It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Hello, Monday!


This week, I've been a reading machine!  Here's what I read...

64.  Between Sea & Sky by Jaclyn Dolamore (finished 4/17) Romance involving mermaids and angels.  A decent read.

65.  Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler (finished 4/20) Great artwork, interesting story that tells exactly why Min & Ed broke up.

66.  Lie by Caroline Bock (finished 4/22) Intense novel centered around feelings about illegal immigration.

67.  Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey (finished 4/27) Third in The Monstrumologist series.  Gory and compelling.

68.  Witchlanders by Lena Coakley (finished 4/28) Great fantasy!  Pick this one up.

68.  Burnout by Adrienne Maria Vrettos (finished 4/29) Another intense read about a girl who has lost a day and is desperate to find out what happened.

Coming up I have to:

• finish reading Wither by Lauren DeStefano
• read Pink by Lili Wilkinson
• read Entwined by Heather Dixon
• go to the launch party for Insurgent by Veronica Roth, get my book signed, and of course read it!

I can't tell you how excited I am for Insurgent!  I've been waiting for a year, and my daughter (who just read Divergent and will be going with me to get her own copy of Insurgent signed) and I plan to read Insurgent together next weekend.  From what I've seen on Twitter this week, those who got advance copies have been loving it.

Want to know what other bloggers have been reading this week?  Head over to TeachMentorTexts and check out the links!

Between the Sea & Sky by Jacklyn Dolamore

Between the Sea & Sky by Jaclyn Dolamore (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Summary from publisher:

For as long as Esmerine can remember, she has longed to join her older sister, Dosia, as a siren -- the highest calling a mermaid can have.  When Esmerine takes her siren's vow, she means to protect the sea and all that live within it -- until Dosia runs away to the mainland and Esmerine is sent to retrieve her.
Secretly thrilled with the prospect of seeing a world that she's only glimpsed from the ocean, Esmerine uses magic to transform her tail into legs and journeys to the capital city.  There, she comes upon a friend she hasn't seen since childhood -- a dashing young man named Alander, who belongs to a winged race of people.  Alander, whose odd ways and brash opinions offend yet fascinate her.  But as Esmerine embarks on a search for her sister that will take her farther away from the sea she loves and the life she has always known, she and Alander rekindle a friendship... and more.

YA lit definitely has its trends:  vampires, werewolves, fairies, dystopian, angels... now it seems to be mermaids.  This is probably the fourth book I've read in the last six months involving mermaids, and I must say, it took an interesting spin, combining both mermaids AND angels!

Dolamore creates a believable world, both in and out of the water, and I was intrigued by Esmerine's  story.  Esmerine's struggles to fit in on land seemed realistic, and I empathized with her as she tried to figure out how Alander felt about her after all of these years.

This book will appeal to girls who like some gentle romance in their fiction, and while technically I would label this "paranormal romance," it reads more like realistic fiction where one character happens to be a mermaid and one an angel.

The Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey

The Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey 
(Simon & Schuster, 2011)

Summary from publisher:
"Rip a human being apart, shred him into pieces no larger than the length of your thumb, and see how much of him you can recognize... That blob of purplish substance there - a piece of his heart of perhaps a chunk of his liver?... Imagine an enormous robin's nest fashioned not from twigs and leaves, but from human remains."
On a quest to find the monster known as the "Holy Grail of Monstrumology" with his eager new assistant, Arkwright, Dr. Warthrop leaves Will Henry in New York.  There, the boy finds himself living with a real family; not facing midnight vivisections, narrow escapes, or confrontations with monstrosities, human and inhuman.  After months go by with no word from Warthrop, Arkwright returns with the devastating news that the doctor is dead.
Will doesn't trust Arkwright, and he can't believe -- won't accept -- this information.  Determined to find Warthrop, he journeys to London in hopes of finding his doctor still alive, knowing that if he succeeds, he will face something worse than all the monstrosities he has seen in his young life.  They will go to Socotra, the Isle of Blood, where human beings are used to make nests, where blood rains from the sky. 
In the deadliest adventure yet in the series that began with the Printz Honor-winning The Monstrumologist, which VOYA called, "gothic horror at its finest and most disturbing," Will Henry ust decide whether his loyalty to Dr. Warthrop is enough for him to make the ultimate sacrifice.

As a rule, I generally do not enjoy scary or gory books.  This one is both.  However, I found that I could not put this book down!  Even though I had not read the first two books in the story, I was able to fall right into Will Henry's world.  The way Yancy crafted this story was masterful.  Though parts of it made me cringe, I could not NOT keep reading!  I had to find out if Dr. Walthorp would be successful in finding his "Holy Grail," and if Walthorp and Will Henry would both make it to the end of the book alive.

This is definitely a book for older readers. First of all, at 557 pages, it is a challenging read.  The vocabulary and sentence structure are sophisticated; Yancey definitely achieves a Victorian feel in this novel.  The gore and violence are also more suited to an older reader.

Fans of The Monstrumologist series will definitely enjoy this latest installment, but don't let the fact that it's a third book scare you.  It definitely stands on its own.

Lie by Caroline Bock

Lie by Caroline Bock (St. Martin's Griffin, 2011)


Summary from publisher:
Everybody knows, nobody's talking... Seventeen year old Skylar Thompson is being questioned by the police.  Her boyfriend, Jimmy, stands accused of brutally assaulting two young El Salvadoran immigrants from a neighboring town, an she's the prime witness.  Skylar is keeping quiet about what she's seen, but how long can she keep it up?
But Jimmy was her savior... When her mother died, he was the only person who made her feel safe, protected from the world.  But when she begins to appreciate the enormity of what has happened, especially when Carlos Cortez, one of the victims, steps up to demand justice, she starts to have second thoughts about protecting Jimmy.  Jimmy's accomplice, Sean, is facing his own moral quandary.  he's out on bail and has been offered a plea in exchange for testifying against Jimmy.
The truth must be told... Sean must decide whether or not to turn on his friend in order to save himself.  But most important, both he and Skylar need to figure out why they would follow someone like Jimmy in the first place.

This is an intense book.  From the moment I started reading the first page, I couldn't put this one down.  Told from several voices, the story revolves around the brutal beating of two brothers who the teens assume to be illegal Mexican immigrants.  Jimmy and his friends go "on patrol" to keep "beaners" from coming into their town on Long Island, and one night things go to far.  If this story had been told just from Skylar's view or just from Jimmy's, the novel would not have been as rich or as compelling.

There were moments when I gasped out loud as I was reading.  It takes a lot to surprise me, and I love it when that happens.  Bock does a great job of pacing this novel to keep the suspense growing.

This is definitely a book for older readers that captures the uneasy feelings about illegal immigration in our country today.  I highly recommend it.

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler 
(Little Brown, 2011)


Summary from publisher:
This is the box, Ed.


Inside is everything.




Two bottlecaps,
a movie ticket from Greta in the Wild,
a note from you,
a box of matches,
your protractor,
Joan's book,
the stolen sugar,
a toy truck,
those ugly earrings,
a comb from the motel,
and the rest of it.


This is it, Ed.


The whole story of why we broke up.

The first thing I thought when I picked up this book was, "Holy cow!  This is a heavy book!"  As I started reading, I realized the reason was the thick, shiny paper the publisher used in order to showcase Maira Kalman's art throughout the book.  I loved the art.  I think it was my favorite part of this book.

I had a hard time getting into this book.  I'm not sure what exactly it was about the way Handler wrote, but something about Min's voice was off-putting at first.  Eventually, though, I got used to it, and I ended up really enjoying the story.  The book is basically one long letter from Min to her ex-boyfriend, Ed, written as her friend Al drives Min to drop the box containing the letter and mementos of their relationship off at Ed's house.  The story of their relationship is told through these mementos.

One of the things I found frustrating, though I know it's also realistic, is that Min becomes completely engrossed in Ed and lets her friendships with Al and the others in her circle slide.  I wanted to take her aside and whisper in her ear that no boyfriend is worth losing your friends over, but really, what teenage girl is going to listen to that advice from a 43 year old mom?

This book has definite teen appeal, though I wonder how much teens will pay attention to the art.  Definitely worth a read!

It's Monday... What Are You Reading?

Happy Monday once again!  Is it just me, or do the weeks seem to be flying by?  I can't believe it's the middle of April already.  


Here's what I read this week.  It was kind of a slow reading week for me...

64.  Between Sea & Sky by Jaclyn Dolamore (finished 4/17) This one was okay.  New take on mermaids (are they the new hot trend in YA?  I've been reading quite a few mermaid stories lately.)

65.  Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler (finished 4/20)  Had a hard time getting used to Handler's writing at the beginning of this novel but ended up enjoying it.

66.  Lie by Caroline Bock (finished 4/22) This book's subject matter is timely and tough to read.  Definitely a book for older readers.

This week I plan to:

• Finish Isle of Blood
• Read Wither
• Read Witchlanders
• Read Burnout

Three of the four of these books are HUGE!  We'll see how well I do.

Want to see what other bloggers have been reading?  Head over to TeachMentorTexts to find out!

Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera

Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera (Albert Whitman, 2011)


Summary from publisher:
He's fifteen.
He hasn't done anything wrong.
It was supposed to be just a trip to visit his mum's family in Pakistan.  But for Khalid Amed, it was the beginning of a nightmare.  He's kidnapped - then taken to a place thousands of miles from his home in the UK.  A place where torture and terror are the daily routine.  A place he may never be allowed to leave...
A place called Guantanamo Bay.

HOLY COW!  This story packs a powerful punch.  I've actually owned this book for over a year, and I would often pack it in my giant bag of books to read on road trips.  I knew, however, that it would be a difficult book to read.  I kept putting it off.  Finally, I HAD to read it.  I'm so glad I did.  This is a story that grips you, takes you in, tears you apart, and then leaves your head spinning.

There's so much we weren't told about what was going on at Guantanamo Bay.

I had the opportunity to hear Perera speak last fall at the Anderson's Young Adult Literature conference.  She talked at length about the research she did while writing the book, and the reason why she felt she HAD to tell Khalid's story.  She takes the isolation, the water boarding, the sleep deprivation, and the other forms of torture the detainees at Guantanamo Bay endured and makes them impactful without falling victim to hyperbole or exaggeration.  She helps you to see that it was amazing the children who were held there actually survived their treatment and makes you wonder how these boys will ever have normal lives.

Were there terrorists held at this prison?  Of course.  But there were also many innocent people, put there because of the bounty that was offered, who did nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  When I finished, I was angry at the government who perpetrated and then prolonged the misery of this prison and then hid the truth from us.

So my book review turned into a political rant.  Honestly, I don't know that I could have written this any other way.  I'm sure my adult brain filtered this book differently than a teenaged brain would, but I think kids in middle and high school certainly would understand the War on Terror more than they currently do after reading this book.  I hope that after reading it, they would think about the dangers of making assumptions about people and their motives just by the way they look or how they pray.

It's Monday... What Are You Reading?

I can't believe it's been several weeks since I posted an "It's Monday" post.  Suffice it to say my life has been nuts.  I started working on my administrative certification, and last week I decided to take a different position in my school which will take me out the classroom.  I will be swapping jobs with our Literacy Coach, and while I am glad I decided to go ahead and take the risk, it will be hard giving up those special relationships I'm able to develop with my students each year.


So last week I read:

59.  Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor (finished 4/10)  (OMG....I so loved this story.  It was so different!  Can't wait for the sequel in November)

60.   The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen (finished 4/11)  (This was a re-read for our book club.  Loved it, too)

61.  Carmen by Walter Dean Myers (finsihed 4/13) (meh,... found the script format kept me at an emotional distance from the characters)

62.  Lost & Found by Shaun Tan (finished 4/14) (beautiful picture book? graphic novel? that left me thinking)

63.  a + e 4ever by ilike merey (finished 4/15) (VERY adult graphic novel.  I'll be passing this along to a high school teacher to decide if it would be appropriate for his or her students.

This week I plan to:

• finish Between The Sea and Sky
• Read Why We Broke Up and Lie (at least)

What are YOU reading this week?

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
(Little, Brown, 2011)


Summary from publisher:
Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grows dangerously low.
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal, otherworldly war.
Meet Karou.  She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she speaks many languages -- not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color.  Who is she?  That is the question that haunts her, and she is about to find out.

Oh....my....goodness!  I had been hearing since September that I HAD to read this book.  One of my students read it right after it was released and couldn't stop talking about it.  I finally read it last week, and she was completely right.  I was hooked right away and couldn't put it down!  Now I have to wait until November to read the sequel!

Taylor gives the new trend in YA lit - angels - a new twist with this story.  She also makes demons endearing, which is not an easy thing to do with the demons/monsters in this book.  I loved how this book made me think and wonder about what was going to happen next; there were definitely some unexpected twists and turns over the course of this story.  Of course, this book also made me want blue hair.

One of the things that made this book intriguing (though could be a turn-off for some readers) was the way Taylor would switch perspectives. Sometimes I had to adjust my reading to figure out whose story I was reading at a given time, but I didn't mind, because reading more than just Karou's story gave the plot a depth that would have been lacking otherwise.

Go read this book.  Right now.  It's that good.  And who could resist that cover?

The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman

The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman (Scholastic, 2011)


Summary from publisher:
Jen and Wes do not "meet cute."  They do not fall in love at first sight.  They do not swoon with scorching desire.  They do not believe that they are instant soul mates destined to be together forever.
This is not that kind of love story.
Instead, Jen and Wes hang around in each other's orbits.... until eventually they collide.  And even after that happens, they're still not sure where it will go.  Especially when Jen starts to pity-date one of Wes's friends, and Wes makes some choices that he immediately regrets.

Let me put this out there:  I REALLY enjoyed reading The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman.  It was a different kind of teen romance.  Divided first into seasons, beginning with fall, then alternating between Wes's and Jen's stories, Hautman did a great job of building a believable story peopled with believable characters.

One of the things I liked most about this story is that both main characters are kind of quirky, and they embrace their quirkiness.  We don't have the old one-is-popular-and-one-is-not conundrum that seems to pop up quite a bit in romances for younger readers.  I also appreciate that Wes and June get to know each other before they realize they like each other.  It wasn't love at first sight, which is much more elusive than books would have you believe.

I hate to categorize this book as a "girl" book, because with the male protagonist, I really do think there are boys out there who would enjoy this story.  It's not, though, an action book like those most of my boy readers tend to gravitate to.  I wonder how I could talk about this book in a way that would get a boy or two to pick it up.

Hopefully, I've convinced you to pick it up, too!

The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch

The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch 
(Scholastic, 2011)

Summary from publisher:
Sometimes the only way to survive is to keep moving.  America is a vast, desolate landscape left ravaged after a brutal war.  Two-thirds of the population are dead from a vicious strain of influenza.  People called the sickness the Eleventh Plague.
Fifteen-year-old Stephen Quinn was born after the war and only knows the life of a salvager.  His family was among the few who survived and took to roaming the country in search of material to trade.  But when Stephen's grandfather dies and his father falls into a coma after an accident, Stephen finds his way to Settler's Landing, a community that seems too good to be true.  There Stephen meets strong, defiant mischievous Jenny, who refuses to accept things as they are.  When they play a prank that goes horribly wrong, chaos erupts, and they find themselves in the midst of a battle that will change Settler's Landing - and their lives - forever.

I purchased this book at our school book fair way back in September, thinking it sounded like a great dystopian for the boys in my class who aren't interested in dystopian-with-love-triangles.  Then my life got busy, and I never got around to reading it.  This is too bad for the kids in my class, as it really was a pretty good story.  With the male protagonist and only a touch of romance, this adventure and action filled story will fill a hole my boys have been finding in the dystopians in my classroom library.

The premise behind the book is pretty scary, because it is all too possible.  We know there are virulent strains of influenza that can wipe out large portions of a population.  Look at the 1918 influenza outbreak for proof, or more recently, H1-N1.  The thought that a war over limited resources would follow such an outbreak is not unreasonable.  When I was a young child, I obsessed over the Cold War with the Soviet Union.  I was always thinking about what my family should do if a nuclear warhead were to be directed at the air force base near the town where I lived (crazy, I know, but true). Television events such as "The Day After" only made my obsession worse.  Now I obsess over things like influenza outbreaks and cyber wars.  Books such as The Eleventh Plague do not do much to assuage those fears!  Perhaps I need to seek help for this!

Boys and girls will both enjoy this great dystopian novel.  It would be a great addition to any middle school classroom library.

Stay by Deb Caletti

Stay by Deb Caletti (Simon Pulse, 2011)



Summary from publisher:
Everything had changed, and everything would stay changed because that's what happens when the fear gets in.
Clara's relationship with Christian is intense from the start, and like nothing she's ever experienced before.  But what starts as devotion quickly becomes obsession, and it's almost too late before Clara realizes how far gone Christian is -- and what he's willing to do to make her stay.
Now Clara has left the city -- and Christian -- behind.  No one back home knows where she is, but she still struggles to shake off her fear.  She knows Christian won't let her go that easily, and that no matter how far she runs, it may not be far enough...

Stay is an intense story about an intense relationship.  Reading about this relationship from a teen girl's perspective is creepy; I often felt like a voyeur, spying on someone I shouldn't be spying on.  At times I wanted to shake Clara, to tell her to wake up and see how she is being manipulated, and at other times I thought back on my own intense teenage relationship and how easy it is to fall into compliance.  I think it's good for teen girls to read about obsessive behavior, to try out these feelings and figure out what they would do if they were in the main character's shoes.  Of course, it's easy to SAY what you would do, but is often difficult when in the situation.

Not everything that happens in this story is completely believable or even fits the storyline, however this story does work.  I found myself unable to put the book down; I wanted to know what was going to happen to Clara and her father.  There are sexual situations in this book that makes it difficult to recommend to younger teens, and there is quite a bit of language, too.  Neither is gratuitous, and the scenes involving sex aren't graphic.  They are, however, instrumental in getting to understand Clara and her relationship with Christian.

I highly recommend this book to more mature teen readers.

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker 
(Bloomsbury, 2011)


Summary from publisher:
Sometimes you just know everything is about to change.  That you'll finally get your own moment in the spotlight.  This is that year for perennial good girl Lacey Anne Byer.
With her driver's license n hand, Lacey has a little freedom from her protective parents now -- or at least more than she had before.  And as a junior, she is eligible to try out for a starring role in Hell House, her church's annual haunted house of sin.  But it turns out Lacey doesn't need to play a role to have her moment.  What she needs it Ty Davis.  He's smart, cute, and best of all, new.  He doesn't know sweet, shy, good girl Lacey Anne.  With Ty, Lacey could reinvent herself and maybe get her first boyfriend.
As her feelings for Ty grow, and conflicts surrounding Hell House intensify, Lacey finds reason to test her own boundaries -- to question faith she's always known to be absolute.

I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this book after reading the cover blurb.  Anyone who knows me knows I'm not big on organizes religion, and I have fairly strong views on some of the issues addressed in this book.  I am however, also curious about people who are members of fundamentalist religious groups, whether Christian, Jewish, Morman, or any other denomination.  I thought perhaps that this book would give me a glimpse of what it's like to be a teen in one of these groups.

I really enjoyed this story, even though at times I wanted to shake the parents for being so close-minded about their daughter and her questions.  I could understand why Lacey was beginning to ask hard questions about her faith and her parents' way of life; many teens go through this as they begin to think for themselves about the big-question items in their lives.  Really, Lacey could have gone much farther with her questioning than she did; she really didn't stray all that far off the path that her parents had set her on as a child.  I thought this, too, was a realistic portrayal of a teen.  Not all teens rebel in a hell-bent-for-leather way.  Some rebel quietly and in small ways.

Lacey's character felt real to me, as did the characters of her friends.  This is a quiet story of finding oneself and one's place in the world.  Girls who enjoy will realistic fiction will find much to like between the pages, including a bit of romance.