Bloggin 'Bout Books Blog

My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett may be a little dated, but it's still a darling story to feed children's imagination. Elmer Elevator is a young boy who finds an alley cat. The alley cat is a little scrawny and sad looking so Elmer takes him home. Elmer's mother is not fond of the alley cat, so Elmer decides to run away. He speaks with the alley cat about his love of flying and the alley cat tells him about a dragon that he knows who is living life in captivity. Elmer decides to rescue the dragon. This book is very short (only 77 pages) and broken down into chapters. While it does have a pretty solid amount of pictures, they are fairly detailed, dated line art so the pictures may not appeal to some young children. However, I think this book would make a great bedtime story or reading time story where a book needs to be parceled down into smaller chunks. There are 10 chapters of about 3 pages a piece, so it's already broken into manageable chunks. It...

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale is a nice tale of family love and finding one's self. Miri feels like the most useless person in all the village of Mount Eskel. She's small and her father doesn't allow her to work in the mine that the rest of the village does. Instead Miri tends goats for the family. Their entire village is shocked to find out that the kingdom priests have declared that Mount Eskel is the home of the Prince's future bride. In order to prepare all potential brides, an academy is set up and twenty of the village girls attend it. Miri faces strong competition for academy princess or the number one place at school. She is not very excited to become a princess but the prospect of leaving Mount Eskel and seeing the world is very desirable. Miri chooses to follow her heart in all circumstances which sometimes works in her favor but sometimes doesn't. I definitely think I would have loved Princess Academy at a younger age. However, now that I...

Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things by Lenore Look is a delightful middle grade read. Alvin Ho is going into 2nd grade and he is afraid of everything. Well, maybe not everything, but he sure is afraid of a lot of things. He can't talk at school, but he manages to make a friend (which he maybe didn't want to) in Flea--a girl with one longer leg than another and blind in one eye. She looks like a pirate which is Alvin's favorite part of her, but she's a girl which means Alvin's automatically afraid of her. Alvin wants to become friends with the biggest kid in 2nd grade, but when he does get his wish he doesn't like it at all. I'm pretty excited to read the next book in this series. It was darling. Middle Grade March Count: 8

The Wanderer by Sharon Creech  is an excellent example of a bildungsroman or coming-of-age novel. The protagonist of the story is 13 year old Sophie. She narrates most chapters with the occasional viewpoint from her cousin Cody. The alternating viewpoint is necessary to the story, as the reader finds out pretty early on that Sophie isn't exactly a reliable narrator. Sophie loves the sea. She wants to spend the summer sailing with her three uncles and two cousins on a trip across the ocean to visit their grandfather who is known as Bompie.  They make several stops along the way, but the majority of the book is spent on a small sailboat. The character relationships in this book really drive the plot along. This is the second time I've read this book. The first time I was probably 12 or 13 and I loved it. I still loved it this time but for different reasons. When I was younger, I loved Cody. I also loved Sophie's stories, and I felt like the ending was the perfect mix...

Judy Moody by Megan McDonald  is about a 3rd grader named Judy who likes to collect thing and prank her little brother, Stink. Judy's a typical kid who gets cranky and doesn't want to do things that she has to do. But this first book is all about Judy being able to turn her moods around.  Judy's really cool--she accurately portrays girls. Her favorite color isn't pink. She doesn't want to be a ballet dancer or some other traditionally female-gendered career. She wants to be a doctor. She gets a Venus Fly Trap for a pet. She's normal. I can definitely understand the appeal for young readers for this series of books. I might even pick up the next one myself. Middle Grade March Count : 6

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll  is a very entertaining classic. I think everyone knows the story of young Alice who follows a White Rabbit into the world of Wonderland where everything is just slightly (or significantly) strange. For some reason, every time I've picked up Alice's Adventures before, I've put it down without making it more than 10 pages or so. But this time, I managed to finish it. It's a quirky sort of book, but I enjoyed it. It did make me think of The Phantom Tollbooth (here's my review of that classic), but I preferred Carroll's novel to Juster's. There's some great play on words and delightful misunderstandings because of homophones and characters not paying attention to each other. I think this is a worthwhile classic, but I don't actually have that much to say about it. Middle Grade March Count: 5

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo  is a phenomenal novel about a little china rabbit by the name of Edward Tulane. It's about his life as he gets lost and stolen and abandoned over and over again. But it's also about life and how even if you feel like everything is lost, it's always worth it to keep on going. I loved this book. I loved it so so much. I'm going to admit something that's maybe a little shameful, but I'd never read anything by Kate DiCamillo before. I've never seen any of the movies based on her books. The most I knew was that the Tale of Despereaux was about a mouse. But I kept seeing this book at my work, and it kept calling to me, so I set it aside for MG March. I bought two more of DiCamillo's books after reading this one. It meant so much to me. Edward is so selfish and uncaring at the beginning of the book that I was actually worried about liking it at first. But I wanted to see where it would go (an...