Ungifted

Ungifted by Gordan Korman is a fun book!  Each chapter is written from a different character's point of view, where we learn the story of a typical troublemaker in school who has a not so typical experience when one of his pranks inadvertantly lands him in the academy for gifted students in his town.  The story that unfolds between him and his former school friends and his new academy friends is one of discovery, realizations, and understanding!  of course all of his "gifted" talents are tested and it is no big surprise that he is in the wrong place at the right time.  It was a quick read, and I rate it a 4 out of 4 stars.

Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie

Eleanor is an eight year old who is struggling with something we all must face.  Saying goodbye to someone you dearly love who must move away can be a hard time, and Eleanor is not exception.  She struggles with the loss of her beloved babysitter, Bibi, who must move to Florida and take care of her sick father.  How will Eleanor deal with this upheaval in her life, and will she ever be as close to her new babysitter Natalie?  Eleanor learns some great life lessons and gains more than she ever thought she could in this quick and fun read.  As a 2012-2013 Bluebonnet Award Nominee, it too is a must read.  Enjoy!

Sternberg, J., & Cordell, M. (2011). Like pickle juice on a cookie. New York: Amulet Books.

Wonder Struck

Brian Selznick has done it again, and I am so glad this is a 2012-2013 Bluebonnet Award Nominee!  Wonder Struck is two stories at once that take place in different times.  Ben and Rose are two characters living decades apart from one another who are both setting out on a quest to learn more about their parents.  Ben's story begins in Minnesota and leads him to New York, and his story is written beautifully.  Rose's story is told in words and beautiful graphics and takes her on a wonderful adventure.  There is so much to this story with the characters becoming intwined in each other's stories.  A must read!

Selznick, B. (2011). Wonder struck: a novel in words and pictures. New York: Scholastic Press.

The Memory Bank

Hope and Honey are two sisters that, despite being raised by questionable parents, are loving and caring.  They survive each day knowing they are there for one another until their parents abandon Honey leaving Hope hopeless.  Hope soon learns that her memory bank is very low, but her dreams make her an interesting prospect for the workers at the Memory Bank.  Hopes quest to be reunited with her sister may be the only memory that keeps her dreams alive.  Read to find out what happens, and let me know what you think!  Great story!

Coman, C., & Shepperson, R. (2010). The Memory Bank. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books.

 

Booklist for Blog

For this class, I read and blogged about the following books:

Chapter Books:

The Dreamer

We Are the Ship

A Tale Dark and Grimm

Turtle in Paradise

Twilight

The Hunger Games

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

Bridge to Terabithia

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Blubber

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Feathers

The Witches

Are you There, God?  It’s me Margaret.

Picture Books:

Blue Lipstick

The Uglified Duck

How Rocket Learned to Read

Martin’s Big Words

Martina the Beautiful Cockroach

Dave the Potter

Goal!

The Duchess of Whimsy

Snowflake Bentley

Flotsam

Hey, Al

Saint George and the Dragon

It’s a Book

And Tango Makes Three

Chalk

Are You There God ? It's Me, Margaret.

Are you There God?  It's me Margaret. is written by Judy Blume and appears on the Challenged Book List.

This is a true coming-of-age story about a girl growing up and learning the lessons of being a young girl.  Eleven-year-old Margaret's family has moved to a small town in New Jersey from their apartment in New York, and she makes friends easily, but definitley notices differences in her family and her friends'.  She has an ongoing relationship with God about her worries and anxieties through short verbal prayers and journal entries even though her family has no religion.  As she journeys through the story, Margaret finds that her curiosity about religion and how she will fit in without it actually draws her further from God.  I thought this book had some great lessons and themes, and most girls can learn quite a bit from it.  It reminded me about several books I have read in the past because of some of the things the characters do and how they treat one another.  Most of it is very spot-on for girls of eleven and twelve years old.  I admired Margaret's relationship with her grandmother and found that it reminded me a lot of my own relationship with my maternal grandmother.  She was very much like Margaret's and it made me remember how valuable those times together were.  

Blume, J. (1970). Are you there God? It's me, Margaret . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Bradbury Press.

The Witches

The Witches by Raold Dahl is on the list of 100 Most Challenged Books.

The Witches is a silly story set in Europe during the modern day.  It is a story of a young boy that is being raised by his grandmother after the death of his parents.  She lives in Norway, but he has grown up in England.  The most important lesson his grandmother has taught him is how to recognize witches and avoid themso he can survive.  Apparently witches are out to destroy all of the children in the world.  After learning about witches, the young boy is more alert in his every day actions and tries to avoid them at all costs.  While on holiday, the boy and his grandmother find out they are staying at the hotel where the witchedsof England are having their annual meeting to talk about there new plan to rid the world of kids.  The boy falls prey to the witches who test their plan on him and turn him into a mouse.  The only flaw is they cannot kill him after he becomes a mouse because he is too smart to fall for dying in a mousetrap.  When his grandmother learns of his new existence, they devise a plan to give the witches a taste of their own medicine, literally.  When their plan works, and all of the English witches turn into mice, they decide they must spend the rest of their days together extinguishing the world of all the witches in the other countries as well using their own plan against them.  I did not really connect with this story in any way, but I did enjoy the relationship between the boy and his grandmother as it reminded me of times In spent with my own grandmother learning many things from her.

Dahl, R., & Blake, Q. (1983). The witches . New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

Chalk

Chalk is written by Bill Thomson and is a selection from the Notable Books for Children's List.

 

 

Chalk is a super fun book to "read" that uses oodles of imagination.  It is a wordless book that really does not need words as the story leaps off the pages at you from the cover to the end.  Three children are walking in a rain shower to the park and discover a bag of chalk.  Little do they know that the chalk is magical and as they begin to draw, they find what they have created becomes reality.  The sun that is drawn rises and dries up the rain, and the butterflies also rise up from the pavement and fly away.  When the third child draws a dinoasur, it too rises up and starts to chase the kids who run into the playground equipment to escape.  The disosaur artist quickly draws a rain shower and the dinosaur melts away leaving nothing but a chalk memory and green puddle.  The children decide to leave the magical chalk behind as they leave the park for some other children to discover.  This book instantly reminded me of the times when my own children would play with sidewalk chalk for hours and create all kinds of materpieces that also became memories and colorful puddles so they could start all over again on their concrete canvases.  The illustrations are so well painted and bring such life to the storywit their close-ups and illumination.  A very enjoyable book to "read"!

Thomson, B. (2010). Chalk . New York: Marshall Cavendish Children.

Feathers

Feathers by Jaqueline Woodson is a Newbery Honor book.

This is a little book that packs inside its cover a very big story.  The story of Frannie and her hearing imparied brother Sean is one that shows how delicate relationships are and how each relationship leaves its mark on your world.  Frannie and her family live in a large city in the early 1970's and even though the city and school are not segregated, the concept is lost on the city where the black families live on one side of the highway and the white families on the other.  When a new white boy comes into Frannie's class, it rocks everyone's world as he doesn't seem to belong, but somehow does.  Everyone from the good-goody girl to the school bully is taken by the mysterious, new boy who eventually makes his way in his new world.  I connected with this book in many ways because not only have I been the new kid in class, I have also been the one who stood up for someone without knowing them against the bully.  The relationships between Frannie and her family and her friends are so simple yet also seem so complex.  I love the way it is written so that you delve into Frannie's deepest thoughts and understand her fears, and see her understand the symbolism in the feathers. 

Woodson, J. (2007). Feathers . New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

And Tango Makes Three

And Tango Makes Three is written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell and is on the 100 most challenged books list.

 

 

 

This touching story is one of families and tolerence.  Two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York came to live with one another and adopted an orphaned egg that eventually hatched into a female chick named Tango.  The two males, Roy and Silo, cared for the young chick and took care to raise her and teach her all of the ways of a penguin.  There is so much tolerence at work in this book, from the animals themselves to the spectators at the zoo, and it is a nice way to share the information which is based on two real penguins of the same name at that very zoo.  It made me think of how much the kids have changed since I was in school.  I think that now there are so many more cultural differences and changes that kids are exposed to that they are much more tolerant of differences among one another that I can ever remember as a child growing up.  How nice for younger students to see that there are differences in families even in the natural world, and yet, they are still a happy and thriving family. 

 

Richardson, J., Parnell, P., & Cole, H. (2005). And Tango makes three . New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is written by Jacqueline Kelly and is a Newbery Honor Book.

 

 

Calpurnia Tate, or Callie Vee as some call her, is an eleven year old girl growing up in a small central Texas town during the year of 1899.  She is surrounded by boys as she is the only girl of seven in the Tate family and happens to be smack dab in the middle of it all.  Callie has a wild spirit about her that keeps her from embracing the fineries of the young ladies of her time choosing instead to explore the world around her with her Grandfather, who is a naturalist and retired from the cotton plantation the family owns.  Her relationship with her grandfather has been nearly non-exitent until he sees her interest in the natural world, and gradually their relationship grows out of mutual respect for their love of nature.  This great book took me back to a time when I was able to spend some very treasured summers with my own Papaw as he worked in his electrician business.  Occasionally I would be allowed to go with him to a job that had to be supervised or for a bid as he owned the company.  Much like Callie Vee, I can remember being in awe of the knowledge that he possessed about his world that was so unfamiliar to me.  I was able to grow close with him over gardening and tinkering around in the garage.  A few times in the novel, Callie takes to her bed in sometimes real and sometimes feigned illness which prompts her to remember her family's cure-all of codliver oil.  That also made me laugh as I remembered my Papaw wanting to mop my tonsils with some red substance that we called "monkey blood" when I mentioned that I had anything resembling a sore throat.  One time was enough for me to know that I did not like it, and nothing would make me say I was sick enough for that.  As the title reads, Callie goes through an evolution or change as she struggles with the internal issues that many strong women of her time must have dealt with; should she become a proper young lady for her family to present to society or follow her heart into science where she knew she could find happiness.  It was a very enjoyable read!

Kelly, J. (2009). The evolution of Calpurnia Tate . New York: Henry Holt.

Blubber

Blubber by Judy Blume is on the list of the 100 most challenged books.

  Blubber is a book that I can totally understand and relate to on many levels.  It is understandable why some people would want to challenge it due to the content of bullying, name-calling, and dishonesty, but these issues are something that is very real in the world today, unfortunately.  The story's main character really learns a lesson about how to treat someone when she becomes the target in the classroom instead of one of the people picking on the target, which is the role she was used to playing.  If more kids read this book, maybe a lesson could be learned about how it feels on both ends of trhe sprectrum.  Each year, I see 6th graders play these games with one another, especially the girls, where there is a ringleader and those that follow blindly without making their own decisions between right and wrong.  With the change in technology and the introduction of cyber-bullying, parents and teachers have to be even more aware of the unfortunate opportunies for kids to lead one another astray.  This tale, while dated, teaches some good lessons.  While I was reading it, I fully expected there to be a more negative outcome simply because I have seen many of the negative things that can happen from bullying.  The lesson may be simple and timeless, but it is even more important now than ever before.

Blume, J. (1974). Blubber . Scarsdale, N.Y.: Bradbury Press.