#26--Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Auggie says, early on, "I won't describe what I look like.   Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse." He is an average 10-year-old in many ways except that he has never been in public school because of a facial deformity he was born with that has required numerous surgeries and hospital visits over the course of his young life. But Auggie is about to enter fifth grade at Beecher Prep.

This story follows Auggie, his family, and classmates through the year and how different people react, or don't, to Auggie. There are immediate friends, bullies, and eventual friends throughout the course of the year.

This was one of the best books I read this summer because it is an amazing story. It doesn't matter that Auggie is 10.  This book is geared for all ages because of Auggie and how he handles himself, his detractors, and his family and their apprehension about sending him to school.

I would recommend this book to everyone! Some of my teachers are thinking about using this book in their classroom as a read-aloud with their classes, which I am really excited about. I will also be adding this title to my book talk rotation too!

Happy Reading!!

#23--Wolf by the Ears by Ann Rinaldi

Over the years I have found Ann Rinaldi's books to be good historical reads about events or people that you don't always hear much about.  In the case of this title, the main character is Harriet Hemings, daughter of slave Sally Hemings and probably Thomas Jefferson.  In the book, Harriet and her siblings have all been raised as slaves but with light work loads.  They have also been educated and told that when they reach the age of 21 they would have their freedom.  Harriet is approaching her 21st birthday but is unsure if she wants to take her freedom.  She tells her brother Beverly that she loves the master (Jefferson) and doesn't want to leave him or Monticello.  Beverly finally convinces her by telling Harriet that Jefferson lists them, their two younger brothers and their mother in farm journals as just any other slave would be listed....that there is no written record anywhere in the house of what Sally was to Master Jefferson.  Harriet has help in planing her leaving from Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., Jefferson's son-in-law and the governor of Virginia at the time.  Randolph makes sure that Harriet has any and all training and education necessary for Harriet to pass--to live as a white woman.

Much of what I've read in Ann Rinaldi's books appears to be very close to factual.  In this case, Harriet was not freed in real life, but Jefferson never reported her as a runaway and never tried to coerce her into coming back to Monticello.  Reading something like this always makes me want to find out more about the people in the story and what happened to them in real life.

Happy Reading!!

#21--Whatever Happened to Janie? by Caroline B. Cooney

So, back in probably middle school or early high school I read the first book in this series The Face on the Milk Carton.....and I probably read it several times.  My students love it too and so I thought it was high time I finally continued on in the series.

In the first book, Janie Johnson picks up her best friend's milk carton at lunch for a swig after eating her sandwich.  This was back when milk cartons had pictures of missing children on them (all you children of the 80's know what I'm talking about).  Janie sees a picture of a 3-year-old girl on the carton, and she immediately thinks it is her.  But there is no reason why it would be her.  She has two doting parents who love her.  She can't be the girl, Jennie Spring, on the milk carton.  Janie obsesses over this picture, to the point that she actually writes a letter to the family--simply to let them know she is ok.  She never means to send this letter; however, it falls out of her binder and someone finds it and mails it to her.  It turns out that Janie really is Jennie and she was taken from a mall in New Jersey when she was three by a woman named Hannah Javensen, the Johnson's estranged daughter who had joined a cult many years before.  Hannah had brought Janie/Jennie to her parents, telling them that the little girl was her daughter.  Her parents had no reason to not believe her.  However, because they were afraid that the cult would track them down and try to take Janie from them, they changed their last name and moved.  The first book ends with both sets of parents meeting, at an impasse....trying to figure out what to do.

The second book picks up with Janie getting ready to leave the parents who raised her in order to get to know her biological family--two parents, three brothers, and one sister.  Nothing goes smoothly.  Jodie, Jennie's slightly older sister, had visions of nightly slumber parties with her newly found sister, her biological parents keep thinking that they can wipe away the past 13 years, and her oldest brother, Stephen is angry at the world, but mostly at Jennie for all the stress and pain her disappearance has cause both him and the family....and the younger twins, well, they are so wrapped up in each other that they don't seem to register the latest addition to the family.  Every once in a while there is a bright spot where Janie forgets that she isn't supposed to be happy with these strangers, but eventually, she demands that she be allowed to go back to her parents, the ones who raised her.

There are three more books in this series, with the last one having been published just this year.  So, I think I need to find out the rest of Janie/Jennie's story before another 20 years goes by!

Happy Reading!!

#1 The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

My school has a teacher book club and the goal is to meet once a month, over a meal at various area restaurants, to discuss the book of the month.  I rarely am able to go; and it is even more rare that I would actually get a copy of the book and read it.  I'm not 100% sure what month Schwalbe's book actually was supposed to be read in (it was within the past two months, I think :) ), but I actually purchased a copy and started reading it almost as soon as it arrived.  A number of things kept me from finishing it as quickly as I would have liked, but I was so eager to read it that I even worked on it standing in line at Lowes waiting for the paint I had ordered to be done....probably not something seen everyday in our Lowes!  :)

Will Schwalbe's mother, Mary Ann, was diagnosed in late autumn of 2007 with late stage pancreatic cancer--which is almost always fatal, and usually in six months or less.  Will, his brother, sister, and father, all made regular visits with Mary Ann to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center throughout the course of her treatments there, for a miraculous twenty-two months.  One day, early-on, while they were waiting for the doctor, Will and his mother started discussing what they were reading--a question they had often asked each other over the years.  During Mary Ann's battle with cancer she and Will read and discussed many books (many of which I have never heard of, but hope to acquaint myself with someday). 

While you know how this book is going to end, in Mary Ann's death, it is about so much more than that.  It is about the fight to live, the journey, and the importance of family and friends.  One of  Mary Ann's classmates at Radcliffe was the author John Updike and one of my favorite quotes in the whole book is when Mary Ann is telling Will about her favorite story from Updike's posthumously published collection, My Father's Tears: And Other Stories:
      

The list of our deceased classmates on the back of the program grows longer; the class beauties have gone to fat or bony-cronehood; the sports stars and non-athletes alike move about with the aid of pacemakers and plastic knees, retired and taking up space at an age when most of our fathers were considerately dead....But we don't see ourselves that way, as lame and old.  We see kindergarten children--the same round fresh faces, the same cup ears and long-lashed eyes.  We hear the gleeful shrieking during elementary-school recess and the seductive saxophones and muted trumpets of the locally bred swing bands that serenaded the blue-lit gymnasium during high-school dances.  (Schwalbe, 295)
 

This was very poignant for me as my grandfather, who loved to read, passed away right before Christmas.  He lived his life right up to the end, and had a child-like joy in living.  He did not view himself (most of the time) as a 93-year-old, but as someone with wonder and excitement and curiosity as a child might have.  I am fortunate that I have several friends that I can say I have known for more than 30 years (I guess that makes me old, at least in the eyes of my students), and to me, I still often picture them as they were when we were in kindergarten, or sixth grade, or as graduating seniors. 

As I was reading The End of Your Life Book Club I kept thinking that I'm going to have to go back through and underline or highlight all of the titles and authors names (and I hate writing in books, so this was going to be a struggle for me) so I would have a list to work on (not that I don't have plenty to read already).  However, imagine my delight in finding an alphabetical listing in the back of the book of all the authors and works mentioned throughout the book. 

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.  I don't typically buy our book club books, but I'm very glad I took the plunge on this one, as I think I will find myself coming back to it again and again in the future.

On to the next adventure!

Happy Reading!!