6. House Arrest - K. A. Holt

read on my Kindle
2015 Chronicle Books
304 pgs. (written in verse)
Middle Grades
Finished 2/10/17
Goodreads rating: 4.26 (1577 ratings)
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary USA (at one point it mentions Texas)

My comments:  The beginning of the story (below) sets it up particularly well, but doesn't tell of the dire straits that Timothy, his mom, and his baby brother are in.  Not only is Levi on super expensive medicine, he must be accompanied every minute because his breathing can be compromised without notice.  That means help.  And the help they end up getting causes more bad than good.  There is so much love in this book. Lots of other wonderful stuff, but lots of love.  Written in verse, as a diary/journal.

Goodreads synopsis:
Stealing is bad.
Yeah.
I know.
But my brother Levi is always so sick, and his medicine is always so expensive.

I didn’t think anyone would notice,
if I took that credit card,
if, in one stolen second,
I bought Levi’s medicine.

But someone did notice.
Now I have to prove I’m not a delinquent, I’m not a total bonehead.

That one quick second turned into
juvie
a judge
a year of house arrest,
a year of this court-ordered journal,
a year to avoid messing up
and being sent back to juvie
so fast my head will spin.

It’s only 1 year.
Only 52 weeks.
Only 365 days.
Only 8,760 hours.
Only 525,600 minutes.

What could go wrong?

Let's Go See Papa! - Lawrence Schimel

Illustrated by Alba Marina Rivera
Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press, 2009
$18.95
40 pages
Rating:  Liked it a lot
Endpapers: Light Blue
Title page:  Beige with illustration of the house where the little girl lives
Illustrations:  Full page on beige, some go over onto the facing page.  I like the illustrations a lot, looking closely I think they're done with colored pencils.
1st line/s:  "On Sundays I wake up early even though I don't have to go to school./Papa's going to call us.  He phones every Sunday because it's cheaper.  Sunday is my favorite day.
Setting:  A Spanish-speaking country, contemporary.
OSS:  A little girl misses her father who has been working for over a year in the United States while she and her mom live with her abuela and wait for him to come home or send for them.

This is a lovely story, of family, of missing a parent, or how life goes on while waiting for change to come when you know it's coming.  The little girl in the story, who lives in an unnamed country, waits for Sunday to talk briefly with her papa on the phone. She keeps a journal for him, telling him what's happening in their life each day while he's gone. He's in America, and this Sunday, after almost two years, he's telling her she and her mom are going to fly there to live with him.  She has, of course, mixed feelings...she'll be leaving her best friend, her grandmother, and her dog, but she misses her father so badly that she's still happy to go.  The book ends as the mother and daughter are flying away on an airplane over the ocean.

I liked thinking about the immigrants that I see here in Tucson and the family they may have left behind, missing them, working hard to make life easier for them, how often do I think about that?  All most parents want for their kids is a good life!

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.

5. Best Friends Forever - Beverly Patt

Illustrated by Shula Klinger
A World War II Scrapbook
Marshall Cavendish Children, 2010
$17.99 hc
92 pages
Rating: 5

This book is written as a journal/scrapbook by 14 year old Louise Margaret Krueger in 1942. Her best friend is Dottie Masuoka, and they live and go to school near Seattle. Their lives are forever changed when Dottie and her entire family are relocated to interment camps after the bombing by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

The diary includes letters from Dottie to Louise as well as newspaper articles about the bombing and coverage of the relocation. Therefore, it covers the feelings and sentiments of non-Japanese Americans who have Japanese American friends as well as insight from the interred Japanese Americans. We see and feel what it's like to be on the outside of the fence, as what it feels like to be on the inside. The housing is described really well, and the decline of Dottie's grandfather and his growing resentment of the U. S. government is powerful.

The book is well-written, interesting, fun to read, and filled with historic information. After visiting Manzanar last summer it was particularly poignant to read. There is a five-page afterward that includes oodles of information related to the historical background of the story.

Jackson and Bud's Bumpy Ride - Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff

America's First Cross-Country Automobile Trip
Illustrated by Wes Hargis
Millbrook Press, 2009
$16.95
32 pages
Rating: 3.5
Endpapers: Map of their journey across the US
2011 Grand Canyon Reader Award Nominee

Read at the Copper Queen Library, Bisbee, AZ on 9-25-10
The Afterword gives photos, dates, and interesting related information.

May 19, 1903 - a $50 bet that no one could ride a "horseless buggy" across the U. S. Horatio Jackson, visiting San Francisco from his native Vermont, takes it on!

No maps, poor all-dirt roads that were not used to cars, tires that look like bicycle tires needing quite a bit of repair, and a vehicle that appears to have no roof, all thwart them. But Horatio Jackson and Bud, the bulldog he acquires on the way, make it.

The story is told in diary form with very brief entries. The illustrations tell more of the story than the words. Fun!

The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound - Sallie Wolf

Charlesbridge, 2010
$11.95
For: Kids
44 pages
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Gray & cream checkerboard with simple bird sketches

Observation journal - an excellent model
Poetry book
Sketching
Watercolors

This journal takes us through a year of observations - of birds, or the changing seasons, and models an observation journal beautifully. It is also a poetry book that includes rhyming poeims, haiku, list poems....

Wolf ends her jounral with a page of thoughts behind journal keeping and a page of bird-watching resources.

Winter Wren
Are you a winter wren?
I see you only once or twice a year ---
a tiny, dark shadow scooting under bushes.
If your tail weren't so perky,
if you weren't so tiny,
I'd think you were on of those
ubiquitous sparrows.

Frustrations
I often hear what I can't see ---
birds and squirrels scolding me.
I scan the branches far and near,
but I don't see what I can hear.

(A haiku)
Early crocuses
burst through dead leaves. Brown creepers
circle up tree trunks.

I love all the pen and ink and watercolor sketches.

Next year I'm going to begin our science studies with observations of the flora and fauna of southern Arizona. Perhspas I'll teach the kids how to sew together an easy journal of blank pages and we can start making observations using this super book as a model.

Amelia Hits the Road - Marissa Moss

Grades 3-5

Pleasant Co. (American Girl) 1997

40 pgs.

Rating: 3.5

I've had Amelia books on my bookshelves in school for years, but have never read one cover to cover. They look really busy and overwhelming, but they're not hard to read at all. I wish I could keep a journal like Amelia - but you have to be able to draw. She (Amelia/Marissa Moss) makes it look so easy.

This is a series where Amelia ages, but she's only ten in this one, on a car trip with her mom and sister Cleo from Oregon to the Grand Canyon, Death Valley (with a stop afterwards at Manzanar) on the way to Yosemite, with the final destination being their old hometown in Barton, California...and her best friend, Nadia, who she hasn't seen in a year.

Cleo gets carsick a lot, and they hike down the Kaibab Tral at the Grand Canyon - full of mule poop. There's quite a bit about vomit and poop and a bratty-drive-you-crazy sister (is Cleo older or younger, I can't tell...), but it's also full of ten-year-old angst, great tourist sites, and all sorts of ephemera. She even meets a boy who makes chains of gum wrappers (great drawing) just like I used to!

I love the covers of these books - the marbelized black journals with stickers and maps and colorful drawings added.

Quick read - and a fun one. (And I love all her hand-drawn cactuses and license plates and the way she uses colored pencil circles and splashes of water color to accent certain words.)