Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage (audio)

To say this book is quirky and folksy doesn't actually cover just how quirky and folksy this book is. No wonder it is a Newbery Honor book. It is a chockablock full of cute similes and metaphors. And the main character is the most precocious girl in the town.  Mo (Moses) LoBeau was found by the Colonel during a hurricane when she was a baby floating on a billboard sign. Raised by him and Miss Lana, Mo grows up writing to her Upstream Mother and putting messages in bottles in the hopes that she will find her. Mo is a feisty girl and when someone in town is murdered and the Colonel starts acting suspicious, Mo and her best friend Dale start a detective agency to figure out who done it and protect her family.

I actually enjoyed this book a lot. Like I said it is very quirky and folksy but once you get past that it is a great book. I think it helps that listened to it on audio. Michal Friedman does a great job of bringing Mo to life. She does a great North Carolina accent and I found myself struggling not to pronounce words like she does while listening to this book.

It's hard to classify this one. It's set up like a mystery but at the same time it's definitely a coming-of-age story. By trying to solve the mystery, Mo learns a lot about families and sometimes it's not about the family you have, but the family you make.

8 hours

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (audio book/movie)

Claudia is tired of living her ordinary life; of having to take care of her brothers and doing her chores.  So she decided to run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art taking her cheapskate (and "rich") brother, Jamie, with her.  The two have a great time living at the museum when they discover a statue reported to have been carved by the great Michelangelo.  Determined to find out the truth about the statue leads Claudia and Jaime to the original owner, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

I read this book a lot when I was a kid.  Like a whole lot.  I was always fascinated by the idea of living in a museum and how awesome that would be.  And of course with the mystery of Angel, the Michelangelo statue.  I thought that was so great and I loved Claudia and Jamie and how clever they were.  I still thought that though I realized how annoying Claudia was and Jamie is so funny.  The money exchange was funny because this was written in 1968 when a dime was big money and a quarter was even bigger.  Nothing really new stood out though from child to adult perspective, but it was nice to revisit an old favorite.  I will definitely be adding this to the little man's shelf.

The narrator of the story is Mrs. Frankweiler and it was read by Jan Miner who did an excellent job of giving everyone voices and adding some humor to the reading.

 I watched the made-for-TV movie with Lauren Bacall as Mrs. Frankweiler, Jean Marie Barnwell as Claudia and Jesse Lee Soffer as Jamie.  I saw this when it originally aired in 1995, but hadn't thought about it much.

This movie gives Claudia more motivation than the book does for running away.  Her parents are very busy and expect her to pick up the slack and her brothers don't seem to do very much.  So the story stays pretty true to the book; the kids run away and live in the Museum and then the Angel statue comes to the museum and Claudia wants to solve the mystery.  Mrs. Frankweiler appears a few more times in the movie and the parents have a bigger part.  I liked the kids they picked for the parts.  They did a good job with their parts and they were age appropriate.  It is a very cute movie and a good example of turning a book into a movie.

A Year Down Yonder (audio)

Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel from Peck's Newbery Honor, A Long Way From Chicago, return.  This time Mary-Alice is sent to live with Grandma Dowdel while her father looks for work.  Her brother Joey, whose point of view A Long Way From Chicago was told, is gone and Mary Alice is alone with Grandma.  Told in several short stories about Mary Alice's year with her grandmother, we get to experience life in a small rural town and her "hard hearted" grandmother.  But Mary Alice learns that her grandmother is more than she appears when her grandmother finds a way to do good works under the cover of only doing her part.  A Year Down Yonder is a wonderful old-fashioned book and I loved it.  I would recommended it to anyone.


*for the Rainbow Connection Challenge and the Take Another Chance Challenge and the Audio Book Challenge

The Wednesday Wars (audio)

Holling Hoodhood can't win.  He's the only kid in class who doesn't have to go to either Hebrew school or Catechism thus making him spend Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, Mrs. Baker who makes him read Shakespeare.  This one fact leads to him performing in a play as a fairy, getting the girl, letting lose the class rats among other things all well learning some valuable lessons and suffering many death threats.

I really enjoyed this book.  The reader, Joel Johnstone, did an excellent job bringing Holling to life.  I loved how Holling related the events in his life to the Shakespeare plays he was reading.  I felt sorry for how certain people in his life treated him (his dad mostly) and how he could never seem to get a break.  At first I was sure about Mrs. Baker but she proved to be the most reliable and honest adult in the book.  I guess because it was set in 1967 it was a different me then but I was bothered by Holling's father.  But Holling is a good kid and he tries very hard.

I also loved Holling's interpretations of Shakespeare's plays and his attitudes about Romeo and Juliet, and Hero and Claudio among others were very funny.  This is a nice little introduction to Shakespeare for kids and might get them interested in reading some of the plays plus there is some history on the Vietnam War.

The Wednesday Wars is a 2008 Newbery Honor book.  Recommended by Jill at The O.W.L.

Everything on a Waffle (audio)

One rainy night, Primrose's mother leaves her to hunt for her father on the stormy seas.  Neither come back and Primrose is stuck with Miss Perfidy as a babysitter.  Then it is decided that it is too expensive for a babysitter to watch Primrose all the time.  So her uncle Jack is located and he comes to Coal Harbour to take care of her and sets out to develop the town into a tourist trap.  While Primrose still believes that her parents are alive, the rest of the town tries to convince her that they are dead.  But throughout her adventures, Primrose stays strong in her belief.

I ran out of audio books and my local library branch has a very small audio section so when I was browsing I saw this title and thought why not?  It was only 3 discs and a Newbery Honor.  It was a good choice.  Cute and quirky and funny, it's the kind of book I like to read.  Primrose is basically shuffled around this small town for various reasons after her parents disappear.  She thinks that they have gotten lost at sea while the rest of the town thinks they are dead.  Her Uncle Jack arrives and he is a born salesman and tries to make the town more to touristy even though the locals object.  The Girl on the Red Swing is the titular Everything on a Waffle.  No matter what you ordered it comes on a waffle to "add some class."  This is the place where Primrose seeks solace and company since her uncle is always so busy and the other adults don't have time for her either. Kate Bowzer is the owner and she helps Primrose to figure out things.  At the end of each chapter, there is a recipe for a dish that factored into the story somehow.  Some of them sound really good!  And of course there is a waffle recipe (and a big surprise) at the end.

The Giver

Jonas lives in his own Community, where people are assigned everything in their lives from wives to house to jobs, where emotions are dampened by a pill and food is always available, where everything is orderly and rules are to be obeyed without question. At the onset of the book, it seems like an ideal world and Jonas does not question it. Until at his 12th ceremony, he is named the new Receiver of Memories. Once he meets the old man, the Giver, he starts to learn of how things were before the Communities and how even a perfect world contains its own horrors.


Amazingly I had never read this Newbery Award winner before. I genuinely liked it. There were parts that I found especially disturbing, like when Jonas finds out what it means to be "released" and the pills they start taking at the onset of puberty. Lowry creates a world here that shows that a "perfect" society comes at a price. I know this is an oft challenged/banned book but I don't think that I would have really understood certain things when I was younger. I think this is one of those books that you see differently as you grow up.

I actually listened to this one and Ron Rifkin, the narrator, does an excellent job. He gives Jonas the perfect voice and creates tension when needed. The only thing about the audiobook was the little music accompaniments to the memories. I found those distracting.

*Read for the Take a Chance Challenge - Public Spying book
*Also counts for Audio Book Challenge

The Graveyard Book

When I was little, I read a lot of Nancy Drew, Babysitter’s Club, Sweet Valley High; when I got older I started with mysteries (Agatha Christie mostly) and more “adult” fare, including to my shame, paperback romances a la Harlequin.

But now I read a lot of YA and Children’s literature and one of my favorites is A Series of Unfortunate Events. It is a dark, highly ironic series of books and I don’t know if I would have liked it. I was rarely interested in the macabre when I was little. The great thing about those books is that they can grow with you. I know I wouldn’t have appreciated it on the same level (which is good because there is a big difference between 10 and 30) but when you are older you can see the subtleties that often you don’t see as a child.

This same thought applies to The Graveyard Book. In the same vein as The Jungle Book, The Graveyard Book, with its wonderfully loose illustrations, is a dark book about a boy whose family is viciously murdered and who is raised in a graveyard by its denizens. It is a book that on one hand, is brutal and, on the other, is just a story about a boy. Nobody Owens is just a toddler when his family is killed. Always curious, he wakes up and escapes his crib without knowing the danger looking for him. When he reaches the graveyard, he is adopted by the Owens couple and is placed up the guardianship of Silas, the not living caretaker of the graveyard. There he grows up and taught by the people of the graveyard and learns many ghostly things.

Neil Gaiman is, of course, the master of these books. Coraline was delightful and eerie and so is The Graveyard Book. This year’s Newbery Award winner, Gaiman invokes a softly creepy feeling where there is danger, very real danger, but where you can feel safe too.