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.

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.