Sixteen tales of trailblazing homesteaders, entrepreneurs and fable-rousers who overcame the hardships of the 1840’s coming west and settling.  The stories are researched through diaries, journals, letters and written songs.   Excellent for women’s studies, or history of the west.  Includes notes for each chapter, bibliography and index.

Gerta’s father and brother visit West Berlin when the Berlin wall went up, nearly over night, trapping Gerta, her mother and second brother in East Berlin and separating their family for four long years. Meanwhile, the Stasi police has bugged their apartment so the family cannot talk freely in their own home about the government’s horrific control. Then Gerta spots her father on the other side of the wall signaling her to dig. Getting a secret note from her father, she realizes the location and risks her life to dig an underground tunnel under the width of the wall to freedom. Excitement and danger mixed with complications and setbacks make this book a great read.

It is unfortunate that Larissa’s family has been cursed with family members’ untimely deaths throughout the generations. Well, Larissa helps her parents by cleaning the family’s antique shop where she encounters a creepy doll that has been in the family for years, and then gets strange calls on a disconnected, antique phone with messages to trust the fireflies. Larissa finds the fireflies at the Bayou Bridge where she time travels learning of her great grandmother’s disrespect which caused the curse. It is up to Larissa to save her family’s future! This story is written so mysteriously that it will entice readers!

This is a story set at Christmas time. It begins in a forest with a winter storm blowing through the bare branches of trees. Only the little fir tree is calm, quiet, and comforting to the forest animals in need of new homes due to the forest’s broken branches. The storm calms at midnight “For far away, a baby had been born beneath a star, while heaven’s angels danced and sang for joy.” Later, “stars from the angels’ cloaks drifted down through the still air.” The trees with their bare branches all wanted the stars to land on them, but the stars only landed and stayed on the soft green branches of the fir tree “the place where there is love.”

The first half of this lovely story illustrated  in soft colors describes the coming of winter in nature with snow and wild animals in their dens.Then the story branches off to people making paper decorations, singing special songs, baking cookies and other special foods. Finally, “Hanukkah is Here!”

This book could easily be used for compare and contrast Hanukkah and Christmas by simply substituting the word Christmas for Hanukkah. Then asking if this is true for Christmas as well as for Hanukkah. This activity could be as simple or as complex as the group doing the comparing and contrasting is ready for.

“Test your knowledge about the beautiful game, the world’s most popular sport and one that’s making new fans in the United States every day. This book features informative sidebars, a trivia quiz, a glossary, and further resources”.

Four chapters from “Rookie” to “Hall of Famer” are written in a Q & A format.  Beautiful, colored photos on every other page related to the information shared. The trivia quiz on pages 44 & 45 helps the reader check his/her own comprehension.  This book is part of a series which includes baseball trivia, basketball, hockey, football and Olympic trivia. Kids will probably read this juvenile nonfiction over and over!

SennTech is pleased to announce its latest and finest creation: a Hart-style Bot who can see individual DNA signatures. Her first assignment: find Edmond West and stick to him like glue. She’s not the only one obsessed with the former-inventor; hostile forces are converging on the little island where Edmond and Hart are hiding and all seems lost. But General Liao isn’t the only one with a secret weapon…

Plot was difficult to follow having not read books #1 and #2.  This book is a YA read and I would suggest only purchasing it if you are able to also purchase books #1 and #2.

This young adult book has violence (bullets exploding through people’s heads, suffocation) ‘bad’ language ( bastards, sons of bitches), and non-descript sex all making this book for high school and above reading audiences.

This is book two of three in an action packed, macho political/military battle of not one or two sides of a story, but three and four sides of the story because that is what life is truly like. It is thought provoking!

I gathered from the bits and pieces of the characters memories that in book one, Divided We Fall, the state of Idaho is seceding from the United States of America, sometime in our near future, because citizens’ rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights have been taken away.

As Burning Nation begins, Idaho is being blockaded from supplies of food by the Federal Government until the Idaho rebels turn themselves in to the U.S. Army soldiers stationed in Idaho to re-establish the peace. “  ‘Attention!’ A loudspeaker on the tank called out into the dark. ‘All Idaho military, militia, and law enforcement personnel must surrender to federal authorities immediately. All Idaho civilians must disarm, remain in their homes, and await instructions from federal authorities. Failure to comply will be met with deadly force.’  “(25)

Tension runs throughout this story. The tension felt by the armed high school students in the Idaho National Guard hiding from the federal troops, the tension of the families of Idaho National Guard members not knowing if their sons and daughters are safe, the tension of the non-violent Idahoans as to whether or not food shipments will be getting through the blockades, the tension in the New England states and Southern states calling all of their National Guard units to active duty locally so they won’t be sent to fight other Americans in Idaho, and the tension in Idaho caused by not knowing what is going on in the rest of Idaho and the United States because President Laura Griffith has cut off all communication to and from and within Idaho, only official United States propaganda is being released about the ‘Idaho crisis’ throughout the country.

Daniel Wright and his armed unit are hiding out. They have a high school friend, TJ, in their hometown of Freedom Lake, Idaho, who is secretly keeping them abreast of what is happening in the town and bringing them needed supplies when he can. After Governor Montaine and the Idaho state legislature “declare our home to be [the] fully independent Republic of Idaho. We hereby dissolve all formal ties with the United States of America …” (73)   Wright and his unit begin running recon missions, shooting at Fed troops, and bombing Fed buildings. On one of these missions, Wright is caught. Major Alsovar tortures him using extreme heat, waterboarding, and electric shocks in his effort to extract secret base locations from Wright in Alsovar’s effort to end this Idaho war. While Wright is in captivity his unit joins with another resistance group, ‘the Brotherhood’. Weeks pass. Wright is rescued.

Outside of Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Montana are forming plans to defy the strangle hold President Laura Griffith has put on their states citizens’ rights and freedoms. In a coordinated effort, these states force the federal troops to retreat and redeploy.

As Burning Nation comes to an end, the reader is left with the Wright’s thoughts, “We’d fought hard, risked everything, to win freedom and start a new country. What kind of society was this?” (417)

Lynch’s Vietnam War series concludes with the final narrative of four friends caught in the chaos of war. Casualties of War (Book Four) gives Beck his turn to tell his story. Morris, Ivan and Rudi have told their stories, but it is not necessary for the reader to know their stories in order to understand this 4^th book in the Vietnam Series.

Beck, now in the Air Force, was always the smart one, the one bound for college. Upon discovering Beck’s plan to enlist, his father had said, “The universe has better plans for you.” And in Vietnam, Beck does feel as if he has “just been handed the keys to the universe itself.” He is, literally, above it all, as he watches the war from on high in his C-123 aircraft, his goal somehow to not kill anyone as he defoliates forests with Agent Orange. He finds the countryside gorgeous and rues the “danger and destruction in all its variety and in every direction.” Beck’s hope is that when the friends get back together, no matter what else has happened, “the universe will tilt back where it belongs.” This volume lacks the sharp character development and pacing of its predecessors, as much of the narrative concerns all four players and how to contrive the requisite reunion. When it does occur, it brings disastrous results and an abrupt ending to the series.

An excellent war saga that will leave readers feeling they have been through something monumental.

In their second STEAM-powered exploration (Full STEAM Ahead!, 2014), mouse twins Sydney and Simon investigate the problem of garbage.

Sydney’s foray into trash tracking starts with a field trip to the aquarium, where a green sea turtle is recuperating after eating plastic. It doesn’t take much of a leap for Sydney to make a connection: “The more trash we make, the more there’s a chance that some of that trash could end up in the ocean.” The two keep a tally of their family’s trash for a week, and the results are eye-opening. Their school is an even larger garbage generator. Ms. Fractalini helps the twins use science, technology, engineering, arts, and math to come up with a way to raise awareness and encourage the community to participate in a solution. A sculpture of Greenie the turtle made out of trash and a song about going green are the start of a community-wide movement to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Along the way, readers will learn lots about decomposition, how quickly garbage adds up, and ways to reduce trash. Ink-and–watercolor-wash illustrations help break up the text and put pictures in readers’ heads that will stick with them, making them likely to want to get on the green bandwagon. Hopefully, readers will focus on Sydney and Simon’s problem-solving, and see it as quite doable in their own communities. (glossary, author and illustrator’s note)