40-50. End of Year Quick Summary Part 1

40. Wickham's Diary by Amanda Grange
This is a prequel to Pride and Prejudice told from Wickham's viewpoint. It's interesting to see how someone can become the bad guy. I think Amanda Grange is one of the better authors in Pride and Prejudice fan fiction universe. I liked this one.

41. The Salamander Spell by E.D. Baker
I love all of her books and this was just as good as the others. It is a prequel to her Frog Princess series. It explores Grizelda's life before she was turned into a witch by the family curse. I would highly recommend it for a fun fairy tale/fantasy story.

42. Shredderman 3: Meet the Gecko by Wendelin Van Draanen
Wendelin Van Draaned is another author that I would recommend anything she writes. Shredderman strikes me as her "boy" series and is aimed at a younger audience (2nd-4th grade) than her Sammy Keyes series. They're still good mysteries though and I really enjoyed this one where Shredderman meets his movie star idol and is able to help him solve a mystery on set.

43. Shredderman 2: Attack of the Tagger by Wendelin Van Draanen
I read this series in reverse order. It was silly but it really didn't matter. This one is great also. Shredderman tries to solve the mystery of who is vandalizing his school and local playgrounds. It is a good look at the issue of tagging. I liked it.

44. Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris
I love these books. This is the first book in the Mr. and Mrs. Darcy mysteries series. They're fun and true to the original characters. And they are good mysteries. I also like that they entertwine other characters from the original Austen books, for instance, Caroline Bingley in this one. This is the fourth time I've read this one. I still like it.

45. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
This is a great book that deals with environmentalism in Florida. It's very well written and interesting. The movie is pretty good but the book is better. Mary picked it for her bedtime story and we all enjoyed reading it together.

46. Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril, and Romance by Marthe Jocelyn
This is a book I picked up randomly because of its great title and cover. It is just as good as its cover. It is a really cute story, told in journal format, of a young girl who leaves home for the first time to go with her sister to a frontier town and teach school. It explores the issues of women's suffrage in the early 1900's. It's funny and clever and a really quick read. I loved it.

47. The Trolls by Polly Horvath
My girls picked this book to read for our mother-daughter book club. We had previously read the book in the library's club. It is a cute book about some kids who have their aunt come and babysit them while their parents go on a trip. This is the first time they've met the aunt and she begins to tell them stories about when their father was a boy. The stories range from being really funny to being really scary. It is a good book to talk about how our actions affect other people in our family, whether we realize it or not. It is a good, fun discussion book.

48. Mudshark by Gary Paulsen
This is a hilarious book by a really good author (he wrote Hatchet). Kate chose this as a bedtime story because she'd read it at school and thought the other kids would like listening to it. She was right. We laughed a lot while reading it. It's the story of a boy nicknamed Mudshark who can solve any puzzle but comes up against his match when erasers start disappearing out of every class in his school. He also meets a parrot who is just as good at solving puzzles and becomes his arch rival. It is super funny and very short. It's well worth the time and works really good as a read-aloud.

49. Bobby the Brave (Sometimes) by Lisa Yee
This book is hilarious too. It's about a boy named Bobby who's father is an ex-pro football player. Since Bobby is small and scrawny, he feels like he's nothing like his father and a complete disappointment. It takes all his courage to confront his father about their differences. It is a really cute book. This is an author I found out about by going to the library's teen book fest. They were right: she's a great author.



50. Dragon Princess by E.D. Baker
This is the 6th book in the Frog Princess story. This book is the story of Millie, the daughter of Eadric and Emma (the original frog princess). She has a small problem. Whenever she gets upset, she spontaneously turns into a dragon and her grandparents hate dragons. She decides to run away and go to see a mysterious witch who is supposed to know how to help her. It's a fun adventure/fantasy story. I love this author.

39. No Place For Magic by E.D. Baker

This is the fourth book in the Frog Princess series. It is just as good as the first three. This time Emma goes to visit her fiancee's home. But what she doesn't know is that Eadrick's parents don't know she is a witch and don't approve of magic. When their youngest son is kidnapped by trolls, Emma and Eadrick are forced to go and rescue him and Emma is forced to not use her magic, because the trolls can find her by her magic. It is a really funny, well-written book. I would highly recommend it.

36. Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

This novel is an awesome example of fairy tale retelling at its finest. The story revisits the fairy tale, the 12 dancing princesses. I loved the characters. They were original and likeable. I love the take on the story. This was a book that I had been wanting to read for a long time because we've met Jessica Day George several times at our library things. She's really funny. She's also a great writer. This is seriously one of my favorite retellings I've ever read.

32-33. Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine

Everyone should read this book. I think I've said this before but I really mean it this time. I read this book for the first time with the mother-daughter book club at the library, and the second time for my ward book club. One of the ladies in our club is a retired special education teacher and she loved it. She said that she thought every special education student should have a counselor like in this book. I love this book because it makes you want to be more sympathetic to those with the same challenges as those in the book. It tells the story of a little 10 year old girl who has Asperger's Syndrome. When her brother is killed in a school shooting, she has to try to deal with the situation and help her dad to do the same. I would highly recommend it for everyone. I would read it again myself. It also won the National Book Award, which is very hard to do.

27. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

I really have mixed feelings about this book. I picked this up because I had heard the name so often that I was curious about it. I have to say the book is much better than I expected. The characters are interesting and well-developed. I liked that there are lots of different personalities with lots of body types and stories. I liked that the stories showed that there are consequences to decisions. The part that makes me uncomfortable is that I felt ok reading it as an adult, but I'm not sure I would want Kate to read it, at least not for a long time. There is nothing graphic in it but it is definitely suggestive in a few parts. So there you go. My favorite part of the book though is that at the beginning of each chapter is a random quote. Some of them made me laugh super hard. My favorite is: "Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them, and you have their shoes."--Frieda Norris. I just couldn't stop laughing when I read that. I know it's horrible, but so, so funny.

25. Penny From Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm

I've been meaning to read this book for quite a while. I really like Jennifer Holm and she won her second Newberry Honor for this book. She also visited our library last year and the girls and I were very impressed by her fun, bouncy personality. She won her first Newberry Honor for Our Only May Amelia, which I read a while back and really liked. She also writes the Babymouse series with her brother, who does the illustrations which Emma and Mary both really enjoyed. So when they decided on this book for this month's Mother-Daughter Bookclub, I was very excited.

I loved it. The book centers around 12 year old Penny who lives with her widowed mother and maternal grandparents in 1950's New Jersey. That side of her life is pretty sedate. Her deceased father, however, came from a big Italian family that adds spice and excitement to her life. She has lots of uncles, aunts, and cousins, along with a spunky grandma, who provide her with all the excitement she could ever want. There are lots of fun characters and stories about this Italian family. But along the way, Penny begins to unravel the mystery of her father's death and uncover the hardships suffered by this Italian clan in WWII. I had never really heard a lot about the Italian-American experience in WWII so it was enlightening to me. As a kid in school, we always talked about the Japanese-American experience because Topaz (a Japanese internment camp in Delta) was so close. (I grew up in Orem.) I enjoyed learning about it. I thought I was WWIIed out, after Kate's Holocaust play, but still enjoyed reading this different perspective on the war. I also liked that it was loosely based on the author's family history (her mother being the inspiration for Penny). I would highly recommend it to anyone.

21-23. The Tripod Trilogy by John Christopher

When I was in college I had to take a Young Adult Literature class for my major. In that class I originally heard of the first book in this trilogy, The White Mountains. It was on several recommended lists for science fiction for young adults. So later, after John and I were married, our library used to sell their discard books for a quarter. I would look through the stacks and if I recognized anything I would buy it. One time I saw this book and picked it up. I promptly put in on the shelf and it has sat there for the last 11 years. About a month ago I needed a small paperback book that would fit in my purse so I would have something to read while waiting for kids. The White Mountains was the first book I saw that met my qualifications.

As I started reading it, I realized this is the first real sci-fi book I've read in years. There are aliens and everything. It really feels like Ray Bradbury or George Orwell. I loved it. I was thoroughly intrigued by the set-up: Aliens have taken over the Earth and roam it in 3-legged metallic tripods. They control the humans by putting a "cap" on them at the age of 13 and controlling their brains. They have set the world back to the dark ages, pre-technology and printing press. Although it sounds crazy, it is written so well that it seems completely believable.

After reading the first, I had to see what happened next, so I checked out the other two in the series, The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool of Fire, at the library. They are equally intriguing. So I must say that if you like classic science fiction, you'll love this trilogy. These books are creative, well-written, and they make you think about some great philosophical questions, as all great science fiction does. They are great stuff!!

20. Dragon's Breath by E. D. Baker

This is the second book in The Frog Princess series. It's another great book. My girls love this series and I think this is my second time listening to this book. This time Emmarelda and Eadrick try to help her aunt find all the ingredients that will transform her aunt's love from an otter back into a human. Along the way they meet sea monsters, sirens, and dragons. This story is funny, with lots of adventures and really interesting characters. I listened to the book on CD and the lady who read it was awesome. The books are some of the best fractured fairy tales out there. I would highly recommend them.

15. Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

My kids love this book. They have it on CD and have listened to it several times, to the point that they have some of it memorized. This was Mary's bedtime story pick. It was her way of getting me to read the book. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I read it too slow, but it was not my favorite book. It is very clever and well-written, but something about the tone of it turned me off. John says I lost my sarcasm meter when we got married. Maybe that was my problem, I don't know. However, I really do have to give Sanderson credit for the books' turn-things-upside-down plot. I especially like the dinosaurs who are small, well-educated, non-violent, and speak with an English accent. There are lots of really funny parts and I would recommend it but I'm not sure if I will read any of its' sequels. We'll see.

5-8. Call Me Francis Tucket; Tucket's Ride; Tucket's Gold; and Tucket's Home by Gary Paulsen

These 4 books are the sequels to Mr. Tucket. I decided to just do one review because they read like one long book. This is great historical fiction. Francis Tucket leaves his friend Mr. Grimes and strikes out on his own with a wagon train headed west. Along the way he gets lost, gets robbed, and finds a small girl and boy that have been abandoned because of sickness. Later he gets kidnapped by Mexican banditos, finds Spanish gold and is rescued by Indians. The books are fast-moving and really interesting. I really liked the part about the Mexican-American war. I really hadn't thought that much about it. They're great quick reads, every one, and I loved them.

1. Mr. Tucket by Gary Paulsen

I forget how much I like historical fiction until I read it again. This is great historical fiction. Mr. Tucket is the first in a series of books that Kate recommended to me. She read them last year and really liked them. I think one of her teachers read her class this book and then she read the rest in the series by herself. And Gary Paulsen is one of the great young adult writers around. His most famous book is probably Hatchet which is a classic. When I was teaching middle school English, Hatchet was the go-to book to recommend to young teenage boys who were reluctant readers. They always loved it. This book is just as good. He tells the story of a 14 year-old boy who is kidnapped by indians from his wagon train while traveling with his family on the Oregon trail. He then is rescued by a mountain man, Mr. Grimes, who proceeds to teach him how to live in the wild. It is a really fun, fast, exciting read. Westerns are great when they are well done and this is well done. I loved it!

86. Nothing But The Truth: A Documentary Novel by Avi

I love this book. I think it perfectly captures the illogical thinking of teenage boys, and the out of control politics of education and patriotism. It also shows perfectly how something can be totally blown out of proportion to serve different people's personal agendas. In the book, a ninth-grader gets suspended for humming the national anthem, and the story is picked up by the national news media. The story really is not that simple, but soon grows out of control. The great thing about the novel is that you get to see everyone's viewpoint because it is written in the form of diaries, memos, letters, etc. from everyone involved. I love this book. If you really want to think about the fine line between patriotism and fascism, you should read this book. It's really short and well worth the time. It also won a Newberry Honor award. I highly recommend it.

85. The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker

Yes, this is the original children's book on which Disney loosely (very loosely) based their movie The Princess and the Frog. I haven't seen the movie, though I've heard it is cute. But I think about the only thing the same between the two is that, in both, the princess gets turned into a frog. I love this book. This is probably the second or third time I've read it in some form. This time I listened to it on CD and the reading is incredibly well done. I just love the wackiness of it. The main character, Emma, does not like being a princess, and she's horrible at magic (which runs in her family). In order to avoid being forced to marry a prince that is pompous and interested only in himself, she escapes to her neighborhood swamp and kisses a talking frog. But instead of turning him back into a prince, she is turned into a frog and spends the rest of the book trying to get out of this predicament. It is a hilarious, quick read. It is also the first in The Frog Princess series, which has about 5 or 6 books in it. My girls love this series and have also read and re-read it. And it is versatile enough that my little girls love it and I still think it is intelligent and funny. A good read that I would definitely recommend.

79. Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley

This book is a creative, original retelling of the classic fairytale Cinderella. The things that remain the same as the original are the stepmother and stepsisters, the glass slipper that the prince finds, and that Bella disappears at midnight. It reminds me a little of Ella Enchanted, another great book. It's a really fun, exciting read and there were some nights we couldn't put it down because we wanted know what was going to happen. I liked that the stepsisters and stepmother were more likable. Kate picked this for her bedtime story, which was great because I had been thinking about reading it for awhile. The only thing I found a little disconcerting was that the viewpoint changed with each chapter. My little girls had a hard time with that. Ruth was constantly asking, "Now who's talking? Well, who's that?" This shifting viewpoint seems to be all the rage in children's literature right now. The thing I like about it is that you come to understand more than just one character. The shifting viewpoint really helped me sympathize with Bella's stepmother and sisters, even though they weren't very nice to her. It's a good read. I would definitely recommend it.

76. A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck

This is another book I read for my book club. A 16 year old girl is forced to leave her home in Chicago and go live with her grandma in Hicksville, Illinois during the depression. I think Richard Peck is really good at depicting small town America. I think this book is hilarious. The grandma is quite the character and the girl learns, over time, to appreciate her grandma's eccentricities. The older ladies in my book club really related to the stories, and remembered similar stories from their own childhood. It was fun to hear those too. I would recommend this book to anyone. It is short and sweet and worth the hour it will take to read.

74. Forbidden Sea by Sheila A. Nielson

This was the last book that Kate and I read for the mother-daughter book club. They picked it because the author has been a librarian at our library for about the last 10 years. She came and talked at the club meeting and she was very interesting. She said she got the idea of writing the book because she had so many pre-teen girls asking for mermaid books and she couldn't think of any. She was able to sell the book to Scholastic without an agent which is pretty amazing, so she obviously found a good niche. I really liked the book. It takes place on an island in the Victorian era. A girl is haunted by a mermaid and eventually leaves to visit her world. It kind of reminded me of The Perilous Gard, another book that I really liked. The heroine is very strong, yet compassionate. I would recommend it to anyone. Kate really liked it too.

73. Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George

This is one of those books that Mary chose for her bedtime story, but that I've been meaning to read for at least a year. The author, Jessica Day George, comes to a lot of the library's book fests and she's always fun to listen to talk. I really had never heard of her before I saw her the first time at the library. And I must say, I think this book is amazing. It is based on a Nordic fairy tale, East of the Sun, West of the Moon and a little bit of Beauty and the Beast. It made a great read-aloud because it is so interesting that you just want to keep reading, but the chapters are short enough that you can read one a night in not too long and make yourself stop that way. My favorite part, though, is the names. The little girl, who is the main character, is just called, "Lass". And the polar bear is an "isbjorn". I just really liked her names for things; it made it very fun to read out loud. I would highly recommend it. All my girls loved it, even the younger two. It is a beautiful story.

66. Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix

I've been toying with reading this series for a long time. My niece and my sister read several of them a couple of years ago and really liked them. But the cover art looked a little spooky to me and I'm not really into scary books anymore. Then Kate read this one (the first in the series) for her book club at school so I decided to read it too. It reminded me a lot of the Hunger Games series. And as a bonus, the book was pretty short too. The premise of the story is that on a future earth ravaged by war and famine, the government has made a law that you can only have two children. However, some people still have a third child, either by accident or on purpose. But they are forced to hide these children so the Population Police don't find them and kill them and possibly the whole family. The story is told from the viewpoint of Luke, one of the hidden children. It's a great premise and pretty interesting story--probably not as gripping as Hunger Games, but still intriguing. Most likely I will continue on with the next book, Among the Impostors (there are about 7 or 8 in the series). I love science fiction because it makes you think about lots of issues.

My favorite part in the book is when Luke is discussing the population law with someone and he asks Luke what he knows. Luke says that he has read the government's books and some underground rebuttals. The man says, "So you got the propaganda from both sides. No truth." And when Luke asks what the truth is, he responds, "The truth, nobody really knows. There have been too many lies for too long." I thought about how true a picture this is about the facts surrounding most volatile issues. Good thing we have a prophet to tell us the truth.

64. Notes From the Dog by Gary Paulsen

I really like this book. The main character, fourteen-year-old Finn, has made a goal to only speak with 12 people the whole summer. Talking to people is just too hard. Then he meets a new next door neighbor, Joanna, who hires him to make a garden in his own yard. She is housesitting a neighbor's house while she has chemo for breast cancer. It really does a good job of exploring the cancer experience and community. Finn and his friend Matthew help Joanna raise money for cancer awareness and along the way their lives change. They meet lots more than 12 people and Finn realizes that he does need people and what's more, that he is good with people. And he also sees that one person can make a difference in the lives of everyone around them.

63. Lyddie by Katherine Paterson

This historical fiction novel is set in industrial revolution New England. The author, Katherine Paterson, said that the idea for the novel came out of her participation in the Women's History Project celebrating Vermont's bicentennial in 1991. It was a really interesting book. I'm used to reading about the industrial revolution in England, but not so much in America. I read this book for the mother-daughter book club at the library. They chose it partly because Katherine Paterson is the ProvoReads author for the year, as well as being the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. She really is an amazing author and has won 2 Newberry Awards, and two National Book Awards.

The main character, Lyddie, constantly battles the bear in the room, literally and figuratively. She has to take care of her family from a young age because her mother is not all there and her father leaves to try to find work and never comes back. She goes from farmer to housemaid at a tavern to finally working at a Lowell, Massachusetts cotton mill. I found it really interesting and well written. Lyddie is a strong character and also likable. I would recommend it. Kate and I both really liked it.