Summer Reading so far

I have actually read a suprising amount so far this summer. I thought it might be harder with a 6 month old baby. While I have to read around her schedule I am getting a good amount of reading done so far. To start the summer off I read The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill. It was on the current Sunshine State reading list. I loved everything about this book. I am not a hige fan of fantasy books but this one was very engaging and the worl building was great. I enjoyed the characters and the journey this novel takes you on. This is a great middle grades book. The next book I finished was When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James. I enjoyed this historical romance a lot. What I like about Beauty and the Beast retellings in historical fiction is it tends to add more demention to the characters, especially the male characters. I enjoyed the characters and the plot. The next book I finshed Beowulf: The Original Graphic Novel.I am a huge fan of Beowulf and was very excited to start this graphic novel. In truth it felt like a watered down version of the tale. The illastrations also left much to be desired. This book fell far from my expectations and was a disappointment. The 4th book I read was To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt. This historical romance was amazing. I loved the characters and the plot. The characters have depth and their interactions are very enjoyable. So that is my summer reading so far. My goal is to finish more of teh Sunshine State books, a few romances I took out of the library, and a couple of teaching books I plan to read this summer.

Book review The Boy at the End of the World

Book Review Dead City

Dead City Review

Dead City by James Ponti This book is on the Sunshine State list for 2014-2015. It is about Molly, a seventh grader, who attends MIST. MIST is a school for gifted students and where he mother went to school. She doesn't have many friends and hangs out at the morgue where her mom worked before she passed away. All that changes when she is recruited to join a team of Zombie hunters called Omegas. The story is about her building relationships and learning what she needs to be a member of the team. I really enjoyed this book. It was a really fun adventure story. I loved Molly and the choices she makes really make a lot of sense. I liked that the we got to see this story from her perspective so you get to really understand how the character feels. It wasn't a scary book so it is good for kids. This is the first book the sequel is Blue Moon. I also loved the first page of this book!

The Boy at the End of the World Review

The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout This is not usually a book I would pick up on my own to read. I had to think about this book after I finished it because I wasn't really sure how I felt about the book. This book really stuck with me and I am still thinking about it after a week. It is a mix of The Matrix, Terminator, and The Wizard of Oz and that may seem like a really weird combination the book does have elements of those movies. It takes place after humans are no longer on Earth. Humans got to a point where they could not reproduce and survive in the world they had altered. So what they do is create several Arcs. In these arcs they have frozen people, animals, and plants that will be woken up when the Earth is habitable again. Something attacks the Arc Fisher is in and as the only survivor the robot in charge of the Arc selects a personality profile and awakens him. This book is about Fisher's journey to discover if he is the last human on the Earth or if there are others out there. This was a very fast paced book and kept a pretty steady momentum through the story. I also enjoyed the characters. As Fisher travels he meets different animals and the author paints a world in which nature has taken back the Earth. It was a very interesting look at what could happen if humans are not more concerned with the choices they are making. I think books like this are good for kids to read. It allows them to think about their actions big and small and how they do effect people.

The Doll Bones by Holly Black This book is about three kids who acquire a haunted doll. Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends for a long time and they decide to go on a quest to discover who the ghost girl who is visiting and communicating with Poppy is and hat happened to her. This is a great coming of age story. The kids are in the painful stage of changing and growing up. When it is time to focus on becoming who you are and to start putting away childish things. They all struggle with what they want to do and what they feel they should be doing. You watch the characters grow and discover more about themselves and each other. They are trying to navigate through their changing relationships and trying to help and understand the ghost. This was a good middle grades book. It was a bit creepy and if you have someone who isn't a big fan of dolls this book is not for them. I loved that the book had some illustrations to go with it. They were very well done and they were so beautifully done. I took the book out of my school's library and plan on buying my own copy of the book. I enjoyed everything about this book.