It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 12/9/13

I am excited to be a part of the conversation at #IMWAYR! Thank you to Sheila, Jen and Kellee for inspiring and hosting this meme.

It feels like crunch time for me as a reader on the Maine Student Book Award Committee.  The committee meets in January to put together a short list and I still have quite a few books that I want to get my hands on before that.  It's an exciting time because everyone is publishing their "best of" 2013 lists and of course I want to read every title on every list!

Rec. for grades K-5

For this week, I started with one on the Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Books of 2013 called Akissi: Cat Invasion.  This is a really unusual graphic novel, originally written in French by Marguerite Abouet and illustrated by Mathieu Sapin.   Have you ever seen a graphic novel set in West Africa?  Nope, me neither.  Since West Africa is a place that has long fascinated me, this book was a definite hit for me.  The author and illustrator team up brilliantly to share the exploits of Akissi, a young girl who knows how to get in and out of trouble.  I absolutely love the subtle humor, the artwork and the character of Akissi and I hope that the graphic novel format will tempt my elementary students in Maine to discover a culture they might not otherwise come across.

Rec. for grades 4-6

Sharon Creech's latest, The Boy on the Porch, has been getting some "best of" buzz as well.  This spare, short book tells the story of John and Marta, a young couple that discovers a boy on their porch.  He has a note in his pocket which explains next to nothing about why he is there, but John and Marta take him in and gingerly, gently, carefully, begin to love him.  I read this book with all sorts of questions in my mind (what’s the deal with the couple? How in the world could they keep this kid for so long without telling anyone? Where did the kid come from? Why doesn’t he speak? etc. etc.) and I very much appreciated Creech's spare and understated approach. It would be an amazing book to read aloud in order to tease those questions out of kids through conversations and it definitely lends itself to imagining the circumstances that brought the couple and the boy together. That said, the slower pace and many unanswered questions might not work for everyone.

Rec. for grades 6-8

Twerp by Mark Goldblatt was a surprising read to me.  I have had several conversations about it with other librarians - some of whom hated it, and others who loved it.  One of my friends said that it reminded her of Wonder which is what finally motivated me to track down a copy.  Set in 1969, Julian has been given the assignment of writing about an incident that led to his suspension from school.  Instead of tackling the assignment head on, Julian begins a journal, detailing the many exploits that he and his gang of friends have in their Queens neighborhood.  Julian is an interestingly sympathetic protagonist who, as it turns out, is also a bully. Seeing the story from the bully’s perspective is unusual and I found his remorse to be genuine.  I can understand why some readers might not love him - he definitely does some things that are extremely unlikeable, but then, who amongst us hasn't done something we regret?  Julian's evolving emotional maturity shows the way in which we all have the potential to recover and redeem ourselves after causing someone else pain.

For adults

In a rare reversal in my household, my husband recommended a book to me that I read this past week called The Orchardist (by Amanda Coplin).  It seemed like it would be an automatic winner for me - historical fiction, set in the Pacific Northwest - but as it turned out, I think I wanted something other than what Coplin delivered.  This is a quiet book about a man, Talmadge, who spends his entire life tending to his fruit tree orchards.  At a young age his mother dies and then his sister mysteriously disappears. When he is an adult, two pregnant girls wander onto his property.  Through tragic circumstances, only one of the girls and one of the babies survives.  As their lives become deeply entwined, Talmadge grows old, the baby grows up and the girl grows increasingly wild.  Despite all that, though, the pace remains slow and easy and the action never seems to crescendo in the way that I was expecting (ok, hoping) it would.



Finally, I have to end with a plug for the book that I am currently in the midst of: The Twistrose Key.  It is beautiful and haunting and I can't wait to get back to it (yes, I  was hoping for a snow day today so I could stay home and read).