Say What?

Does anyone else feel like they've been had on this one?

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

I willingly bought into (and bought) the 39 Clues books because my 4th grader loved them. My husband and I read them, too, and liked them, though they weren't the same caliber as the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I was pleased that Amy and Dan's adventures were able to end gracefully and coherently. Good closure and all that.

But now they're back. And I am not sure how I feel about that.

Wait -- I am sure how I feel about it: I feel like they're merely trying to extend a lucrative franchise, that it's less about compelling storytelling than it is about the cha-ching. And maybe I wouldn't feel like I'm being pumped for whatever else might be in my wallet if we hadn't already bought all the 39 clues books (oh yeah, all 10).

Hmmmm. Since I have a bad habit of mouthing of without a ton of thought beforehand, I'm going to officially state that BOOKIVORE RESERVES JUDGEMENT ON THE NEW VESPERS SERIES UNTIL SHE READS THE FIRST BOOK.

Then I'm going to remind myself when I get all twitchy and miffy and such that I have RESERVED JUDGEMENT.

Right. Glad we cleared that up.


NOTE: yes, I read about the "other, powerful family" in the last 39 Clues book, but for some reason I just didn't think they'd be starting a new series so soon after the first one. But I did grasp that there would be a new series. Truly, I are not so dumb.

The Missing

The Missing is Margaret Peterson Haddix's newest series and I have to say, it's a original idea. In fact, as I was reading volume one, Found, I couldn't predict what was actually going on. When the twist was revealed, I was intrigued.

Jonah was adopted as a baby. He's always known he was adopted and he is not much bothered by this fact. His parents obviously love him and Haddix pokes gentle fun at them for their perhaps overly-earnest desire to be sensitive to Jonah's adoption "issues," should he ever begin to have any. However, things begin to happen that lead Jonah to wonder just what the circumstances surrounding his adoption were. He meets Chip, a new kid in his neighborhood, and then he gets a bizarre letter. It's a simple piece of white paper that says "You are one of the missing."

Jonah dismisses it as a prank, but when Chip gets the same letter, the boys begin to wonder what it means. Jonah thinks it might have something to do with his adoption, but Chip isn't adopted -- is he? Turns out he is, and his parents have kept that fact from him his entire life. Then the boys get another letter: "Beware. They're coming back to get you."

With Jonah's younger sister Katherine, they begin to investigate where they might have come from and discover they're part of a group of 36 kids who were all adopted and who now, mysteriously, have migrated from all over the country to the community where Jonah and Chip live.

I'm going to give some spoilers here, so if you don't want to know the twist on which this whole series rests, stop reading now and go check out Found from your local library.


What is it all about? In a word, time travel. I know -- you didn't see that coming, did you? Me neither. Turns out Jonah and Chip and the other kids were kidnapped out of time in a cosmic baby-smuggling ring. And they were kidnapped because they were important personages in history -- the Princes in the Tower, Virginia Dare, Anastasia Romanoff, Chinese princesses, philosophers...people who would have died too soon but instead were "rescued" to be adopted by prestige-seeking parents in the distant future. In a bungled baby-snatch, the 36 kids were accidentally crash landed in the late 20th century -- a plane-load of babies, mysteriously appearing on a small regional runway.

Unfortunately, their kidnappings have wounded Time and while one faction of time travellers is trying to snatch them back so they can be adopted in the future, another faction is equally determined to return them to their proper times so they can die as they were meant to do. Neither option is very appealing to the kids. If they go forward, they'll be regressed to babies and have to grow up all over again. If they go back, well...they die.

Eventually, the faction trying to restore Time to its proper path wins and Chip is sent back to 15th century England with another boy, Alex, to fulfill their destiny as the Princes in the Tower. But Jonah and Katherine manage to hitch a ride with Chip and are also catapulted back to the 1400s. They are reluctantly given the chance to "put things right" in a way that heals Time and spares their friends. And that is the subject of the second book, Sent.

Haddix has laid the groundwork for a very ambitious series here -- at lot of books, if she truly plans to cover each child on the plane (one child doesn't show up for the big adoption reunion and Jonah's sister, Katherine, who is not adopted, takes her place; Alex and Chip are handled in one book, but still, there are a lot of kids to cover). That ought to be enough to keep her busy for a while. The books are well written and do a nice job of combining the time-travel elements with actual history. These are books that do a lot to illuminate events and people from the past, so they get my vote just for that.

I don't know what adopted kids will make of this series. Certainly there's a kind of wish fulfillment here, finding out that your birth parents were royalty or famous or whatever -- like everyone wanting to believe they were Napoleon or Lady Godiva or Cleopatra in a former life instead of Joe the Pig Farmer. It might pass completely below the radar for adopted kids, or it might open some doors to talk about birth parents and what you actually know about them. Jonah and Chip present different adoption experiences, with Jonah's all very open and above-board and Chip's hidden as though it were completely immaterial, or even embarassing. Chip also feels "out of place," which is put down to his being literally "out of time," but his feelings may provoke a response in some adopted kids (and bio kids as well; feeling out of place can just be a teenage condition, too). I think parents of adopted kids should read this first so they know what kinds of ideas or questions or issues might be raised by the story.

39 Clues: Into the Gauntlet

Maybe I should have called this Rick Riordan Week because even though this particular book isn't authored by Riordan, the whole series and kickoff book were his brainchild. The final volume was actually written by Margaret Peterson Haddix, another well-known kid lit author, and it's a solid ending to a series that I, at least, wasn't sure could be brought to a satisfactory close.

The story picks up after Dan and Amy's Very Bad Day in Jamaica, where an innocent dies and they discover they're Madrigals. Now their task is to somehow unite the branches of the Cahill family and stop the competitive bloodshed that has spanned centuries. A pretty tall task, and one that on the face of it seems difficult for them to achieve. And I'll tell you straight out that this ending wouldn't make it in an adult book because it's a bit too pat, a bit too "now the world's a better place," a bit too Scooby Doo-ish to be completely plausible. But it's helpful to remember the target audience here: middle school and younger. For kids of that age, I think it works, and if it's a tad naive, it doesn't insult their intelligence.

The action moves to England, where it turns out that William Shakespeare was a Madrigal as well and clues at his grave point the Cahill sibs to the Madrigal stronghold. Haddix does a good job of incorporating the cryptic inscription on Shakespeare's monument at Stratford-Upon-Avon into part of a greater Madrigal code -- that actually made me smile, since that inscription has baffled scholars for years precisely because it makes no sense. Now, in a Cahill context, it does. Very neat.

This is the first book of the series where it felt like Haddix was struggling to catch the rhythm and pace of the previous books. The opening chapters are somewhat clunky and awkward, but eventually the book levels out and seems to find its mojo. Haddix moves the point of view around in the book so we see events not just through Dan and Amy's eyes but also through Hamilton Holt's, Ian Kabra's, Alistair Oh's and a surprise returnee from book one, Sinead Starling of the Starling triplets. Getting into their heads, this next generation of Cahills, allows the reader to see the shift in their attitudes, which does ultimately make the ending work.

Book 10 is a tidy wrap-up of what's basically an extended geography and history lesson. It's kind of a lightweight series, mainly action without a ton of substance, but it was a good read and one that my 9 year old really enjoyed.

I've Got a Crush...

On Jon Berkeley.

I have blogged before about his very excellent book The Hidden Boy, so I was tickled pink to find the first book in his Wednesday Tales series, The Palace of Laughter. And I am here to tell you, it did not disappoint.

It's fantasy, but it's so fresh, and told in such a novel way...I am almost at a loss for words (and that never happens. Seriously.)

Miles Wednesday, who lives in a barrel outside the town of Larde, meets a tiger one day in the woods. A talking tiger. Who decides not to eat him. The next morning, the tiger is gone and Miles, who has run away from the orphanage (Pinchbucket House -- how's that for a name?) sneaks into the circus to see if the tiger is real or not.

Instead of a tiger, he meets an angel. A real angel named Little who's in trouble. He rescues her from the evil ringmaster, the Great Cortado, and this begins their cross country adventure. They are searching for the Palace of Laughter -- though they don't know what or where it is. They hope to find Little's angel companion, Stormpoint, but they are sidetracked by a number of odd and sometimes frankly bizarre happenings.

Love Love Love Jon Berkeley. Love his originality, love the mesmerizing rhythm of his prose. I get lost in his finely drawn, almost-modern-yet-curiously-old-fashioned-worlds. I can picture each one of his oddball characters -- from Little, whose skin glows faintly, to fat Lady Partridge, who lives in a tree house with a hundred cats, to Tangerine, the bear Miles has had since he was left at the orphanage and who is brought to life by some magic of Little's.

Seriously, give this one a try. Or read The Hidden Boy -- if you like fantasy or even just oddball fiction, Jon Berkeley won't let you down.

Skippyjon Jones: Lost in Spice

The original Skippyjon Jones was a lot of fun. My kids and I had a ball doing cheesy Mexican accents for all the chihuahuas and we laughed when Skippito Friskito punctured the Great Bumblebeeto.

The second Skippyjon book, Skippyjon Jones: In the Doghouse was a little trip into...well, trippiness. I'm not going to say anyone was smoking crack when they wrote that one, but it didn't make a ton of sense. In fact, the subsequent books made less and less sense, even for the delusional daydreams of a Siamese cat who thinks he's a chihuahua.

So now we have Skippyjon Jones: Lost in Spice and at last there's another SJ book that makes some sense. In this book, Skippyjon blast into space where he encounters an alien twin -- a Martian Skippyjon in glowing green. And why is he lost in spice (an inside joke only for parents)? Because the Red Planet is covered in chili powder, of course. That's why it's red.

The pictures are bright and attractive; I do like Judy Schachner's artwork. The story makes about as much sense as the first book, and considerably more sense than the second book. Worth buying in hardback? Probably not, but perhaps worth it in paperback and certainly worth checking out from the library.

I Regret to Inform You...

I failed.

It doesn't happen often, this type of failure. But occasionally there's a book I just. can. not. get. into.

Linger was that book.

I tried, I really did. But I just couldn't bring myself to care what happened to Sam and Grace and all the werewolves. You can read my thoughts on Shiver, the first volume of the series here. I still have some objections because of the premarital sex. Other than that, Maggie Stiefvater is a fine writer, but the whole thing just left me saying "meh."

Apparently in this volume, Grace turns into a wolf and that's the big cliffhanger.

Meh.

At least they'll get a trilogy out of it. Whoo hoo.

Ingo: A Series for Mermaid Lovers

Mermaids, I suspect, are a perennial favorite among girls. Unfortunately, books about mermaids tend to be a bit light on literary merit. In a word, they often stink. What a great thing, then, is the Ingo series by Helen Dunmore.

11 year old Sapphire and her brother Connor live in Cornwall, growing up "in sight of the sea," as their mother puts it. One midsummer's night, their father, a fisherman, leaves the family to go for a walk by the ocean and disappears. The family is fractured by his disappearance. When his boat washes ashore some days later, rumors abound -- he drank too much that night and fell overboard, he only made it look like he drowned and he's left them for another woman. But there is one possibility that Sapphire is forced to consider: that he went into the sea of his own free will, lured by something out there, something irresistible.

Her suspicions are sharpened when her brother Connor begins disappearing for hours at a time; in fact, he seems barely conscious of the time he is gone and his manner tells Sapphy that he is being pulled toward the sea as their father was. She sees him sitting on a rock just off the shore, talking to a strange girl, but he denies later that he was with anyone. Then one day, she herself feels drawn, pulled like a magnet toward the ocean, and there she meets Faro, a boy who takes her into the realm of Ingo beneath the sea.

Ingo is a step up from books like The Tale of Emily Windsnap (and for comparison, Emily Windsnap is a step up from the Tinkerbell books). The writing is better, the plot is richer and more complex. The characters and their motives are more finely drawn and more multi-faceted. Even Ingo itself is a riddle: is it good? Is it evil? Do Faro and his sister mean well or ill? It all adds to the tension and the conflict. There's a parallel plot involving Sapphire and Connor's mum, who is beginning to date again and the book explores their feelings for her new friend, who they both like and detest in equal measure. He's a likable guy, but he's not their dad. And they both feel very strongly that their father is still alive, perhaps is even in Ingo.

here are four books in the series. It's been around for a while -- Ingo was published in 2005 -- but the last book was only recently made available in the US. If you have a strong reader, this one could go as young as 9 or 10, and I think its appeal would hold into 8th or even 9th grade. If you have a daughter who likes magic and fantasy, this is a good one to try.

How to Train Your Dragon -- Bookivore's Choice for a Good Read-Aloud

Read alouds can serve several purposes: they can introduce kids to more difficult language, they can expose kids to forms of language that might otherwise be unfamiliar or intimidating, like poetry, or they can stimulate kids' interest in reading by just being a rollicking good time. How to Train Your Dragon falls into this last category.

Great literature it ain't, but it is unapologetic about that. In fact, it revels in distinctly un-literary characters like Snotface Snotlout and Gobber the Belch and my personal favorite, Baggybum the Beerbelly. The hero, or perhaps anti-hero, is Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, son of Stoick the Vast, chieftain of the Hairy Hooligans, a tribe of Vikings inhabiting a dreary, difficult island in the North Sea called Berk (for those not in the know, Berk is a British slang term for an idiot).

Hiccup is rather a failure at all the traditional Viking pursuits; he is particularly bad at yelling, which is a handicap for his task in this book, capturing and training a dragon. Hiccup, you see, usually tries to do the right thing, which is not always the same as doing the Viking thing, and quite often is exactly the opposite. In this case, because he tries to save his friend Fishlegs from being eaten as he kidnaps a dragon, he himself ends up with the smallest, laziest, most contrary and ordinary dragon ever -- not a stellar achievement for the son of the chief and possible future chieftain himself someday. Hiccup manages to get himself thrown out of the tribe and almost simultaneously reinstated in order to save the Hooligans from the greatest dragon threat they've ever encountered. Hiccup manages it using his brains -- something the Hooligans are a bit short on -- and becomes a hero in the process.

We took this one on vacation with us and it was a huge hit with my children, particularly my seven year old son. The book is peppered with goofy drawings of the various characters which my children liked. And of course, the names and the references to belching, farting, and otherwise being kind of gross and impolite were a big hit as well.

Note, this is very different from the movie, so if your children saw the film, this isn't going to be as dramatic, nor is there as much emphasis on the viking-dragon relationship. Dragons in the book are supremely selfish and Hiccup's dragon is no different.

It's good fun as a family read aloud, and worth a look for reluctant readers, too. And if your kids like it, there are 4 more books in the series, enough to fill lots of nights with laughs.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole -- Coming to a Theatre Near You

My oldest daughter got started on the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series by Kathryn Lasky over the summer, mainly because it was one of the selections she could choose from for the Barnes and Noble reading program. She picked it because nothing else looked very interesting and although she wasn't sure she'd like it, she brought it home.

8 weeks later, she has read ten of the 15 or so books in the series and can't wait to get her hands on the rest. She has browbeaten her parents into reading the first few books as well, so I am now able to tell you that if you read these books, you will know a great deal about owls -- maybe more than you ever thought possible (or necessary).

The books -- at least the first few -- follow Soren, a young barn owl who has fallen from his nest in the forest. He is captured by some owls from an 'orphanage' called St. Aggie's, but this 'orphanage' has a sinister intent. With his friend Gylfie, an elf owl, Soren escapes St. Aggie's and sets off to find the Guardians of Ga'Hoole -- a legendary order of owls said to protect the weak, right wrongs, and do noble deeds.

The series is coming out in film September 24 and so far the stills and trailers look gorgeous. However, this is the same bunch that brought us Happy Feet, which didn't impress me a whole lot, so I am not getting my hopes up. I generally have low expectations for book-to-film adaptations.

What I like about the books is that they drove my daughter to ask so many questions -- what do sooty owls look like? How about burrowing owls? What does an owl pellet look like? What's inside it? Are there really blind nest snakes that take care of the owls' nests? (yes). Questioning, we know, is one of the habits of a good reader, so this was a very good thing. We spent several busy hours on the Internet satisfying her curiosity and building her understanding and knowledge into the bargain.

The other thing I liked was the size of the series -- 15 books are a God-send when you have a child that reads constantly. I spent the first half of the summer scrambling around trying to keep her supplied with books. After we found these, I could put my feet up and drink iced tea on the deck while I ate my bon-bons. Whew!

Already my daughter is begging to see the movie, so I am crossing my fingers that it's at least passably good. In the mean time, if you have a little nature lover who's between 8 and 12 years of age, you might want to give this series a try.

Book 10 Is Here!

Released today.

Are you running to the bookstore so your little readers can have it by the time they get home from school, or did you pre-order it so you can stroll leisurely to the mailbox and pick it up that way? Or are you cheap like Bookivore and planning to wait for the next Scholastic Book Warehouse Sale to get it for half price? Of course, this means we have to take our chances with the public library, so I might have to cave and go to the bookstore for this one...

I can't wait to see how Amy and Dan fare in the final book of the series.

Runaway

"What happened to that book you were reading about
China?"

"Lost on Planet China? I finished it. Now I'm reading
a book about a girl who had a brain transplant against her will."

"What?"

"A brain transplant."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"Um...no."

"Who in their right mind would buy a plot about a brain
transplant?"

Yep, it's book three in Meg Cabot's Airhead trilogy. Runaway follows the further adventures of Emerson Watts, whose brain was transplanted into the body of supermodel Nikki Howard after a freak accident at a Stark Megastores' grand opening. Book one, Airhead, is mostly concerned with Em learning to live as Nikki. In book two, Being Nikki, Em learns that Nikki didn't die of an aneurysm as she'd been told, but is very much alive and the victim of attempted murder because of something she'd overheard about Stark Megastores and the launch of their new, low-cost laptops. She tried to blackmail her boss and wound up as nothing more than a brain to be discarded until a compassionate doctor transplanted her into yet another available body, this one much too average for Nikki's taste.

Book three opens with Nikki, her mother and brother, and Em all being held prisoner by Brandon Stark, Nikki's one-time boyfriend. He wants Nikki's secret so he can blackmail his father. Nikki wants her old body back. Lulu, Em's roommate, wants Nikki's brother, Steven. And Em? She wants Christopher, her best friend, to be more than a best friend.

Got that?

It's barely plausible as a plot, but it is very readable and funny in a campy, conspiracy-theory kind of way. I like Meg Cabot's writing style -- she's like a Sophie Kinsella for the high school set -- but she doesn't quite make it past my mom-filter on this one. My biggest objection throughout this whole series has been the implication that Nikki is no sexual innocent. Em is, there's no question of that, but many references are made to Nikki's body and its sexuality. Em is confused by the sensations and signals her new body sends her. In book three, we find out that Nikki really isn't an innocent -- Brandon admits he'd only stayed with Nikki "for sex." And Nikki's been a bit of a skank, sneaking around behind Brandon's back to hook up with Lulu's boyfriend at the time, Justin. But now she wants to get back together with Brandon because she's convinced he'll be able to help her get a reverse-brain transplant so she can go back to being Nikki, even though the operation would almost certainly kill either her or Em or both.

Got that?

Em has to deal with the fallout from their infidelity, has to make sense of her body's messages, has to find a way to get Christopher to see that she loves him (though I have to say, this is pretty obvious and I found myself wondering how she could miss something so glaringly clear). While I like Cabot's easy, breezy style, and I very much liked the realization Em has that being pretty on the outside doesn't really make up for being a jerk on the inside, I have all the same objections I had to the first book; there's just too much sexuality in this for me to be comfortable with it as a junior high book, and almost too much for me to be comfortable with it below age 16.

The Hunger Games Series

Quite often I read two books at the same time; one I keep upstairs for reading at bedtime or while I'm blow drying my hair (I hold the book open with my toes and dry my hair more or less upside down) and the other I keep downstairs for reading during the odd moments that I'm not doing something else. This only works, however, if the two books are about equally interesting. When I started Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, it was my downstairs book. But then it started migrating upstairs with me, and then I just had to stop everything and finish it because it was just. that. good.

Collins is a veteran writer and I greatly enjoyed her Gregor the Overlander books, so I expected this one to be good. I did not expect to be carried away by it to the point that I almost couldn't bear to make dinner because I was frantic to find out what happened next.


Katniss Everdeen lives in a post-apocalyptic North America in which the the country has been divided into 13 districts, all subjugated by The Capitol. Except for District 13, which has been obliterated by the Capitol in reprisal for their rebellion. As part of their subjugation, each district must send tributes -- a boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 17 -- to participate in the Hunger Games each year. Games in which the tributes must fight to the death. By this means does the Capitol exercise its power over the districts. This year, Katniss's 12 year old sister, Prim, is chosen. Unhesitatingly, Katniss volunteers to take her place.

The rest is a roller coaster ride of strategy, stylists, ambushes, alliances and lots and lots of death. I'm not going to explain the details, only say that once Katniss enters the arena, I defy you to put this book down until you've seen it through to the end. There are classical echos here: it brings to mind the Athenian tributes sent to face the Minotaur, and the gladiators who fought each other in ancient Rome. Many of the characters have Latin names, so the parallel isn't accidental. The entire society of the Capitol is a bizarre blend of frivolity and violence -- one minute people are dying their hair purple and tattooing themselves, the next they're screaming for blood during the games.

The second book, Catching Fire, which deals with uprisings throughout the districts, is even more absorbing than the first, which makes it breathtakingly good. Unfortunately, I now have to wait until August -- AUGUST! -- for the third book, Mockingjay, to come out. I'm not sure I can make it that long.

They are violent books -- the premise is such that they can hardly be anything else -- but there's real poignancy and pathos in most of the deaths. And beyond the violence, the books are thought-provoking in a timely way. The terrible waste of life and the terrible cruelty of the Capitol serve as backdrop for Katniss's coming of age, in which she is forced to weigh issues many people never face. At what point does life become so terrible that rebellion is preferable to living? These are for Junior High and up, because of their violent nature, but don't let the violence cause you to pass these by. They are truly, among the best books I've ever had the good fortune to read.

Learning to Get Along

I really like this series. We got the first three books ages ago when they comprised the whole series, but now it's grown to about 15 books, covering topics like politeness, sharing, empathy, safety, fears, anger, listening, acceptance, giving, and participation. The author, Cheri Meiners, is a former elementary educator who now teaches at the university level. She does a nice job of breaking these topics down so they're approachable for the preschool/kindergarten set.

Pictures are bright and nicely rendered. They do an especially good job of conveying emotions through facial expressions. Also, the pictures are very multicultural: the central character of Understand and Care is Asian; Be Polite and Kind's central character is Latino. Other books do a similarly good job of including children of many races.

These books are also good ones for starting conversations about feelings, reactions, other people's feelings, behaviors...just about anything you might need to talk to your 2-6 year old about. My almost-4-year-old loves Understand and Care; she enjoys identifying how people feel from their facial expressions and we spent some time talking about what you might say to someone who felt afraid or sad or angry. Such a great springboard to talking about and teaching empathy -- how do other people feel? How can you use your imagination to figure out what they're feeling? We've been having a lot of tantrums around here lately, so Cool Down and Work Through Anger is looking like a good title for us to pick up. And we've been talking about blessing other people, so Reach Out and Give might be another possibility.

These may be available at your public library -- ours carries the first three titles -- and they're all available in paperback through your favorite bookseller. It might even be worth checking your church library, as they were popular with churches when they first came out.

Images courtesy of BarnesandNoble.com

Scientists in the Field

Every so often, I run across a series that just wows me. Scientists in the Field is just such a series. These are rich books -- full of scientific and natural information, as well as information about scientific process.




The series, which is published by Houghten Mifflin Harcourt, has about 15 books in it. It's hard to get an exact number because Houghten Mifflin Harcourt's website doesn't list all their titles and a search by series title on Barnes and Noble or Amazon doesn't bring up all the titles. But, suffice it to say that there are quite a few of them and they are diverse enough to appeal to a wide range of interests.

There were so many possiblilities for us to check out. Tree Kangaroos --so sweet! This was a nice one about the difficulties in tracking this very shy and elusive animal. Stunning photography, too.

Like frogs? Here's one for you that will tell you tons of cool stuff about frogs and how scientists study them.

Here's one for older kids. It's a little more abstract, but highly interesting. If you have an 8-12 year old who is studying pollution or the ocean, this would be a good one.

Now, you may be wondering whether Bookivore has read all of these. The answer is no. I let my children pick one from the library and the one they picked was this:

They did this on purpose because they know I hate spiders and they think it's funny to make me read books to them about spiders. ESPECIALLY books with pictures like this:

Oh my. What I have to do when I read stuff like this is keep my eyes on the text and pretend the other stuff just isn't there. BUT, I will say that the scientific information was so interesting, and so well presented, that I was completely reeled in, in spite of my severe arachnophobia.

The book profiled an Arachnologist from Hiram University in Ohio as he traveled through French Guiana in search of Goliath Birdeater Tarantulas. Not just spiders -- big, hairy spiders. There was lots of detail about how scientists ask questions and frame experiments and I found myself kind of fascinated. I didn't know that spiders molt -- shed their skins -- and that this is kind of a delicate and dangerous procedure for them. Do I enjoy looking at molted spider skins as pictured in the book? No. But it was interesting to learn about it.

If spiders aren't your thing, there are thankfully many other options. Whales, for example. Whales I can really get into.

Or maybe the Great Apes. Love Gorillas.

Yikes! More bugs. Why do people let them crawl on their faces? Makes me shiver. However, this is just the kind of gross-out factor that appeals to my almost-7-year-old son, so this one will be coming home with us soon.

I am not particularly freaked out by snakes, but some people are. These books are loaded with photographs, many of them close ups, so if you tend to flip around snakes, you might want to avoid this one.

It's got pictures in it like this:

The range of interests and habitats is impressive -- there are even books about searching for extra terrestrials and anthropology -- the study of human groups. I find the whole idea of learning about what specific scientists do a refreshing change from all the books we've read about animal species.

The age range for this series is listed as 8-12, and it would be that for independent reading, but my 6 and a half year old was riveted by the tarantula book, which I read aloud. My 8 year old could have read it easily herself.

We borrowed the hardcovers, but they are available in paperback. The hardcovers are $15, the paperbacks are $8. I think they'd be a valuable supplement to a homeschool science curriculum.

They are anywhere from 60-80 pages in length and at the back they include glossaries of the terms used (waaaaayy more spider terms and factoids than I ever wanted to know. I now know what pedipalps are and that spider fangs are white like walrus tusks after they molt --bleah).

These could also be used in the summer as a way to keep those little brain cells working. The way the information is presented really gives kids a model to follow in testing their own hypotheses. They could be used in conjunction with nature hikes or other outdoor experiences. If you're brave, you could let them study spiders in a jar. Or snakes. Or frogs.

We will continue to check these out of our library (because why would I want to own a huge, hairy spider book?). A truly wonderful series -- go give 'em a try.

All pictures courtesy of BarnesandNoble.com

Pinkalicious

Sometimes, ideas for books just tickle me...well, pink.

Pinkalicious, the title character, eats too many pink cupcakes and voila! She turns pink from head to toe. She is thrilled. "I was so beautiful, I cried." she says. Then she runs around yelling "I'm Pinkerbelle! Look at me, I'm Pinkerbelle!"


Her mother takes her to the doctor, who prescribes a diet of green food to cure her "pinkititis." Yuck! No way Pinkalicious is signing up for that. She sneaks one more pink cupcake and wakes up...RED! Oh no, this won't do. She buckles down, eats her greens, and returns to normal.

If you have a 3-5 year old who loves pink, this book will be an instant hit, and deservedly so. It's charming, funny, and a pleasure to read.

Enter Purplicous.

Purplicious is not charming. In fact, it's rather appalling, especially following on the heels of something as sweet as Pinkalicious. It loses the light, humorous tone that made Pinkalicious so readable and gives us some mean girls, picking on Pinkalicious for her love of pink. Yes, Pink goes on to meet a girl who loves purple and admits that perhaps there's more to life than pink, but it seems to me that they've completely misjudged the target audience. The publisher lists this one as a book for 5-8 year olds, but I can't see many 7 or 8 year olds with this book. It's a preschool/kindergarten book --maybe up to age 6 -- and as such the mean-girl behavior is bewildering to kids -- why would anyone be so mean about liking pink? This is not how it is in preschool, unless your preschool has a Lord-of-the-Flies quality that ours lacks.

Enter Goldilicious.

Goldilicious has a premise that is more appropriate to the true target audience of 3-5 year olds. Goldilicious is Pink's unicorn. Adult readers will realize the unicorn is an imaginary friend (he becomes see-through whenever Pink's mom is around) and he and Pink have wonderful adventures together. And guess what? Now Pink has a fetish for all things gold! Go figure! Kind of thin, as plots go, but at least no one's being nasty to each other.

Goldilicious exists because Pinkalicious is a lucrative franchise. Anymore it seems almost any book that sells well will spawn enough sequels to completely exhaust an otherwise good idea. It happened with Skippyjon Jones (with ever-decreasing lucidity) and Walter the Farting Dog (how many books about gassy dogs do we need?) and Olivia (and you can certainly argue that Olivia's franchise was spinning out thinner and thinner until she was picked up and made into a cartoon by NickJr.)


My advice: get Pinkalicious if you have a preschooler who loves pink, check out Goldilicious from your local library, and leave Purplicious on the shelf.

Classic Monday: Nate the Great

"I, Nate the Great,

am a detective.

This morning I was a cold detective.

I was standing in the snow

with my dog, Sludge,

building a snow dog

and a snow detective.

They looked like Sludge and me.

They were cold and white and wet.

And so were we."

Nate the Great and the Snowy Trail

You gotta love Nate the Great: his hard-boiled monologue, his love of pancakes, his determination to solve the case. He's been around for nearly 40 years and still stands as a classic chapter book for readers beginning to read independently.


Kids today aren't going to get the Joe Friday tone to Nate's speech, the short, clipped sentences, the just-the-facts-ma'am attitude, but parents who grew up on Dragnet re-runs or have caught them on cable will recognize the similarity.


Line lengths are short, but there are quite a few per page. Often an entire page is covered in text. The stories are accessible, always involving other kids and their mysteries. The stories offer the opportunity to stop and predict what might happen -- a good higher-order thinking skill. The books are usually under 50 pages.


Lots of sight words here, and lots of repeated words, mainly because of how Nate talks. The repetition is nice for early readers because they get practice with the same words. However, this repetition makes them not a good choice for reading aloud -- you, the parent, will find yourself getting either a little bored with or annoyed by the text -- wonderful practice, but a slow read for competent readers.




There are about 25 books in Marjorie Sharmat's series, though several since the 1990s have been co-written with Craig or Mitchell Sharmat, who are presumably her sons. Nate the Great remains a good choice for beginning readers.

Usborne Young Reading

After my last post, I got to thinking about good transitional books and wondering why I don't have more of them. So I dug into my stash of readers, which I have handily sorted into plastic shoebox bins and keep stored on top of a bookcase in my bedroom. In my box labeled "Level 3 Readers & Early Chapter Books" I found a couple Usborne Early Reading books.



These are much like the Stepping Stone Full Color Chapter books, in that they are true chapter books with full-length sentences, but they have brightly colored pictures on every page. They come in two levels -- Series One and Series Two, with the text length in the series two books being a little longer and more complex. There is a Series Three, but the subject matter is definitely for older kids -- not so much transitional.

Most of the titles in either series are remade classics -- books like Beauty and the Beast, and Sleeping Beauty, as well as The Adventures of King Arthur, Robin Hood, The Prince and the Pauper, The Wind in the Willows, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Phantom of the Opera and so on. There are a few original titles, some informative, like The Story of the Olympics and The Story of Castles, and some original titles like The Incredible Present and Mystery Mansion. The titles in Series One are overwhelmingly fairy tales, while Series Two seems to be mainly classical literature and informational.

Usborne is a British company which publishes a lot of great kids books, and they are particularly well know for their illustrations. These books are no exception -- not great art, but highly colorful and inviting pictures compliment the stories well. They are well suited to their target audience of 6-8 year olds. The example below really highlights what Usborne does so well: provides pictures with a lot going on in them. Kids will enjoy poring over them to pick out details. Not all the books are illustrated like this, but many are.


This is a big series -- the list of titles in the two series numbers well over 100. You can see the full list at Usborne's website, but keep in mind that this site is located in England and some books won't be available here. Amazon and Barnes and Noble have several of these books, but not nearly as many as Usborne actually publishes. I feel fortunate to have stumbled on a couple hard-bound copies at my local used book store. They are wonderful examples of their type and well worth searching out if you have a child who needs a nudge to the next level of reading.