Colin's (Partial 2010)

                                                  


Enjoy!


This is only a partial list of what Colin read this year.   These are the books that he took AR tests on, plus a couple I could remember.   This does not include any book he read over the summer or any book that didn't have a test.  Still there are 54 books here, and only 2 are picture books.   The rest are chapter books, some very long.  


He read all the Percy Jackson series, and really enjoyed them, as well as both of Rick Riordan's new books, The Red Pyramid and The Lost Hero.  These, however, were not his favorite series.  That would be the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer.  He notes the most recent of these, The Atlantic Complex, as one of his favorite books of the year.  


He was also a big fan of the Heck books, and is anxiously awaiting the fourth circle in the spring.


It is clear from going through this list that he tends towards the fantasy - or I tend towards handing him the fantasy.  Which do you think it is?  At least 2/3 of this list is fantasy, although there are a few he really enjoyed that were reality based.  These include The Fast and the Furriest, which he just read and got a huge laugh out of and Oggie Cooder, which he enjoyed much as he did the Hank Zipzer books.


Arthas, well, what can I say, the boy likes WoW.  He  read this one faster than I did, and keeps asking me for more of the same.  We decided he should read The Hobbit first, get straight to the source of all the madness.


I got him to read a couple of classics this year as well, as you can see.  He enjoyed them all, although I have not been able to get him to read any of the sequels.   These include:  A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs Frisby, The Enormous Egg, and The White Mountains.  In addition he read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at school.  


What he is really enjoying at the moment though, are comic strips.  He keeps wanting the Sunday Comics to come to door on Sunday, based on promotional delivery.    He doesn't like that the New York Times that comes every week does not have comics in it.  He has read through all of Calvin and Hobbes, loves Foxtrot, and tries to understand The Far Side.  These have  led him to draw his own comic frames and comic strips, emulating those that he admires.  


I have provided links to all the books if you want to know more about them.  Maybe your 8-12 year old will find something among these that he or she wants to read.

2010 - 40 Books.

According to my accounting, although there are still a few days left in the year, in which I might finish up a book or two, to date I have read 40 books this year.  That is both good, very few people read that many, and actually not that many at all.  I try to shoot for more like one a week, although it has been several years since I got there.  Here is the list:

They are from every genre, every style, from a quick mystery read, to serious non-fiction.  I also have three books still in progress, probably only one of which will be finished this year.  What can I say about these books....

Only a few would I actively push into someone else's hands. 

  

I love Allende's writing, and this was a lovely book, although not her best overall.  I would still recommend it.  I feel the same way about Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna.  It is not her best book, but still quite an interesting read.

With everyone else on the planet, I read Stieg Larsson's books this year.

These I did really like.  I ran across the first one summer 2009 when we were down at the beach and I finished my book.  Somehow, at Seascape there is no place to buy a book (someone should remedy that - they should at least carry a dozen or so titles in the grocery store!) and I ended up two exits up the freeway at another grocery looking for something, anything to amuse me for the next couple of days while we were there.  Snob that I am, after dissing the James Pattersons and the Danielle Steeles on the grocery store display, I noted that this one had been translated from the Swedish, so I figured it must be better than the other books on the shelf.  I was pleasantly surprised and devoured The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo over the next couple of days.  The next two I read practically back to back this spring.  I found them a thriller well worth sinking a few days into, and thats all they really need.

Cutting for Stone is an interesting book.  It gets rave reviews and yet for the first 2/3 or the book or so, I wondered what the big deal was.  Then things changed, the pace picked up, and the last 1/3 of the book makes the whole thing worthwhile.

  

Everyone, it seems, has read The Help.  It spent forever on the NYTimes best seller list.   It seemed for a long time that it NEVER was going to be released in paperback (has it even yet?).  It is actually a surprisingly good read for something that has spent forever on the NYTimes best seller list, without even being an Oprah pick.    Read this one if you are one of the few who hasn't.  It deserves it.

This is the fourth, I think, in the series, starting with The Spellman Files.  These are fluff, but fun fluff, about an odd family of PIs in San Francisco.  None of them will take you very long, but they are a quite fun diversion.

Finally, I'll recommend The Lost City of Z.  A non-fictional tale of an ancient civilization in the Amazon, that no one thought one did or could exist, and the men (yes, all men) who over the past two centuries went looking for it.   Fascinating story of explorers, adventurers, treasure seekers, and archaeology. 

And finally, here is what is currently on my bookshelf - in some state of progress:

Arthas

I read this book as part of my duties as a good mom.  Colin desperately wants to read the WOW books, so I dutifully sat down and read this one for him, to make sure there was nothing "inappropriate."  Final call, not a great book, but nothing inappropriate for a ten year old.   My first impression was that science fiction as a genre uses a huge number of adjectives.   Everything is well described.  My second impression is that there are only a few stories in the world.  There is so much of this story of Arthas's turn to evil that parallels that of Anakin Skywalker.  Arthas was a good boy, on the side of right, then showing a temper and having a great loss (Arthas, a horse (really!), Anakin, his mother), he turns to the dark side.  All his friends are, of course, in his mind, against him, and he continues this path, mostly as the pawn of the greater evil.  Eventually he merges with that evil, and becomes the "Lich King" himself.   It reminds me of Propp's analysis of Russian fairy tales, that said that all stories were built up of the same elements, just perhaps in a different order and of a different number.  This analysis has extended to an anthropological analysis,  with Star Wars being a retelling of the Wizard of Oz.  

Overall, this is not a terrible book.  Neither is it a great book.  But if it pleases the WoW fan in your house....let them read it over break when they aren't reading for school.  I handed this to Colin this morning.  He complained that he already KNEW this story because of Warcraft 3, and could I get him a different one.  There is no winning.  Even when being a good mom.

Jackson Jones

Just picked this one up for Lauren.  It looked really good.  Free right now for Nook - no longer free for Kindle.  I'll post more when I have actually read it!

The Finkler Question

I guess I must agree with the Amazon readers more than the Booker Prize voters on this one.  I didn't care. I couldn't care.  The end made no sense to me, although I was glad to be done with it.  Maybe I was missing something.

An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin

This book by Steve Martin (yes, THAT Steve Martin) is a lovely read about the rise and fall of a young art maven.  I found it an easy read and entertaining, well written, if not actually very deep or profound.  The problem is that you never really feel for Lacey, and therefore its hard to find joy in her rise, or sympathy in her eventual fall.  I enjoyed it, but probably would not actively shove it into someone else's hands to read.

The Day the Babies Crawled Away

I was up early yesterday morning (stupid dog) and the sky reminded me of the illustrations in this book.  I love the illustrations in this book.  The children in the book, the babies, even the animals and the diapers (yes, the diapers!) are illustrated in silhouette against a darkening sky.  Gorgeous illustrations for this story about a group of babies who leave the picnic for a little adventure and the young boy who tries to round them up.  A delightful picture book for the younger set.

eBook readers and free eBooks.

I have been reading about 80% on my iPad lately, and although I prefer the iBooks application to others, there are advantages out there to all of the major apps.  I prefer the layout in iBooks, but I also like the visual feel of the Nook reader.  I prefer both to the Kindle reader.  I don't really understand why, however, in landscape in the Nook app, with a small font size, I get two columns and with a slightly larger font size I only get one.  I would like two columns no matter my font size.

I like the progress bars in both iBooks and Nook better than Kindle as well.  I love that the iBooks app tells you at the bottom how many pages you have left in any particular chapter, so you don't have to flip ahead to see whether you should quit now or if you can finish the chapter before you go to sleep.  But I really like in the Nook app that the page numbers are related to the print pages, not the screen pages, which makes it easier to really know where you are in the book, in a reference that we can all relate to.  I also like to know how long my book REALLY is. 

However, the Nook sync between devices does not work as easily as either the Kindle or iBooks.  On both Kindle and iBooks, this works seamlessly, but in Nook, my book never seems to sync between my phone and my iPad even though it's supposed to.  

One of my favorite features of the Nook is that you can "loan out" books, which is an advantage if you have a friend or husband to share your reading with.  You just send your friend an email, and they will have two weeks with the book.  Most people I know can read most books in that time.  This is a feature that you don't find in either Kindle or iBooks but which makes Nook much more appealing for purchasing.

The major problem with iBooks, since I really do love the layout, is not that it can't loan out books, but simply that the iBookstore does not have nearly the selection of the other two.  I keep reading this in the press as a failing of the iPad, but that clearly not the case, as all the other readers are available.   This is a failing of the iBookstore.  I finished my book a couple days ago and went to buy a new book.  Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, not in iBooks.  The Finkler Question, not in iBooks.  Three or four more that were on my list - not in iBooks.  Ok, time to look someplace else.  All of these were available from Amazon and Nook, so someone else gets my money.

Another benefit of eBooks are the occasional freebies.  Here, again, the advantage goes to Kindle and Nook over iBooks.  IBooks has freebies from the Gutenberg project, but both Kindle and Nook have a variety of other promotional freebies, which change quite regularly.  A lot of these are cheesy romances -- lots and lots of cheesy harlequin style romances -- and science fiction, but there are a couple each week which are popular, well-reviewed and well regarded.  This is what I found this week:

On Kindle:  Fireflies in December.  This was the book club selection for the book club that many of my friends belong to a couple of weeks ago.  They all thought very highly of it.  It's next on my list after The Finkler Question, which I did buy.

On Nook, Reckless by Cornelia Funke.  Funke is one of my favorite authors of kids books, from the illustrated to the advanced chapter.  She wrote Inkheart, The Thief Lord, and The Princess Knight, amongst others.  This is a brand new book of a brand new series by her, and free right now for the Nook.

Book Fair

The two weeks before Thanksgiving were book fair so, although I was surrounded by books every minute of every day, I didn't have a moment to think about them.  For those unfamiliar to the process, this is when Scholastic drops off a ton of books at the school and you convince the kids and parents to buy them for the benefit of the school.  At our school, I run this mess, not for the sake of Scholastic, who I am sure is doing very well, but for the school library, which gets absolutely NO MONEY except from the book fair to buy new books.  Having spent my elementary (and middle school) years, holed up in the school library, and being ever so disappointed at how small ours is and how little time the kids get to spend in it, I feel compelled to do whatever I can to make it better.  Rather than what we are reading this week, I am going to highlight some of the books at the fair - although Scholastic certainly doesn't need my help.

The big seller of the week was Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Ugly Truth.

  

The fifth installation in this comic series, we sold over a hundred copies of this book, primarily because it was released at the beginning of book fair and was therefore the hot new thing.  I, myself, am not terribly impressed by this series, but the kids seem to love it.  Written as a diary, and in handwriting, with comics throughout,  it meets the kids desire for illustrations while also being a chapter book.  Its popularity has also spawned quite a few imitators from Dork Diaries to Big Nate.  These two series were also extremely popular.

Any of these is such a quick read, that I would recommend the library for them, rather than purchasing.  Colin finished Wimpy Kid the afternoon we got it, even before we left the fair.  Of course, I say this even though they all have come to live in my house.

Books I did like on the fair include these that I picked up for Colin, Leviathan and Homer Figg.  So far he has read Homer Figg, under protest mind you, although after he got into it, we had to pry it from his hands to get him to go to sleep.  He has just started Leviathan, so I'll let you know later what he thought of that.

Natalie is a series kind-of girl, and right now her series is Geronimo Stilton, so we had to get a pile of those for her. Geronimo Stilton is an interesting series for the early chapter book reader.  Apparently Italian in original origin, these books spend as much if not more effort on the visual appeal of the book as they do in the storytelling.   If it uses the word sizzling, sizzling will be red, with flames coming out of it, fonts and colors and typography used all along to advance the story.  These stylistic choices make the book a little more fun to read, and a little more appealing to those reluctant to take on a picture-free lengthy chapter book.  They are full color and there are now many books in the series, which means that if they engage your child, lucky you, you have books for months to choose from!  Most are short, but there are two newer longer books, The Kingdom of Fantasy and The Quest for Paradise.  There is also a newer sub-series, for those who prefer a heroine to a hero - or multiple heroines even, the Thea Stilton series.

Lauren is much harder to shop for, her tastes running more of a moving target.  She is reading Big Nate right now, but I also picked up a couple others that I thought she might like, including the below.

Each of these is a smaller chapter book, with intriguing main characters, and the occasional illustration.  All third to fourth grade reading levels.  Hopefully some of them will get read!

In picture books, they had one of my favorites, Library Lion, as well as Library Mouse, both lovely stories about the roles of these animals in their local libraries.

Another delightful illustrated book that I discovered on the fair was I Need My Monster.

In this tale, a certain boy's monster from under his bed goes on vacation, and both find that life is not complete without the other.  The illustrations of the various substitute monsters are delightful and imaginative, even if the story is somewhat predictable to the jaded reader of children's books.

These are some of the ones that caught my eye.  What has caught your eye lately?

Mars Needs Moms MOVIE!

OH MY GOODNESS!  I just read today that there is going to be a Mars Needs Moms movie, coming out next year.  Its always interesting when they make a full length movie out of a 20 page children's book, and rarely good, but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed for this one.

It's a Book

I bring this book to your attention simply because I love the conceit - that people - in particular kids - don't know what a book is anymore.  It's pretty funny.  

I chose this book after reading an article in the NYTimes about the author, a doctor at Stanford.  He's apparently trying to bring back the physical, which given the brevity of my recent physical, makes tons of sense.  I then looked at the book on Amazon, where out of 450 or so reviews, over 80% were five star.  That also seemed promising.  I, however, would probably give it 4 stars, even possibly three.   I found the first two thirds of the book slow going, and the last third intriguing.   The last hundred pages I read in one sitting.  In the end, I was pleased with the book, but it took me a while to get there.  One other strange fact I learned from the book, apparently ferengi is Amharic (Ethiopian) for stranger.  

Classic series of the week - Tripods

A couple of years ago, I was thinking of this book and I searched high and low trying to figure out what the name and author were.  Apparently, though, you only have to ask around a little to find out what the book with the evil tripods capping the kids in the community in order to control them, and the kids who ran away from it, and someone will come up with the title.  I have very strong memories of these books, and still recall the moment when I realized that the destroyed old city that they were wandering around at one point in the book was Paris.  It was amazing to me at the time.  I found them and Colin read the first of the series, The White Mountains, and really enjoyed it, although I haven't been able to get him to read the next two -- although I must admit, I don't really remember much of the next two either.  It's this first book that is really notewothy.  

Mars Needs Moms

Berkeley Breathed, author of the Bloom County cartoons, has since quitting cartooning taken to writing and illustrating children's books.  This is a boon for all of us.  These books are clever, and amusing, and appeal on many levels.  The illustrations are delightful.  Perhaps my (and my children's) favorite page from Mars Needs Moms is the one where the Martians try to lure mom with a cup of Starbucks on the ground.  It seems from Amazon that this book, although only a couple of years old, has gone out of print and is soon to be re-released.  Look for it, its a sweet tale about martians who need moms, and humans who need to be reminded not to take them for granted.  Also look for Edward Fudwupper, another of our favorites.

We received this book for Christmas a few years ago and absolutely love it.  A tale of a family who receives a penguin every day for a whole year, the mystery of who is sending them, and the quandary of what to do with all those penguins.  Also a math lesson (math, you say?  You said there would be no math!).  Chunky penguins, and a Where's Waldo exercise too.   I'll let you figure that one out.  Oh, my goodness, you can even get an advent calendar of the book!
  
I'll have to consider that!
AR 3.1, pts 0.5

Heck! Where the Bad Kids Go

I find these books very clever and entertaining.   A retelling of Dante's inferno with kids, each book is a separate ring of "Heck."  The first is when the Marlo and Milton first arrive in heck, the second is greed and the third, gluttony.  Book 4, due out next May, called Fibble, is clearly about lying.  Each follows the adventures of Milton Fauster and his sister Marlo and their friends as they work their way through Heck, a boarding school run by Bea Elsa Bubb.  You call tell from these names that the author is speaking just as much to the adults reading these books as to the children, who will be surprised as they grow up of all they learned about the literary traditions of Hell from these.  Milton's best friend is Virgil (of course) and there is Marlo(we) (another author of a Faust book).  Teachers include Lizzie Borden and Nixon, who amusingly teaches ethics.  Most of these allusions go right over the kids' heads, but once I pointed them out to Colin, he started to find them himself and thought it hilarious that the book would take such liberty with literature.  What I read with him was hilarious and well put together.  An entertaining take on classic literature.

Various recommendations for grades, from 3-8, I would go for the midrange of these 4-6.   Colin has been reading them voraciously and am sure will leap at the new one in the spring.  AR Levels 6.0-6.4, 8-14 pts.

Classic series of the week - The Great Brain

If you are not familiar with The Great Brain series, you should go check it out.  This is the cover when I read the series when I was a kid.  My books were falling apart by the time I was done with them, especially the fourth one, The Great Brain at the academy.  Colin read these last year and loved them as well.  Set in the 1880s in Utah, these stories of brothers, the middle one, the "Great Brain", too clever for his own good, and the younger telling of his adventures.   The adventures are everyday to over-the-top, from the first, Tom selling tickets to see the family's new indoor toilet, to setting up a "roller coaster" in his back yard.  Tom always has a plan and therein lies the entertainment.  And even though its set over a century ago, the kids and their problems are relatable - from sibling rivalry to bullying, to being the new kid at school.  A great series for your 3-6th grader.  There are 7 books in the series, although I recall mostly the first five.  AR levels 5.0-5.8, 4-7 pts.

How to Grow Up and Rule the World

This is one of the most fabulous books we have stumbled along in a long time.  A guide to how to be an evil genius.  It details the numbers of minions, henchmen and scientists you might need, how to build a hideout, develop an evil laugh, and even how to deal with those pesky superheroes.  We checked this out from the library one afternoon and Colin didn't put it down until he had finished it several hours later.  He has since read it several more times.  A real winner of a book.  AR level 7.7, pts 4.0.

What we're reading

I am asked very frequently to recommend books to people - especially to the kids in our lives. I have promised many people lists of our favorite books. This is the answer to those requests. What we're reading will include lists, reviews, and notes of good books, for kids especially but also what I am reading at any time. Hopefully you can find something to read when you look at what we're reading.