Peter Pan

All I have to say is WOAH! This is not your Disney animated Peter Pan. We read it as a family for book group and the kids enjoyed the swashbuckling, flying, mermaid aspects of it, but honestly it was intended for a much older audience. I think middle school would be more appropriate.  I was shocked by some of the inferences and references until I did some further research on British terminology and found out that our use of words like negligee is not the same as the original meaning of the word. Good thing, I was really starting to wonder about that Tinker Bell. :)

City of Ember

Great teen dystopian society book. It would be good to read this along with either The Giver, The Hunger Games, or The Unwanteds and do a compare and contrast.  Movie was decent, but not always true to the book.  The kids loved to listen to the book on disk.

The View from Saturday

My feelings about this book are conflicting. This is a children's award winner and I am learning very quickly that award winner does not always translate into great. This book started out slow but picked up with the chapter about sea turtles although even that seemed cliche and a little too save-the-world-by-being-green to make this a timeless book. The characters in the story are 6th graders and as the general rule is that children read books where the characters are a couple years older than they are, I thought it should be appropriate for my 3rd and 5th graders. I personally, did not think that the overused references to puberty would be appreciated by my children and I took issue with several other references as well, such as referring to a dog as "obviously male" and using a noose as their academic team logo. In the end, the story was cute and a little endearing to read as an adult, but I really find it hard to believe that children would enjoy this book. To prove my point, I started reading it to my kids and they all rebelled against the book in the first chapter. I think it I could get them to sit for it, they might actually enjoy it in the end, but they are so turned off by the beginning that I don't know if that will ever happen.

Eagle of the Ninth

I read this as part of our Ancient Roman studies. It took a long time to finish, but it was actually pretty good, just not riveting. I really loved the friendship and trust portrayed in the two main characters. I don't think that the movie did justice to the book at all.  This is definitely intended for middle to high school aged youth, and they should probably have some interest in Roman legions or it might not hold their interest.