Picture Book - 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental

Illustrated by Joelle Jolivet
Endpapers:  N/A - HUGE BOOK

2006 Harry N. Abrams, translated from French

44 huge, thick pages

Illustrations in Black, white, blue, and orange

Goodreads rating:   4.11 - 914 ratings

My rating:  5!

1^st line/s:  "On New Year's Day, at nine o'clock in the morning, a delivery man rang our doorbell."

My comments:  Loved this book.  But, it's HUGE.  Not sure how I'm going to read it aloud! One penguin arrives each and every day for 365 straight days.  Lots of arithmetic and a few vocabulary words for younger readers (anonymous, three-digit-number, ecologist), one page where you hunt among the penguins for the only one with blue feet, and even a great poem:

    Penguins, penguins everywhere,

    Black and white and in my hair,

    Two or three would be quite nice,

    But hundreds more, let's think twice!

    Bathroom, bedroom, closet, kitchen --

    I've had enough, it's time to ditch 'em!

Goodreads:  From the amazing success of the documentary March of the Penguins to the popular penguins in Madagascar to this fall’s upcoming penguin-themed movie Happy Feet, penguins are everywhere! That’s especially true for the family in 365 Penguins, who find a penguin mysteriously delivered to their door every day for a year. At first they’re cute, but with every passing day, the penguins pile up—along with the family’s problems. Feeding, cleaning, and housing the penguins becomes a monumental task. They’re noisy and smelly, and they always hog the bathroom! And who on earth is sending these kwaking critters? In a large format, and with lots of opportunity for counting, 365 Penguins is sure to become a perennial wintertime favorite.

38. Collision by Victor Dixen

#3 Phobos
read the book - translated into English from the original French
originally published in 2016 in France
published in English in 2019 by Hot Key Books
725 pgs.
YA SciFi
Finished  2/28/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.02 - 1112 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting:  Mars, in the future

First line/s:  "I'm alone, even if the people who've lived with me through the most important moments of my life are all around me:  them, the Genesis pioneers - the space heroes - the condemned of Mars."

My comments:  Wow, what a trip.  Ups and downs and all sorts of craziness, bt I couldn't wait to get back to the story every time I had to leave it.  The first volume was the best, the most fun, but the intricacy of this last volume, number three, was also really interesting.  Victor Dixen has quite an imagination.  I don't   think it would hurt to look into some of his other writing, if I can find any.  The series was written in French and I'm so tickled that it was translated into English, even though it was difficult to get hold of copies and hasn't been published in Kindle or audio as far as I can tell.

Goodreads synopsis:  The third book in a heartstopping, high-octane new space series.
          The Genesis Programme reality TV show has brought twelve young astronauts to Mars, to face unprecedented hostility. An even greater danger is now threatening Earth, but the viewers are too glued to their screens and the rescue mission to see what is really happening. 
          Leonor is ready to risk everything to bring out the truth and warn the world. She can never admit defeat - but can she fight her last fight alone?

Picture Book - Encyclopedia of Grannies by Eric Veille

Translated by Daniel Hahn (translated from French?)

2019, Gecko Press, New Zealand

HC. $17.99

28 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  3.46 - 24 ratings

My rating:  3
Thick cardboard covers, thick pages with rounded corners.

1^st line/s:  "The world's first encyclopedia devoted entirely to grannies."

My comments:  2/3 of the book seemed intended for the entertainment of grandmothers, if they're not easily offended.  Not actually sure who the intended audience of this book actually is....but I enjoyed most of it with a wry smile throughout....

Goodreads:  Why do grannies always tell us to speak up? Why do they have creases on their faces? Are grannies flexible? How do you cheer up a sad granny? How old are grannies, actually?
          Eric Veill� explains it all in this offbeat book for the extended family to chuckle over--no matter what kind of grandma you have, are, or would like to be. From the author of My Pictures after the Storm, which received three starred reviews and which School Library Journal proclaimed "may be the funniest book of the year."

Poetry PICTURE BOOK - Sweet Dreamers by Isabelle Simler

Translated by Sarah Ardizzone
Illustrated by the author

Published originally in France in 2017
America, 2019 by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers

HC $19.00

72 (thick) pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.26 - 135 ratings

My rating:  5 - for the artwork alone, but the translated poems are great, too
Endpapers:  Moon over mountains and water, two different views
ARTWORK:  Digital!  Scratched picture.  Incredible.

See Betsy Bird's outstanding review, description, and discussion of the digital art here.

My comments:Wow.  Just wow.

Goodreads:  A gorgeous bedtime book from an award-winning creator
          From the celebrated creator of Plume and The Blue Hour comes another enchanting animal book. Countless cozy animals are settling in for the night, but they all sleep in different ways. A bat dreams upside down, a hedgehog snuggles into a pile of leaves, and a humpback whale spins in its sleep like a ballerina.
          With its poetic language and lush illustrations, Sweet Dreamers will dazzle young readers as they drift off to sleep themselves.

    Slung like a hammock,

        the sloth dreams

  of spring-loaded sprinters,

      of rockets blasting off,

of pump-action spinning tops,.

  When the stopwatch starts,

          our dreaming racer

              doesn't move

                  an inch.

   The horse dreams standing up,

           in the middle of the herd.

       She never loses her footing,

    although her thoughts break free.

          Puffing up her feathers

              in a quilted hollow,

  the grouse dreams under the snow.

         She spends the night in secret

       beneath that great white sheet.

57. Distortion by Victor Dixen

(#2 Phobos)
read the book - purchased online
2015 original in French, 2018 English Hot Key Books
576 pgs.
YA SciFi
Finished 6/22/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.11 - 1853 ratings
My rating:  5
Setting:  Contemporary Mars and various east coast US locations

First line/s:  "Twelve.  We are twelve, gathered all together for the first time in the Visiting Room, the glass bubble that has seen us parading in, two by two, over these past five months: us, the participants in the Genesis programme, the greatest TV game show in all history - and the cruelest lie of all time."

My comments:  These 567 pages flew by, almost literally.  I totally recommend to anyone that is going to read the series that you have all three volumes in hand before starting.  The cliffhanger on this one is really something.  The first book was about being in the transport to Mars, the second is about the first month or so on Mars, very different because not only are the twelve young people investigating this new habitat that is now their new world AND getting to know their new partners in life, but they are trying to figure out how to not be thwarted by the evil Serena McBee.  However, the revelation that Marcus makes at the very end of the this second volume must have so much more to it....and you have to wait for the next volume.  Eeeek.  Not only that, but - spoiler, spoiler! - the drones are rushing towards Andrew and Harmony in Death Valley and you have no idea what's going to happen to them.  I'm thinking I have at least a week before I received volume three.  Woe is me!

Goodreads synopsis: After a speed-dating show that is literally out of this world, twelve young astronauts are set to become the first humans to colonise Mars. They are also the victims of the cruellest of plots.
          Léonor thought she was a pioneer on an extraordinary mission. She thought she had left all regrets behind her on Earth. But when memories are this painful, there can be no forgetting . .

49. Ascension by Victor Dixen

#1 Phobos
read the book - just translated (from French, I believe)
2015 original, 2018 in English
496 pgs.
YA SciFi
Finished 6/2/2019
Goodreads rating: 4.05 - 2990 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting:  On a spaceship to Mars, current time/dystopia

First line/s:

My comments:  OMG, I want to continue this story immediately, right now, vite, vite!  But it is literally impossible since the American edition will not be available till October 18th. Even though it's been out in English in Britain for a short while, I can't seem to find a way to get it.  Woe is me!
     This book was actually everything I'd hoped it would be, it was just plain fun.  Good guys vs. bad guys, innocents vs. unscrupulous.  And even though I dislike reality TV greatly, reading about it in a book worked really well for me-at least this time.  I can't wait to find out what is going to happen next....what a dirty trick, Victor Dixen....one of the toughest cliffhangers I've ever read.

Goodreads synopsis:  'This thrilling space odyssey will keep you turning pages late into the night.'
C. J. Daugherty, author of NIGHT SCHOOL
          Six girls, six boys. Each in the two separate bays of a single spaceship. They have six minutes each week to seduce and to make their choices, under the unblinking eye of the on-board cameras. They are the contenders in the Genesis programme, the world's craziest speed-dating show ever, aimed at creating the first human colony on Mars.
          Leonor, an 18 year old orphan, is one of the chosen ones. 
          She has signed up for glory.
          She has signed up for love.
          She has signed up for a one-way ticket.
          Even if the dream turns to a nightmare, it is too late for regrets.

Picture Book - The Neighbors by Einat Tsarfati

Illustrated by the author
Translated from Hebrew by Annette Appel

2017/Israel 2019/Abrams Books for Young Readers, NY

$16/99 HC

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.21 - 212 ratings

My rating:  5 A terrific picture book!

Endpapers:  mustard yellow with white line drawings of something from each apartment

1^st line/s:  "I live in a building that is seven stories high."

My comments:  This clever picture book entertains up to the very end - and what an ending!  It's all about a little girl's imagination, with lots and lots and LOTS to look at in each illustration.  It's also about what her life is about to become, I think!  SO MUCH to talk about and share with kids in this one.

Goodreads:   As a young girl climbs the seven stories to her own (very boring!) apartment, she imagines what’s behind each of the doors she passes. Does the door with all the locks belong to a family of thieves? Might the doorway with muddy footprints conceal a pet tiger? Each spread reveals—in lush detail—the wilds of the girl’s imagination, from a high-flying circus to an underwater world and everything in between. When the girl finally reaches her own apartment, she is greeted by her parents, who might have a secret even wilder than anything she could have imagined!

90. Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason

#3 Inspector Erlundur, 1st one published in English from Icelandic)
read on my iPhone, listened on Audio, AND watched the movie on Amazon Prime!
translated from Icelandic
2005 Minotaur - originally in 2000 in Iceland
275 pgs.
Adult Police Procedural/Murder Mystery
Finished 9/6/18
Goodreads rating:  3.8 - 19,061 ratings
My rating:  3.5
Setting: contemporary Reykjavik, Iceland

First line/s:  "The words were written in pencil on a piece of paper placed on top of the body."

My comments: I've had this book on my Kindle for years, and then got a cheap deal on audio, so had them both and finally decided to go for it.  Then I discovered it was hard listening to it because so many of the places and names in Iceland are almost incomprehensible for my weary brain.  But flipping back-and-forth between the text itself and the audio was really quite interesting.  And then I rented and watched the movie, made in Iceland with subtitles, an hour after I finished the book!
     Not only was this story/mystery itself incredibly dark, the setting was almost darker.  Although it was autumn, it was a dreary, constantly rainy autumn.  Erlunder, the detective protagonist, is a 50-ish, scruffy smoker, long divorced, with a daughter who is an addict.  She begins living off and on with him, and their relationship is ingrained into the story.  I'm not really sure how or why his investigation moves in the direction it does, but we immediately discover the dead man is a rapist, his few friends are criminal and crazy, and everything hinges around the death of a four-year-old boy 25 years previously.  The movie pretty much followed the book, though in a bit different order, but adding situations with the dead man's two accomplices that did change the story a bit.  Not sure how to rate this - I liked the setting and the characters, but the direction in which the plot moved so so improbable....

Goodreads synopsis:  When a lonely old man is found murdered in his Reykjavík flat, the only clues are a cryptic note left by the killer and a photograph of a young girl’s grave. Inspector Erlendur, who heads the investigation team, discovers that many years ago the victim was accused, though not convicted, of an unsolved crime. Did the old man’s past come back to haunt him?
          As the team of detectives reopen this very cold case, Inspector Erlendur uncovers secrets that are much larger than the murder of one old man--secrets that have been carefully guarded by many people for many years. As he follows a fascinating trail of unusual forensic evidence, Erlendur also confronts stubborn personal conflicts that reveal his own depth and complexity of character.

PICTURE BOOK - The Wonderful Fluffy Little Squishy by Beatrice Alemagna

Illustrated by the author

2015 Enchanted Lion Books, originally published 2014 in France

40 pgs. - one that opens out

Goodreads rating: 3.61 (470 ratings)

My rating: 4

Endpapers front: shocking pink
Endpapers back:  all the characters

Illustrations: watercolors over line art, some collage

My comments:  What a fun, fanciful story!  There's  a lot to like about this picture book.  I adore the illustrations (always love it when there's a little collage-y touches thrown in, as well as "lines" worked into the overall artwork).  The shocking pink endpapers, continuing into the story, are wonderful, as is the illustration on the closing endpaper.  There's so much to see on every page!  Perfect for five year olds...and four year olds...and six year olds....

Goodreads:  Eddie is five and a half, and thinks she is the only one in her family who isn’t really good at something.  So when she hears her little sister say “birthday—Mommy—fluffy—little—squishy,” it’s extra important for her to find this amazing present before anyone else does.  So, gregarious, charming, clever little Eddie goes all around the neighborhood to all her fabulous friends—the florist, the chic boutique owner, the antiques dealer, and even the intimidating butcher—to find one.  It’s a magical adventure that draws on Eddie’s special gifts, ones that she herself learns to appreciate.

10. Still Waters by Viveca Sten

(Sandhamm #1)
Listened on Audible
Translated from Swedish
2015 Amazon Crossing
387 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 2/22/17
Goodreads rating: 3.64 (5255 ratings)
My rating: 3
Setting: Contemporary Sandhamm Island, Sweden

My comments: This was translated from Swedish and is the first in a series of eight.  The first two have been translated but it doesn't look like the last six have been.  This was a good mystery, which I was very much in the mood for.  Set on one of the islands in the archipelago off Stockholm, Sweden, the story is told from two different perspectives, two adults who have been best friends since childhood.  Thomas Andreasen is a Stockholm cop.  Nora Linde is a mom and lawyer, married to a self-centered doctor.  Nora helps Thomas solve the mystery much more than any "friend" in the US would ever be allowed to do.  I would've been happy with a little less of Nora's life and problems with more focus on just the meat and potatoes of the mystery.  So I guess I liked 60% (the setting and mystery) of the book and didn't so much like 40% (the chick-lit parts) of the book..

Goodreads synopsis:  On a hot July morning on Sweden’s idyllic vacation island of Sandhamn, a man takes his dog for a walk and makes a gruesome discovery: a body, tangled in fishing net, has washed ashore.          
          Police detective Thomas Andreasson is the first to arrive on the scene. Before long, he has identified the deceased as Krister Berggren, a bachelor from the mainland who has been missing for months. All signs point to an accident—until another brutalized corpse is found at the local bed-and-breakfast. But this time it is Berggren’s cousin, whom Thomas interviewed in Stockholm just days before.          
          As the island’s residents reel from the news, Thomas turns to his childhood friend, local lawyer Nora Linde. Together, they attempt to unravel the riddles left behind by these two mysterious outsiders—while trying to make sense of the difficult twists their own lives have taken since the shared summer days of their youth.

23. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend - Katarina Bivald

Translated from Swedish by Alice Menzies
Library book - large print because all the regular prints were on a long reserve list
2013/2016 Kennebec Large Print
394  pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 4/9/16
Goodreads rating: 3.60
My rating: 3, I liked some of it a great deal
Setting: Contemporary Broken Wheel, Iowa

First line/s: "The strange woman standing on Hope's main street was so ordinary it was almost scandalous.  A thin, plain figure dressed in an autumn coat much too gray and warm for the time of year, a backpack lying on the ground by her feet, an enormous suitcase resting against one of her legs."

My comments:  I think I'm going to have to congitate on this one a bit before I give it a "rating."  It reminds me of another book, but for the life of me I can't think of which one it might be.  The premise is terrific - a 30-something "nobody" from Sweden has come to Nowhere, Iowa to meet the much-older penpal she's been trading books - and life stories - with for two years.  The town is dying/dead, but a small group of stalwart souls still inhabit and... run....the town.  Quirky folk, to be sure.  Enchanting.  Real?  Hmmm.  And Sara, the protagonist, is from Sweden.  She must speak flawless English, but this is never EVER referred to in any way.  Of course, when she arrives, her penpal is dead, having never mentioned that she was bedridden when she invoked the invitation.  If you read this with tongue-in-cheek, never taking anything too seriously, it's a great read.  Just a little too sugar-coated for me in places, I guess.

Goodreads synopsis: Once you let a book into your life, the most unexpected things can happen...
          Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist—even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books. Marooned in a farm town that's almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend's memory. 
          All she wants is to share the books she loves with the citizens of Broken Wheel and to convince them that reading is one of the great joys of life. But she makes some unconventional choices that could force a lot of secrets into the open and change things for everyone in town. Reminiscent of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, this is a warm, witty book about friendship, stories, and love.

20. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

#1 Millenium Trilogy
translated from Swedish by Reg Keeland
13 unabridged cds whilst driving back & forth from work and around town when not in work...
2005 Knopf
 465 pgs.
Very adult Murder Mystery
Finished
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating:5
Setting: Sweden, starts in Stockhilm,but mostly on the coast more up north

First line/s:  "It happened every year, was almost a ritual.  And this was his eighty-second birthday.  When, as usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then  picked up the telephone to call Detective Superintendent Morrell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna."

My comments: Oh my, I'm SO glad I read this.  I've seen both versions of the movie - totally enjoying them both - but the book was incredibly different, more so than the usual book-to-movie translations.  Unsettling, yes.  Thought-provoking, yes.  A twisting-turning-terrible mystery to solve, yes.  I loved being able to get into Salander's head, even if it was only a little and only for short amounts of time.  I can't wait to read the next one! (Which I'll probably listen to, because the narrator was wonderful.)

Goodreads synopsis:  Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch—and there's always a catch—is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo.

51. Ruby Red - Kersten Geir

Precious Stone Trilogy #1

listened to on Audible
translated from German by Anthea Bell
330 pgs.
YA Dystopia/Time Travel
Finished 8/8/15
Goodreads rating: 4.12
My rating: 4

First sentence/s:  "I first felt it in the school canteen on Monday morning.  For a moment it was like being on a roller coaster when you're racing down from the very top.  It lasted only two seconds, but that was long enough for me to dump a plateful of mashed potatoes and gravy all over my school uniform.  I managed to catch the plate just in time, as my knife and fork clattered tot he floor."

My comments:  I listened to this first in the series with its lovely lilting accent, making it very British indeed.  Time flew by as I sewed and listened.  I jut wish that Gwyneth would speak up for herself a little more other than just thinking her feelings.  Nothing seemed at all familiar to me...until I went to enter it onto my book list and see I'd already read it.  Nothing seemed familiar at all!  So weird.  But you can see my first review here.  It's a pretty decent review!

Goodreads synopsis:  Gwyneth Shepherd's sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth, who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era!
          Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon--the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.

41. The Girls of Riyadh - Rajaa Alsanea

translated by Rajaa Alsanea and Marilyn Booth
for:  Adults (and YA's too)
Penguin Books, 2007 (originally published in Arabic in 2005)
paper $14.00
286 pgs.
Rating:  4

This is the story of four upper class Saudi girls and the customs and foibles they live with when it comes to dating (huh!), men, and marriage.  Even though I had some background, some pre-established knowledge, there were many eye-opening new facts to learn. It was written in an interesting way.  Supposedly, every week for a year or so, a "friend" of the four girls writes an email to a list of subscribers to uncover more and more of the girls' story. She gets quite a backlash - both good and bad - from different Saudis.  The book itself was very controversial in Saudi Arabia and other Arabic, Islamic countries.

Read no further unless you want spoilers.  The four friends:

Gamrah - first married, to a man who takes her to Chicago and goes out of his way to show his distaste for her.  Come to find out, he's had a loving relationship, but his parents would not allow him to marry her.  He continues this relationship, Gamrah gets purposely pregnant, and they divorce.  She is left bitter and angry.

Sadeem - becomes engaged to Wahleed, it seems to be a love match until she gives herself fully to him shortly before the actual marriage and he dumps her.  Then she meets Faras, an older-than-her politician and they are practically glued at the hip....until his family refuses to let him marry a "divorced" woman and forces him to marry another.

Michelle - half American, but fully a Saudi, since she's lived there through adolescence.  She falls in love with Faisal, but his parents have someone else in mind for him.  She eventually goes to the United Arab Emirates and becomes a producer.

Lamees - the most playful, flirtatious of the four, she knows how to have fun and finally, in medical school, sees the man she desires as a husband, plays her cards right, and follows the traditional path without too much glamour and fireworks. She was also the character that interested me the least.

30. Don't Look Back - Karin Fossum

Translated from Norwegian by Felicity David
A Harvest Book; Harcourt, Inc., 2002
$14.00 paperback
295 pgs.
Rating:  4.5

I'm not even sure why I didn't rate this a 5, because I liked it very much.  The translation was wonderful, she used outstanding words, out-of-the-ordinary vocabulary which was delightful, I reread a number of passages for the beauty of the words alone.  At first I thought it was going to be easily solved because a few seemingly blatant clues were included, but I was very, very wrong.  Perhaps this is why I didn't rate it a five, the first fourth or fifth of the book I was so sure I knew what was going to happen that I didn't pay it enough heed.  Big mistake.

Chief Inspector Konrad Sejer is the crime solver in this story.  He works in a small town in Norway, near enough to Oslo that they can drive.  He is aided by his curly-haired young sidekick named Skarre who is learning as he helps and watches Sejer.  We get to know many people in the small town, and most of the people that live near the neighborhood where the victim in the story resides.

Young Annie Holland has been found murdered, but not assaulted, by the tarn. Only 16, everyone only has kind words to say about here.  She was pretty, athletic, kind, and a babysitter for many of the families that lived nearby.  She had a very nice boyfriend and no enemies.  But as Sejer begins asking questions and putting pieces together, he finds that her happy-go-lucky attitude changed at a certain time in the recent past.  Now he has to discover why, and if this had anything at all to do with her murder.

The book also begins and ends in a way that keep you guessing, seals everything up, then keeps you guessing again.  Good storytelling.  I didn't realize how strange-to-English-speaking-ears Norwegian names would be.  Annie, Konrad, Raymond, okay.  The rest weren't:  Ragnhild, Thorbjorn, Snorrason, Halvor, Solvi, Eskil.....so interesting.  Really puts you into the setting even more.  But I still couldn't quite picture the place, that was the one weakness for me.  I could only picture some of it in my mind.  But really good story.

35. The Song of the Whales - Uri Orlev

translated from Hebrew by Hillel Halkin
Houghton Mifflin, 2010
108 pgs.
Rating: I'm afraid I didn't like it at all

Michael's parents move from America to Israel because Michael's grandfather, who lives there, is getting old, and the parents don't want him to give his estate away to his housekeeper/"kept woman." They buy a big house in Jerusalem, and Michael goes - on his own - to visit his grandfather, who he feels close to.

Michael has no friends. He'd rather create and pretend, and he's never had friends. He isn't close to his parents, who don't seem to have much interest in him, either, to tell the truth. Madame Saupier, the housekeeper, doesn't like children because she was never able to have any of her own, and she forces Michael to be clean, clean, clean.

When Grandfather begins to ail, he and Madame Saupier come to live at Michael's house. Imagine, they have four bedrooms, how convenient. And Michael (who has become Mikha'el in Israel), slips into bed with his grandfather now and again. And now the really weird part - they share grandfather's dreams. This is a gift that he has apparently had, and it has passed on to Michael.

The dreams are bizarre (as dreams usually are), sometimes scary, and boring to read. The story jumps here there and everywhere, never really sticking to a storyline or finishing out an idea that was about to blossom. Sometimes it was even hard to tell what was real and what was a dream. And.....I didn't care. I was just happy to be finished.

I can't imagine a kid liking this book.

The Black Book of Colors - Menena Cottin

Illustrator: Rosana Faria
Tranlated by Elisa Amado
Both author and illustrator are from Venezuela
For: Any and all
Publilshed: 2006
Rating: 5
Read: October, 2008, many times
Endpapers; Black - as they should be.

What an incredible premise. A picture book written to be touched. Black as a-night-with-no-moon pages. Short white font in the lower left is all we SEE. The rest we have to feel.

Above the one-sentence of text is the sentence written in braille. And then, the entire facing page is a raised illustration...an illustration to be touched. "Thomas says that yellow tastes like mustard, but is as soft as a baby chick's feathers." Fliuffy feathers float across the facing page, lovely to see when you can get the light just right, and SO difficult for the unaccustomed, desensitised fingers to feel. "Red is sour like unripe strawberries and as sweet as watermelon. It hurts when he finds it on his scraped knee." A huge, plump strawberry attached to its vine, with two smaller strawberries as well. "Brown crunches under his feel like fall leaves. Sometimes it smells like chocolate, and other times it stinks."

The last page is the braille alphabet. I cannot feel these dots. It all feels the same to me. How do people do it? This is one of the most thought-provoking picture books I've read in a long time.

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.