This zany story is a combination of mystery, quest, fantasy and some historical fiction thrown in for good measure.  It is a free-association paradise which some students will really enjoy and others may find too bizarre or confusing.  It is the sequel to The Neddiad and reading that first book may have made this book seem a little less jumpy.

Read this book and you’ll learn how to write nonfiction that’s definitely not a boring list of facts.  Eyewitness accounts, personal letters, mysterious happenings, and dramatic historical events are among the many ideas for subjects.  Susan Campbell Bartoletti, author of Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow is just one of the successful authors whose works are used as examples.

Meticulous research, story maps, and choosing more descriptive words, such as “whispered” or “shouted” to replace “said,” are a few of the ideas that will help students to make their nonfiction more interesting.

With lots of quotes, dramatic pictures, and author interviews, this is an attractive book that I believe will be popular with middle school writers.  There are 18 books in the “Write Your Own” series, and I’d like to see the volumes on writing myth, and graphic novels in our school library.

I loved this fantasy/mystery and immediately recommended it to several of my students.  The main character, Griffin Penshine (6th grade), visits an antique shop with her mother only to be tricked and cursed by a Wish Stealer.  Griffin is a good girl who spends the rest of the book trying to reverse this evil magic and return the stolen wishes before she is corrupted as well.  Exciting and fast-paced, this makes a quick and entertaining read.  Appropriate for a nice age range of readers as it’s exciting without being mature in content or too scary.  Fantastic job with the cover art as well which depicts a sparkly wishing pond!  I highly recommend this book!

This is the third book in this dragon series by Jessica Day George but I was able to follow the story easily without having read the first two books.  There were a few references to past events and characters but some context was given so I understood well enough.  The characters were believable with strong female heroines and male heros both among the dragons and humans sprinkled in among a few “bad guys”.  The plot was an exciting adventure fantasy with a satisfying outcome.  I would recommend this book to my 4th – 8th grade students.

This Lion Book of Day-By-Day Prayers is full of beautiful illustrations and thoughtful, yet easy to read and understand prayers.  The table of contents neatly categorizes the prayers into chapters by theme and an index of first lines at the back also makes this resource accessible.  There are several prayers per page separated by the illustrations which so nicely compliment each prayer.  I look forward to sharing this resource with the students and teachers at our Catholic K-8 school.

12-year old Paris Pan and her family have just moved into a new house in a new town called Nowheresville, Oklahoma.  Little did they know that twenty years ago, a young lady named Beth took a dare and slept in the woods on the night of her thirteenth birthday.  Beth was never seen again, and two weeks later, her dead body was found on the Pan’s property.  Since then, as girls turn 13 in Nowheresville, their rite of passage is to “take the dare” and spend the night in the woods.

As Paris prepares to take the dare, is it her imagination, or does she hear voices coming from the property?  Where are the dolls coming from that the dog drags in? Is that Beth’s face that keeps appearing in Paris’ dreams at night?  Might Paris be clairvoyant?

The author’s tone has enough humor in it that the reader can be pretty certain this is no ghost story.  One-by-one the mysterious incidents become explained.  I was surprised by Asian author Cynthea Liu’s unconvincing broken English by Paris’ s parents.  Likewise, the stuttering of the character named Tom seemed poorly done.  But, I was proud of Paris’ stand on bullying at a time she was desperate to make new friends.

Percy Julian, whose grandparents were slaves, could not get a high school education in his home state of Alabama in the early 1900s. So his parents put him on a train to Newcastle, IN, so he could attend DePauw University to catch up on his high school classes and then go on to earn a degree in Chemistry. He excelled in the field of organic chemistry, going on to work on developing a plant-based treatment for glaucoma and beating a British scientist to the correct formula.  However, even after earning a doctorate in Chemistry in Austria and many other accomplishments, he could not get a job in the United States.  No university would hire a black man to teach white students. Julian did not allow these setbacks to deter him from his passion, though. This biography is solid, but basic. The author’s three page digression to explain the racial situation in the Deep South in the early 1900s was simplistic as well as distracting. A timeline and list of additional resources are provided.

Like other titles in the Snapshots in History series, this is a solid overview of the Allies’ push to win WWI.  The book provides information on the Allied and Central commanders, weapons from that time, casualty statistics in clear and easy to read boxes and inserts. The photographs are good and some copies of front pages of newspapers are included; most of the primary source documents seem to be from letters and diaries of soldiers. A Timeline, Glossary and list for Further Reading are provided if the reader would like more information.

Like other titles in Abdo’s Essential Library, this is solid, if simplistic, overview of the life and military career of Patton.  I learned much about his childhood and adolescence that I did not know. It was suggested that Patton might have suffered from dyslexia and ADD, which might account for his poor grades. However, it is his military brilliance and incidents of jealousy and bad temper for which he is most often remembered, not his record in school. The book is very balanced in its treatment of Patton, not glossing over his tirades, but providing background and the big picture to put the events in perspective. The book focuses on his military accomplishments – his training programs, tactical brilliance and his relationship with his men. A Timeline, Glossary and list for Further Reading are provided if the reader would like more information.

Like other titles in the Enslow biography series, Henry Hudson is a good, if simplistic, telling of the explorations of this English navigator. The book provides a basic overview of Hudson’s adventures, including some background on the conflict between the English and Dutch for the conquest of trade routes and the New World. I did learn something; I had no idea Hudson died after being put off his last ship by mutineers. A Timeline, Glossary and list for Further Reading are provided if the reader would like more information.