muse
Who sings to the boy
Who stays up all night
Writing poems and plays

As the page is turned, we see that the next illustration is titled "The Comedy of Errors": At the bottom of the illustration is a famous quote from the play, "We came into the world like brother and borther, and now let's go hand in hand, not one before another."

These are the twins
In matching disguises,
Courting and sporting
All kinds of surprises...

Amusing the Muse/Who sings to the boy/Who stays up all night/Writing poems and plays.

We continue on through Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer's Night's Dream, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, and ends...

"You'll be my players
And the world, my stage.
We'll live through the tales
That unfold on each page!
Happy you'll be
When you act well your part,
And happier, I,
Making words into art."

The last three pages are information about each of the plays, descriptions of the characters in the illustration, and added commentary. The illustrations are bright, bold, drawn very much in a style that I enjoy. And yes, I can SO think of ways to use this book in my teaching of Shakespeare. I'm teaching Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar (as well as Romeo and Juliet) this year. I'll have the three classes that are NOT included in this book design pages in the same style and tone for the plays that they are reading! Cool!

A Child's Calendar - John Updike

POETRY
Illustrator: Trina Schart Hyman
For: Kids
Pub: 1965, 1999
Rating: 5/5
Reread for the umpteenth time: Aug. 23, 2008

Twelve poems, one for each month, written by Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike.
Alliteration.
Imagery.
Personification and Metaphors and Similes..
A veritable feast of words.
AND awesome illustrations by one of my favorite illustrators, Trina Schart Hyman. YeeHa!

AUGUST

The sprinkler twirls.
The summer wanes.
The pavement wears
Popsicle stains.

The playground grass
Is worn to dust.
The weary swings
Creak, creak with rust.

The trees are bored
With being green.
Some people leave
The local scene

And go to seaside
Bungalows
And take off nearly
All their clothes.
John Updike

Don't ya just love it?

Ellsworth's Extraordinary Electric Ears - Valorie Fisher

For: Kids
Pub: 2003
Rating: 4/5
Read: Aug. 25, 2008

Abundant alliteration.
Clever dioramas.
Multi-media.

I love alphabet books, and I love figurative language. I love collage and I adore cleverness. This books contains all. Each letter of the alphabet has a snazzy sentence and an accompanying diorama that not only illustrates the sentence but includes many other words beginning with that letter.

I want to share this book with my middle-schoolers and have them create sentences that they then illustrate with collage or diorama! We'll photograph them and put the page in our memory books.

A few examples:
"Fancy feathered fashions were favored by Floyd's farm friends. (You can imagine THIS diorama!)
"Kyle's kids kept kites in the kitchen.
"Quentin quickly quieted the quibbling, quarreling, and quacking of the quintuplets.
"Trust Trevor to tell you, typing on a trapeze was terribly tricky."

Loved it!

40. The Boyfriend List - E. Lockhart

A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

For: Young Adult
Pub: 2005
229 pgs.
Rating: 3.5/5
Finished: Aug. 24, 2008

After quickly skimming some reviews for this book, I found three things that people liked. I agree with one of them.

Organization. Lockhart frames the story using a list of 15 boys that have somehow touched Ruby's (Roo's) life. Yes, it was a clever way of telling the story and worked well introducing characters, but it did not help the time frame, it made the story jump around, I was always confused about whether she was talking about years ago, months ago, weeks ago, or the present. Sometimes I even had to go back a few chapters to figure out the sequence or to double check which boy was which.

Footnotes. There were footnotes on every page, or so it seemed. Long ones. This was how Lockhart continued the story. She could have easily included it in the prose of the story, but I guess she was just trying to be clever or different. I had to jump back and forth, read the bottom, move my eyes over the page above to find where I'd left off, only to have to switch to the bottom again. Hated it. More confusion. At the end of the book is a section called "A Conversation With E. Lockhart". One question asks her what her ten favorit all-time movies are. This list helps me understand from whence her writing style doth cometh, since it included: Annie Hall, Cabaret, Moulin Rouge and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- very telling, eh?

First person perspective. Always love it. (Aha, you guessed it, this is the one with which I agree.)

The plot, when you finally sort out its sequence, is SO sopohmore girl angst-y. The insight that Roo finds from writing AND talking to her "shrink", Dr. Z, is spot-on perfect and not overinflated. Her sophmore year in a small private school, Tate, where she thinks she's the only scholarship student, is complete with being thrilled about having a boyfriend, loving her quartet of best friends, making a few missteps, not knowing what to do, and then screwing everything up. Painfully. And that she lives on a small house boat with her one-woman-performance-artist, macrobiotic mother and her "but how does that make you FEEL" gardening father. And that she has questions and misgivings about boys, sexuality, boys, kissing, boys....you get the idea.

Lots of things to like, a few things to get past, but now I'm ready for the next installment, The Boy Book, which I have to read for a book club, but decided to read this, its predecessor, first.

39. A Bottle in the Gaza Sea - Valerie Zenatti

For: Young Adults
Pub: 2005
Translated from French: 2008
149 pgs.
Rating: 5/5
Finished: Aug. 16, 2008

"My name is Tal Levine. I was born in TelAviv on the first day of July 1986, but I live here in Jerusalem. I know that everyone on the planet knows the name Jerusalem, and if there are extraterrestrials they've probably heard about it too; it's a city that creates quite a sitr."

This wasn't the "perfect" book (which one is?), but I still had to give it a 5. And what do I discuss first, the plot...with its timely tough-to-understand setting, the characters, or the writing? I guess it was the title and setting that caught my attention and prompted me tor read the book, but it was the writing that struck me most when I first started reading. Perhaps because it was written in French and translated into English? The language and word choices are lovely. Because there are places where it's not written in the way most teenagers I know would speak, it made me realize that some of them surely THINK this way. For example:

"I sat up. Immediately. Something had jabbed me viciously in the back. I can remember it now: I felt as if some huge injustice had been done to me, that I'd been cruelly attacked just as I was trying to forget myself in the sand - reducing myself to a body, its imprint on the ground, leaving the nausea and indigestion to hover overhead and be carried away on the wind."

Need I say more about the writing?

Contemporary Israel. Contemporary Palestine. Two teenagers from different worlds who live in places where we, as lucky Americans, can't even imagine. This book gives you a viewfinder, eyes to see what's really going on in this tiny strip of the world. Both protagonists have been raised by parents that yearn for peace. In Israel, the Levines have attended any and all peace rallies for many years. In Palestine, Naim's family has taught him to read Hebrew so that in the years to come, when they are hopeful for peace, he will be able to speak and read the language properly. Looking at the bombings, the terrorism, LIFE, from their point-of-view, is eye-opening.

Tal pours her heart out into a letter that she puts into a bottle destined for the the Gaza Sea. She pictures a 17-year old girl like herself finding the letter and responding. When a sarcastic, private young Palestinian man answers, a roller coaster relationship begins. Using the internet (and we even see how difficult and dangerous this is for the Palestinian) the story unfolds. And we get to see so much. Differences. Similarities. Hopes, desires, wishes. The view from each side.

My writing is as jumbled as my thoughts. Perhaps in a few days I'll come back and organize, add, make this more coherent. This was a very powerful book. I'm looking forward to sharing it with my Jewish middle schoolers and getting their take.

37. Robin's Country - Monica Furlong

For: Early/Middle Grades
Pub: 1995
140 pgs.
3/5
Finished: Aug. 13, 2008

This was my first foray into the tales of Robin Hood. It was easy-to-read and probably would give young people a good feel for Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood and Marian, the merry men, and some of the medieval history that surrounds these legends. The protagonist's name throughout the book is Dummy, which put me off every single time I read it. Sure, the poor kid couldn't speak, but...

Well, anyway, a mute orphan boy of an unknown age (ten? twelve?) runs away from his evil master and stumbles upon Robin Hood and his crew in Sherwood Forest, who take him under their wing/s. He finds food and kindness and even love from this gang, which makes him begin to have memories of his totally forgotten childhood. As he learns to become a topnotch archer, confidant to Robin, and expert rider, we are privvy to some of the mischievous shenanagans that Robin Hood pulls while trying to trick the Bishop of Hereford and the Sheriff of Nottingham. We realize that Robin Hood and his gang are devout Christians, loyal still to the missing King Richard, who do, indeed, steal from the rich and give to the poor. There's a very tidy ending, Dummy discovers who he really is, everyone lives happily ever after...etc.

This book would certainly give young readers a taste of Robin Hood. Just a taste, all cleaned up (though there are a couple of killings, most of the story is pretty tame). I'm going to have to read more widely about the tales of Robin Hood before I can better say how worthwhile this book really is.

Library Mouse - Daniel Kirk

For: Kids
Pub: 2007
Rating: 5/5
Read Aug. 12, 2008

Libraries are some of my most favorite places anywhere, and the library where Sam, our protagonist, lives makes a colorful, happy setting for this story.

Sam lives in a hole in the wall behind the children's reference section in what I'm guessing is a rural library. Each night after the library is closed and silent, he creeps out and reads. He samples every genre. His imagination brims over with new ideas until one night he decides to write a book of his own. He folds litle squares of paper into a book and writes aobut what he knows - being a mouse. He branches out night after night, writing, illustrating, creating, then leaving the tiny books on the library shelves for the children to find and read. The children, as well as the librarian, love his books, love them so much that they want to MEET the author! What's a mouse to do?

What Sam decides to do is clever and creative and will encourage any child who reads this books to write one of their own.

The illustrations are marvelous. Colorful. Bold. Detailed. Sam's face has more character than any mouse I can rememaber in a picture book. Every two page spread contains a full-page, edge-to-edge masterpiece. The large, bold font - a great choice - is easy to read and great to look at.

This is a perfect gift for a kid; a box containing the book, assorted 4, 8, and 12 page premade folded books, a few cool pencils and a box of crayons or colored pencils.

This is going to be a favorite!

My America - Jan Spivey Gilchrist

Illustrators: Ashley Bryan and Jan Spivey Gilchrist
For: Kids
Pub: 2007
Rating: 4/5
Reread: Aug. 12, 2008
Signed by both Bryan and Gilchrist

Okay, anything by Ashley Bryan drives me wild. I love his work and I love him. This collaboration is quite beautiful, whether you're an Ashley fan or not. Gilchrist's simple 13-line poem is illustrated alternately by the two illustrators. Gilchrist's watercolors depict a thoughtful, introspective translation of the poem and Bryan's amazing colors shout out the "big picture" of what the poem is saying.

MY AMERICA
Have you seen my counry?
Seen my magic skies?
Seen my mighty waters?
Have you seen my land?

Have you seen my counry?
Seen my wings abound?
Seen my water creatures?
Seen my beasts and fowl?

Have you seen my people?
We hail from every shore.
Have you seen my homeland?
Have you seen my country?
Have you seen my AMERICA?

Just to get my middle school students revved up for the new year, I'm going to share this poem. I'll read it to them, I'll pass out copies, I'll have them read it to each other and to the class. Then I'll share the book and get reactions. Perhaps they'll each create an illustration themselves. Perhaps they'll each add another verse. We'll see where it goes. Reading. Writing. Listening. Speaking. AND fantastic art!

(I love the saguaro cactus on the cover. When Ashley visited Tucson a few years ago, I got to drive him around a bit and share this beautiful landscape, so different from Maine's!)

The Animal Hedge - Paul Fleischman

Illustrotor: Bagram Ibatoulline
For: Kids
Pub: 1983, 2003
Rating: 3.5/5
Finished: Aug. 11, 2008

I first read this book when it was illustrated by Lydia Dabcovich. Now out of print, I can't remember the illustrations. The current version is illustrated by a Russian artist using an American Folk Art style, A bit dark, and not my favorite style, it does seem to suit the story. A 19th century farmer lovingly tends his animals and raises his three boys, always singing while they worked. The eldest sang coachmen's songs, the second sang songs of the sea, and the third's favorite song was of a traveling fiddler.

Tragedy strikes in the form of a huge drought. To feed his family, the farmer slowly sells all his animals, then his farm, purchasing a tiny house in which to live. When rain finally reappears and he goes to trim the hedge, his eyes picture animal shapes in the greenery, so he trims it to look like the animals his mind sees. As the hedge grows he continues to trim, adding offspring, creating a yardful of cows and chickens and pigs. However, he no longer sings.

One by one the sons grow up. The father helps each to realize what their aspirations are by cutting the hedges to the ground and letting each boy look for the shapes they see in the growth to guide their career decisions. Not surprisingly they follow the direction of the songs each sang as a young boy - the eldest becomes a coachman, the middle boy a sailor, the youngest a fiddler.

Years later the successful sons come home to visit the father and realize that since their dreams took shape in the hedge, their father's continuous farm menargarie being recreated there is his dream. So they go out and buy him a whole new flock of cows, chickens, and pigs. Alhough now quite elderly, he is quite happy. A sweet story. Magical without any magic. What would MY heart see in the growing hedge?

Little Red Cowboy Hat - Susan Lowell

Illustrator: Randy Cecil
For: Kids
Pub: 1997
Rating: 4/5
Finished: Aug. 11, 2008

I love fractured fairy tales, and while wandering around the the Texas State History Museum gift shop I found this book. It was actually the author's name that drew me, because I'm not crazy about the cover illustration. However, the opening two-page spread of bright yellow, orange chartreuse, lime, and gold desert appealed to me greatly.

Local author Susan Lowell has created a fractured fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood that is set in the Sonoran desert and has the feistiest grandmother I've ever met on the pages of a picture book. "That yellow-bellied, snake-blooded, skunk-eyed, rancid son of a parallelogram!" she exclaims after they have successfully driven him out. (We actually never know whether Little Red and Granny kill him or not, but that would make a great conversation!) Great language throughout.

As far as illustrations, I liked the outdoor, desert pages far more than the pages set indoors. And the cover still doesn't work for me, but now I'm going to explore other works of Randy Cecil to see how I feel about his work as a whole.

Turn! Turn! Turn! - Pete Seeger

Illustrator: Wendy Anderson Halperin
For: Kids
Pub: 2003
Rating: 4/5
Finished : Aug. 11, 2008
includes CD with two songs

Last year, while creating curriculum for fifth graders on the literature of ancient Israel, I decided to find readings from the Old Testament and teach them using a musical approach. I remembered the Byrds' song Turn! Turn! Turn! and have found two picture books depicting it. In 1961, Pete Seeger took the words from Ecclesiastes, originally written in 250 BCE and translated into English in London in 1607, and set them to music. Wendy Anderson Halperin takes those words and creates a double page spread to illustrate each coupling of verse. All illustrations are contained within a huge circle and drawn using watercolors. BEAUTIFULLY drawn. I poured over each of them, looking at details and admiring Halperin's vision for each of the phrases. There was one drawback for me, however. To be able to view each illustration correctly, I had to keep turning the book this way and that, upside-down and sideways. It's a fairly large book with a dustcover, and it started to drive me crazy. Otherwise, it was quite lovely.

There is a full page note in the back of the book from Pete Seeger, explaining how he created this now-very-popular song. Sheet music is included, as well a CD that contains Pete Seeger's version along with the Byrd's slightly different one. It's fun to see the difference and listen to both sets of voices sing this song.

The Dump Man's Treasures - Lynn Plourde

Illustrated by Mary Beth Owens
For: Kids
Pub: 2008
Ratiing: 4/5
Finished: Aug. 11, 2008
signed by both author and illustrator

I found this on one of my summer visits to Port in a Storm bookstore in Somesville, Maine. A Maine setting with a literacy theme, written and illustrated by two well-known-at-least-by-me Mainers was my hands-down picture book choice for this trip.

Mr. Pottle lives in Shiretown, Maine (although I think shire town means county seat,....whenever I think of Shiretown I think of Houlton, Maine, which is nicknamed Shiretown). He oversees the dump. He collects and repairs perfectly good items, especially books. He can't believe that people would throw them away. He repairs them, cleans them, and even uses potpourri to de-smell them. He stores them on rickety bookshelves, giving them, lending them, sharing them with anyone who wants to read them, especially the children of the town. When his shelves are full he fills an old shopping cart and begins to give them away all over town, nursing homes, homeless people, anywhere they will be read, with the only rule being they won't be discarded. When Mr. Pottle breaks his ankle and becomes bedridden, the children bring him all sorts of books to read, and he admits that he can't read. So, of course, the kids begin to read to him. The last illustration shows a kid sharing a book entitled "C is for Cat", with alphabet cards scattered across the tabletop, signifying that Mr. Pottle is now learning to read.

Heart-tugging theme. Lovely prose. Gorgeous illustrations. I loved that you could recognize many of the books from the hazily recreated covers, because Owens didn't include the book titles. The bordered page that depticts the kids riding their bikes all over town looking for Mr. Pottle is especially cool. The dump illustrations remind me of a brighter, watercolory CATS set. The whole book describes in words and pictures small-town Maine life as I've known it. Delightful.

35. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! - Laura Amy Schlitz

Illustrated by Robert Byrd
For: Children
Pub: 2007
2008 Newbery Award
Pages: 86
Rating 5/5
Finished (2nd time) Aug. 10, 2008

This really is a brilliantly conceived and written book, deserving of the Newbery. Laura Schlitz, a school librarian, created 21 short "plays", so that a class could perform it and all would have relatively equal parts. Each "play" is told from the point-of-view of one of the children living on a generic medieval manor in late13th century England. All but two are monologues, two are poems for two voices, some are prose, most poetry, some rhyme, all are loaded with information, great vocabulary words, and just enough footnotes to help the reader but not overwhelm. Schlitz has inserted six essays that she calls "A Little Background." These follow the child/speaker that she feels needs extra clarification (the Three-Field System, Medieval Pilgrimage, The Crusades, Falconry, Jews In Medieval Society, and Towns and Freedom). You can feel the fleas, smell the dung, shiver in the cold, and become totally absorbed in the village and life of this sobering time.

I would love to sit down and brainstorm with Laura Schlitz! I'd love to share ideas about the numerous ways this book can be used in a classroom. I plan to use it this year with my sixth graders as their central literature for the medieval period - I can imagine it becoming a touchstone text - and I can't wait!

I Know an Old Teacher - Anne Bowen

Illustrated by Stephen Gammell
For: Kids
Pub: 2008
Rating: 3/5
Finished: Aug. 10, 2008
signed by the author

I picked this up at BEA in May, but just got a chance to read it. I love rhyme and rhythm (repetition I can take or leave....well, mainly leave) and since this is a take off on The Old Lady That Swallowed a Fly, it's full of rhyme and ryhthm. The red haired teacher, Miss Bindley, takes the class pets home for the weekend. When she inadvertantly swallows a flea:

"I know an old lady who swallowed a flea.
It fell from her hair and plopped into her tea."

she begins gulping down various class pets to begin the inevitable chain reaction. I love humor, I LOVE Gammell's illustrations, but somehow the premise of this story doesn't tickle my funny bone just right. Why would such a cool-looking, smart teacher start eating...live...her class's beloved pets? Yuck! At the end she swallows one of her students who has been peeking into her window throughout the story. This I laughed at. Go figure.

Again, I love the illustrations, although I'm more grossed out than I would have guessed at the rat and the snake disappearing into - and protruding from - Miss Bindley's mouth. This is probably the reaction the illustrator was looking for. Stephen Gammell IS terrific.