Little Women

I think every 12 year old girl should read this book with her mother. Then, read it again on her own each year until she is 18. This book embodies the time-honored values that women used to have and live by, but are now fading away as society becomes more self-absorbed. I love that the young women in this book are still human with individual weaknesses, but strive to overcome their shortcomings to make life better for those around them, while still retaining their unique personalities. When my girls caught me reading this book, they asked me to read it out loud and even though I was in the middle of the story, they loved every bit of it. They kept asking me to tell them what came next and how it ended. It took me several times of starting this book to finally get through it, but once I did, what a reward. My favorite memory while reading this book sitting out on the porch reading it to the girls. Of course, they wanted to be the characters and "played" Little Women for weeks after. They also love watching the movie and reliving it all over again. The characters, the setting, the family ties, it's all beautiful.

The Jefferson Key

Okay, I have to preface this review with the fact that I don't normally read thrillers. I was interested in this book because of the history included. I did enjoy learning more about the history of piracy and privateering and it actually came in handy while playing a game of pirate minature golf with the kids one day. That said, I really had a hard time with all the guns and killing, especially the graphic details of acts of torture from the pirates, and no I don't normally squirm from gore, it was just so unnecessary and unrealistic being that it was set in modern times. I was also distracted by the author's continual switching back and forth between the different plot lines. I don't usually mind that technique, but this was extreme, happening literally after one or two sentences in some cases. My last critique was the over use of the phrase ingress and egress. I thought it was creative vocabulary usage the first time it appeared, but after the third or fourth time it was distracting and I thought that a simple entrance or exit would have sufficed.

Catch-22

I love war books so when I found this classic for sale at the library I snatched it up.  I wanted to like it so that I could check it off of that list of 100 classics that everyone should read, but I just couldn't. Although the story was interesting, the language and imagery was awful and by awful I mean crude. I know, it's a war book and war is not pretty and I really can handle a fair amount of violence, but I just choose not to read foul language and fill my mind with words that may someday slip out and corrupt the impressionable minds I spend my days with, so...sorry classics list, but I did not finish this book and I don't intent to.

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

Well, other than having the longest title for a book ever! it was a pretty fun book. Two kids hiding out in a museum...what kid wouldn't love to live that adventure. It also reminds me of a story I wrote when I was a kid about my brother and I getting trapped in the mall and the adventures that we had. It really made me wonder if I had already read this book as a kid and it was in my subconscious, or if the author of this book was secretly my elementary school teacher who stole my idea and wrote a book and became rich and famous. Well, we'll never know now will we?

Over Sea, Under Stone

This book by Susan Cooper is the first to the series "The Dark is Rising." Unlike the rest of the world, I am not one who usually likes to read series. I guess I'm just enough ADD that I like to mix it up and read something totally different than the book I just finished. However, the other books in this series are supposed to be really great so I guess I will read them, I just need a break in between. Anyway, about the book, it has been compared to "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," but honestly the only similarities are the British children who are staying in an old house with a strange uncle, who are bored on a rainy day so they decide to explore the house and find a mystery hidden behind an old wardrobe. Okay, so I know that sounds exactly like "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," but that is where the similarities stop. Although this story is really just your basic kids-save-the-world-by-singlehandedly-fighting-all-the-bad-guys, I enjoyed it's quaintness and the fact that it was well written if not all believable. I have high hope for the next book in the series which is "The Dark is Rising" and is a Newberry Honor winner.

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.