Umbrella Summer

By Lisa Graff.

Darn those end-caps at the library. The books there always grab my attention and I can't say no! Thankfully, this was a good distraction.

Umbrella Summer is a touching story of a young girl and her family overcoming grief. Her older brother recently died of a freak accident so the heroine is overly cautious. For instance, she wears Band-Aids all over her arms and legs when she has the slightest scrape, she wears Ace bandages 24/7 in the event she may twist her ankle, and she wears all her bicycle safety gear to walk her bike up and down the streets.

Lucky for her a caring, elderly neighbor who is dealing with her own grief opens her heart and home to Emily and the healing process begins.

Emily is endearing and at times, laugh out loud funny. This is a short read yet still manages to captivate the reader and wills you to cheer Emily on.

I don't know what my deal with youth fiction is lately but I can't get enough!

Before Green Gables

Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson

I was skeptical of this book. I generally do not enjoy prequels by different authors than the original classics. Plus, it's been so many years between the original Anne books and this prequel. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed reading the sources of Anne's window friend, Katie Maurice. I also enjoyed imagining where her 'depth of despair' and 'bosom friend' ideas came from.

Parts of this story were heartbreaking but Anne's life was also visited by hope and she never lost her 'light.' She endured a lot and reading about her hardships helps to appreciate the other books more.

Overall I thought the book was well written and most of the time along the same vein as the original classics. If you enjoy the Anne of Green Gables stories, this is a good companion book.

Mo Willems Week: Day 5

Check out Mo's latest books! They're hot off the presses, actually. I have not had a chance to read this first one; it's waiting at the library for me. We were able to read the "Friends Who Fly" though. It's short and sweet but still endearing.

The colors are vivid and the pages are not busy. Emery likes to follow the flight pattern of each animal and make the sound of it's wings flapping.
I loved Mo's inclusion of the pigeon. The pesky pigeon and his cameos! I'm excited to check out the other titles in this series, set to come out later this
year. Another great set of characters from Mo!








Now for the adult portion of this week: You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons:The World On One Cartoon a Day

Less than a week after Mo graduated from NYU he set about on a trip across Europe, Egypt, the MiddleEast, Asia, and part of the US (with one stop in Canada). He only took one change of clothes, some money, paper, and his drawing pens. Each evening he drew a cartoon depicting the image that stuck out to him the most during the day. Then a few years ago he read through these images, added modern-day Mo reflections and put them together in a book for us to enjoy. I thoroughly enjoyed traveling around the world through Mo's eyes. It was also interesting to read his reflections after more than a decade had passed. It is smart, perceptive, and very humorous.
(Ian & Bekah I think you would really enjoy this book! You can compare travel adventures!)

The Wednesday Wars

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

This book was unexpected. I'd never heard of it or the author. I was at the library picking out books for Emery and this one caught my eye. It reminds me of the honing instinct of books I quoted on the Guernsey post.

In The Wednesday Wars we meet Holling Hoodhood; a funny boy who narrates his life during his seventh grade year. He's growing up near New York City during the Vietnam crisis. He has an older sister who frustrates his father because of her "flowerchild" mentality. All his father is concerned about is becoming the Chamber of Commerce Businessman for two years running. While reading the passages including Holling's father, I pictured a mix between the fathers from A Christmas Story and The Wonder Years. Holling's mother was not heard from much except to say she did all the "dutiful" jobs of a wife and secretly smoked when she thought the kids didn't know.

On Wednesdays when the Jewish students went to Hebrew school and the Catholic students went to Catechism, Holling, a Presbyterian, stayed at school with the dreaded Mrs. Baker. He was convinced she hated him but the reader quickly realizes that was only because she was a good teacher. She made Holling do things he didn't want to do like read Shakespeare. Each month of the school year she made him read one of Shakespeare's plays and then they would discuss it and he take tests and write reports.

Through Hollings eye's we get to read stories and events that vary between hilarity, horror, poignancy, and triumph. Whether or not books really have a honing device, I'm glad this one found me. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

Stay tuned next week for a tribute to Mo Willems as we ring in a new month!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

By Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

I first saw this book listed on many "must reads" from members of my online book club. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I am so glad I did! I love this book! I also love lists so let me make a list of my favorite things about this book:
1. All the literary references from Oscar Wilde to Jane Austen.
2. The format. The entire book is made of letters sent between the herione, Juliet to her best friend, her publisher and good friend, her suitor, and from a man who begins as a stranger but introduces her to a makeshift 'literary society' who ultimately become her best friends. It's fun to read each character's perspective and it makes the reading go by quickly.
3. The history. The book takes place in England and Guernsey in 1946, directly after WWII and Nazi Occupation.
4. The quick wit. This book is full of it and I love it!
5. The writing of this book made me feel like I truly knew these characters. I cared about them and feel like when I reread this book I'll be catching up with old friends.
6. I like that the author, Mary Ann Shaffer is a librarian and had never written a book before. That's great! I would love to do that someday. Not so I can get fame but so I can create a story and characters that people want to remember and know.

Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:

• That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive--all with no end in sight and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
• Perhaps there is some secret sort of honing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.
• We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us.
• He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new, one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in.

The Perilous Journey

What a great series! Opening this book was being reunited with old friends. I enjoyed the first book but of course, there's a lot to learn in the first book of the series. You have to meet the characters. This time, I already knew the history so I was able to simply enjoy the adventure. Mr. Stewart has developed a well-written group of kids and sets of challenges. It's not as intense for me as Harry Potter but it certainly made a me jump and raised my blood pressure a couple times! Other times Constance made me laugh out loud--what a great (albeit frusrtating) character!

This book and the series in general packs a lot of punch. You get adventure, mystery, puzzles, comraderie, loyalty, self-development, and a lot of fun! This is one I'll be passing on to Em when she's ready!

Me With You

I realize I "review" a lot of children's books but as it turns out, I have a small child and we read lots of books so I have a seemingly-endless supply. I stumbled across this one and have enjoyed it as a bedtime read the past couple weeks. It's beautifully illustrated by Christopher Denise and portrays a relationship between a grandpa and his granddaughter. I have to promote those when I find them because how many books include grandpas? Not as many as grandmas, I'll tell you. Without further ado, let me share a couple of my favorite passages from this book:

We're a pair beyond compare,
a rare and special two,
in all the ways that I am me
and you're completely you....

On days when being me feels like
the sky was painted black,
you and I together roll
along a brighter track...

And though I'll find new ways
of being me my whole life through,
my favorite me will always be
when I am me with you.



Sweet. Charming. Delightfully illustrated. Check it out!
*photo courtesy of http://www.kristydempsey.com/

Same Kind of Different As Me

By Ron Hall & Denver Moore

I read this book to participate in my online book club. In fact, at the time it was announced we were reading this I didn't think I would be able to read it because we couldn't afford to purchase it. I put in a request but hadn't heard from any one in the book club but a week before the discussion started I received a package all the way from Surrey, England! A fellow book club member was gracious enough to donate a copy! Thanks, Rebecca!
I was warned that this book is a tear-jerker but that always sets my defenses on high. Same as the movie P.S. I Love You. All anyone ever told me was that I would weep so of course I didn't since I'm stubborn like that. I digress...
This book was an uplifting story and I greatly appreciated hearing how a simple act of caring was able to change lives. Deborah did not do more than have a will to serve and a lot of determination but God was able to use that in might ways. I also appreciated the juxtaposition of a black homeless man's struggles set against an affluent white man's. It reminded me that struggles are struggles. What is difficult for one man may not be the same for another and yet, each struggle is validated. Each person has his own path but God is sovereign.

Committed

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert (also of Eat, Pray, Love)


I love Liz Gilbert's style of writing. She's witty, entertaining, exciting, and relatable. I thoroughly enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love and though this book has a different style, I still found it irresistible. I appreciate both the academic and personal approach she took on discovering the history of marriage. She mixes in humor and personal fears and experiences to balance the heaviness of the subject material. She also fills the book with excitement as she uses examples of marriage, love and life in several different cultures that I wouldn't necessarily want to read about in boring/heady history books. I can visit and learn about these cultures vicariously through her more travel-beaten shoes. Committed is an escape to other worlds through Liz's eyes while still being tethered to my own world as I was forced to inspect my own marriage and ideals.
I most certainly recommend this book as well as Eat, Pray, Love if you haven't already read that one. Next I'm going to start on her fiction so I'll let you know how that goes!
Some favorite quotes from Committed:

• The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.
• In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers--always measuring our lives against some other person's life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead.
• Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person.
• Marriage has bonsai energy: It's a tree in a pot with trimmed roots and clipped limbs. Mind you, bonsai can live for centuries, and their unearthly beauty is a direct result of such construction, but nobody would ever mistake a bonsai for a free-climbing vine.
• This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark.

*On a personally exciting note, I found while reading the acknowledgments that Elizabeth's sister is none other than author Catherine Gilbert Murdock whose Dairy Queen series novels I thoroughly enjoyed! Proves you should always read the acknowledgments!

The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.

This is a story of four children (3 orphans, 1 runaway) who band together to save the world from being 'brainswept'!

The characters are really perfect and relatable. Reynie is a natural leader who struggles with self-doubt. "Sticky" is the nerd who can remember absoultely everything he's read or learned and longs to feel wanted. Kate's past lead her to become independent and strong but she realizes she can't do everything on her own. Constance is true to herself even when that means frustrating those around her but she pulls through in the toughest of situations.

It is everything a children's book should be! It had surprises, humor, emotion, wit, friendship, values and was entertaining overall. The best news is that this book is only 1 of a series!

Quotes:

"You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn't depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family."

"The missing are not missing, they are only departed, all minds keep all thoughts-like gold- closely guarded."

"Children are capable of such rudeness."

Go check it out! (http://www.mysteriousbenedictsociety.com/)