Two Incredible Series

 I don't want to say too much about either of these two books since both are #3 in their respective series, but what I do want to say is that if you love fantasy, complex characters, and powerful female main characters, please go start the Ember in the Ashes series and the Throne of Glass series.

I read Ember the year it came out and have waited patiently for each of the next two installments.  Laia of Serra's life changes when her brother is imprisoned and her grandparents killed.  She runs, but eventually starts working as a servant for the Empire to try to find a way to locate and free her brother.  Torch Against the Night follows up wonderfully to the first book, and Reaper - good grief!!  I don't even know where to start.  I wish that I had had time to reread both of the first two books before I read Reaper, but I just didn't have the time.  I was able to pick up ok.  This third book was all action.  I had a hard time keeping track of every group and what they were doing, but I held on enough.  It was very good, and even if I couldn't always keep track of the minor characters and new people, I enjoyed continuing with Laia, Elias, and Helene.  I was pretty wrecked at the end of the book, and am very interested to see how Tahir wraps up the series.

I read Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight over Christmas and never got around to continuing the series since I had so many 2017 and 2018 new books to get to.  This series was recommended to me by one of my favorite students and I loved it immediately.  As a kid, I read Terry Brooks (my dad's entire Shannara series) and this series brings back some of what I loved about those books.  Sweeping settings, fantastical creatures, lurking evil, and characters trying to figure out who they are and what their powers can do.  I love Celaena's story and so far, each book in the series has been complete on it's own.  They each leave you wanting to continue, but have their own satisfying endings, which is nice.  I am going to start Queen of Shadows soon.  This third installment was probably my favorite so far.  I really liked the Celeana/Rowan plot line.  It's a really cool world and an epic story.  I love these and can't wait to keep reading!

It's also super nice to read a series with all of the books out!!  I struggle with this a lot, because I pick up the first book in a series and then wait for the second and third installments.  It's nice to be able to just keep on reading.  Even though it's a pain for me, it's nice when a series is complete and my students haven't read it - because they can just keep on going!

Well, these two are great fantasy reads.  I am going to keep going with both series.  I think I'd like to do a reread of all three Ember in the Ashes books before the fourth books comes out.

Dread Nation

I got this one the day it came out, and I was soooo pumped!  It was great and I can't wait to get it into the classroom library.

The premise is cool - during the Civil War, the dead get up and walk.  The zombies, called "shamblers" will eat you and a bite will turn you.  So this changes the entire course of U.S. history as we know it.  Cities have started building their own defenses, and people have their own opinions about how to stop the shamblers.  One of the things that has been put in to place are training schools, part of the "Negro and Native Reeducation Act" in the book.  As part of this act kids of a certain age go to "school" to learn how to fight the walking dead.

The main character, Jane McKeene, attends one of these schools, the reputable Miss Preston's, and Jane is on the of the best at the school.  Jane was separated from her mother and entire family, and she yearns to get back to them.  But once she graduates from Miss Preston's will she be able to go home and see if her mother is even there??  Or will she be hired as an "attendant" who will protect her white mistress from shambler attacks?  Jane hasn't heard from her mother in so long, she fears the worst.

The girls of Miss Preston's go to a lecture in Baltimore that changes the entire course of her story.  What happens at the lecture plus the mysterious disappearance of a neighboring family get Jane wrapped up in something that is much more serious and sinister than she thought.

I loved Jane's voice and the entire organization of the book.  Each chapter has excerpts from Jane's letters, and I enjoyed reading the real story and piecing together the rest from the letter snippets.  Jane is a tough young woman of color who kicks major zombie butt.  The secondary characters in the novel are all wonderful and important to Jane's story, too.  I loved the setting and the history wrapped up with this new vision.  Jane is spunky and doesn't let others bully or scare her.  I loved this main character and the world Ireland has created.  This is going to be an awesome series and I can't wait for more installments.  The books is action packed, but also eye opening when you consider the darker side of American history and how this book speaks to us today.

There's more evil in the world than just the shamblers.  Good thing Jane McKeene is ready to take on all of it.

Back!! Summer Reading 2018

I haven't been on the blog for waaaaay too long.  I've been reading all this time, though.

This past year, I have really been able to read again at the pace I used to, and I have also (thanks to Donors Choose and BookOutlet.com) really been able to add to my classroom library. 

So the big news is....I am back and want to continue book blogging.  I am starting back by posting my 2018 summer reading list.  This is really just a nice, colorful version of my Goodreads To Read list, but still....many of these books are piled up by my nightstand ready to go.  I am so pumped to relax this summer and dive into as many of these as I can. 

Which of these do you love?  Have you read?  Would you recommend??

Coming up this week are my first reads of the summer:  Dread Nation, Reaper at the Gates, Be True to Me, and Heir of Fire.  I am working on these reviews and am excited to be back in the saddle again here on the old blog.  Thanks for visiting and here's to summer reading fun!!

Everyday by David Levithan

I was so intrigued by the idea of this book when I read the summary online that I just had to get it.  It was super!  Here's the deal:

A is a person who wakes up in a new body every day.  One day a girl.  One day a boy.  One day in one town working hard in school and getting good grades.   The next day, another town, in the body of a person with an addiction.  It's been like this forever.

A has learned about it and has dealt with the fact that this is how life will be until one day A wants it to be different.  A meets a fabulous, beautiful girl, Rhiannon.  Now instead of calmly floating on to the next day, the next place, the next body, A wants to be back with her.  Kind of hard, though, when A has no idea where the next place or body will be.

So begins this book.  I liked that it just starts.  No real introduction, you just start one day with A on the journey and it all happens.  I thought the pace of the book was great.  It was detailed yet quick-paced.  I was so interested in how it all worked but I really enjoyed meeting the characters as well.

What really stuck with me about this book, though, was that A literally got to walk around in another's person's shoes every single day.  I think about how much we judge other's.  Even if we're calm and controlled enough to never blurt out crazy things, we all think stuff sometimes.  What A has realized is that all people, no matter what the outside appearance might be, have their own stuff they're dealing with.  A respects the bodies and tries to understand what the kid is going through.  I felt like I got to meet so many different kinds of people as I read this book.  I got to see so many perspectives on life, just like A does everyday.

So, can A and Rhiannon be together?  How can something like that even begin to work?  And if A does try to tell Rhiannon somehow that this is how life is, who would even ever believe a "story" like that.

I loved the book.  I was really hooked at the beginning and couldn't wait to see what each day would bring and how all the details of each day would affect the rest of the story.  I highly recommend this book because it's different and new and cool, but also I recommend it because it's eye-opening to see so many different kinds of lives.  I think it's a good reminder not to judge someone until you've tried to see things and understand things from their perspective.

Can't help it, so here's a favorite passage:

I have been to many religious services over the years.  Each one I got to only reinforces my general impression that religions have much, much more in common than they like to admit.  The beliefs are almost always the same; it's just that the histories are different.  Everybody wants to believe in a higher power.  Everybody wants to belong to something bigger than themselves, and everybody wants company in doing that.  They want there to be a force of good on earth, and they want an incentive to be a part of that force.  They want to be able to prove their belief and their belonging, through rituals and devotion.  they want to touch the enormity.   

It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other.  Yes, the differences between male and female are biological, but if you look at the biology as a matter of percentage, there aren't a whole lot of things that are different.  Race is different purely as a social construction, not as an inherent difference.  And religion--whether you believe in God or Yaweh or Allah or something else, odds are that at heart you want the same things.  For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.

One passage/character/body that really affected me was Kelsea.  I thought about how hard high school is and how it's hard even if you've got everything together.  This girl's story really touched me.  It make me thing about how every time we say hello to someone, especially someone who's different or seems to need it,  we might be helping out.  Kindness matters so much.  More than we ever know.  We can't ever afford to be unkind to each other.  Every look, every smile, every nod, every hello matters and can send peace and respect into the world.  Here's Kelsea's life:

Kelsea has email access on her phone, but I'm still worried about anything being traced...so I walk the halls and go to classes, waiting for my chance.  I have to push harder to get Kelsea through the day.  Any time I let it, the weight of living creeps in and starts to drag her down.  It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible.  Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored.  People talk to her, but it feels like they are outside a house, talking through the walls.  There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with.  There's a false beast that takes the form of instinct and harps on the pointlessness of everything that happens.  

That's a rough life for a kid to have to live.  But not every day that A wakes up is like this.  This was just one reminder about how much a person might be going through whether their outer self shows it or not.  A cool read.  I'd pick it up, soon, if I were you!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This book is currently out as a movie right now.  It came out (the book) in 1999.  In 1999, I was a senior in high school.  Preoccupied with passing Calculus and getting into college, I wasn't really too much of a reader that year, believe it or not.  So somehow, this book passed me by.  I've seen it on shelves, and it's been a young adult book cult classic for a long time, but I still never got to it until now.  I can say that I am really glad I read it.

Some books stick with you and you feel all happy and warm and fuzzy inside when you finish.  Others make you grab boxes of tissues.   This one stayed with me, but not in a way I've experienced before.  I just enjoyed it.  I was glad to have gone on the journey with Charlie.

So the books is told through letters written by Charlie to his listener.  He is wandering through high school.  He's different.  He's really smart.  He's got a family.  They're great, but like all families, they have their issues.  He is observant.  He doesn't really "participate" in life.  His English teacher gives him some extra books to read and encourages him to participate.  He does.

This is the story of his participation (or sometimes his lack of it) in school, life, and love over the course of the year.  He meets up with Patrick and Sam who are cool and quirky.  They adventure.  They experiment.  They are infinite.  We follow Charlie to football games, school dances, and parties.  Charlie thinks of others before himself, sometimes to a fault.

It's hard to really describe this little book.  But it was really good.  I read most of it one sitting because I just followed Charlie and wanted to know how things worked out for him.

The book does touch on some scary subjects:  drugs, sex, date rape, domestic violence.  But it's in a way that really shows readers how terrible these things can be for young people.  To ignore these issues isn't good...they're real, and I felt that the author presented them and handled them well.  But they aren't the focus of the book.  To me the book was about figuring out who you are and about trying to make it in this crazy world, even when it seems like that is the hardest thing you can do.  There were so many touching moments in the story.  I am really happy I finally got to this one.  I recommend to students who don't mind reading books about big issues.  I also think you decide pretty quickly if you like the letter format and Charlie's narrating voice.  The reader can take it from there and decide if this is the book for you.

The Future of Us by Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler

I had seen this book forever on the shelf and never even picked it up to look at the back.  But this summer, when I saw a nice hardcover on sale at a used bookshop, I picked it up.  Asher's 13 Reasons Why is very popular with my student readers, so I took a look....I was instantly hooked!

So, Josh and Emma are in high school in 1996.  What's super cool for me is that this exactly when I started high school, and I must say the book was right on as far as time-period stuff goes.  Anyway, when the internet really first started in people's homes, you would always get these free AOL discs in the mail.  Tons of them! So when Emma gets a computer from her dad, she's all ready to set up her first email address and her IM account....(old school IM yall!) and she has Josh come over to help.  She and Josh were BFFs forever but had an awkward I-like-you-but-just-as-a-friend moment earlier last year, and so things are a bit rocky.  But they put the disc in and are setting it all up when they see this window for something called Facebook.  But it's 1996...Facebook doesn't even exist yet.  They actually end up seeing their own profiles in their own futures....and what they find is pretty interesting.  Who are they married to?  Are they happy?  Did they finish college?  Are they still friends?  All of these questions surface as they start digging deeper into their futures.  And  then, once they start making choices during the year, they see that these changes affect their future profiles.

The book is told from alternating points of view, which is always fun.  This keeps it fresh and also allows for you to see the story from multiple perspectives.  It was a fun read because we can all think about what it would be like to get a glimpse into our futures.  What would we do??  I liked the regular school stuff, too:  parties, dates, sports, class, hallway conversations.  It was all pretty fun and real.  I recommend this to both guys and girls.  If you like Facebook...that's a plus.  You'll get a kick out of it!

Chiggers by Hope Larson

A while back I read Mercury by Hope Larson and really liked it.  I've been trying to beef up the collection of graphic novels in my classroom library, so I picked this one up.  It was pretty good.  I most enjoyed the fact that it was about camp.  I loved reading about the camp atmosphere and activities.  Bunk life is crazy, and it was fun to be reminded of old times at summer camp.  I thought that the characters were cool, but overall it was just ok for me.  I wasn't terribly moved by the story at all.  I will add it to my collection, but will probably recommend Mercury first.