Books My Son Loves: Snow Sounds by David A. Johnson

I picked up this book from the library due to my son's overwhelming love of snow.  I grabbed it, flipped through it, saw it had very few words, and decided it was good for our reading time.  (On a sidenote, I absolutely hate when I don't do this and I get a book with wordy paragraphs that my son cannot handle yet.  He wants to read the book, so he won't let me stop reading, but he climbs all over me because he finds wordy paragraphs boring.)

When I got home and read it to him, I was a little surprised by the subtitle of the book "An Onomatopoeic Story", but we started it together nonetheless.  I admired the gorgeous watercolor pages, full of expressive drawings.  These pictures make you remember the feel of a snow day from your youth, with the dark and the quiet.

My son settled into my side and after I started to make sounds, but not tell a story, he became impressed by the snow plow sounds I was making.  I encouraged him to tell me a story about what was going happening on the pages.  The lack of a story to tell became a story to hear from him.  I'd prompt him, "What is the boy doing at his window?"  "What is the boy eating?"  "What is he feeling?"  At first, my two year old would simply looked stumped and say, "Hmm..."  (No lie, my son puts his finger on his chin thoughtfully and says hmm.)

After the second or third reading, with prompts, he started to answer and tell me more about the pages.  "People drive the snow plow", "Boy eat cereal.  Cat get some too.", and "Boy get toy.  Boy happy?"

We'd have rudimentary discussions about the different types of snow plows in the book, and who was awake, and why.  Now, it's a nightly story at bedtime.  I don't know how I'm going to explain to him that we don't own this book!  It might be a keeper and one we have to grab off of Amazon.

I'm pretty sure that this is at least a nine in my son's eyes!

Breaking Up by Aimee Friedman

(A really short description of the book) From the author's website:  "What happens when your best friends hate your boyfriend?"

Since that doesn't do it justice, I'd like to add that this is an exploration of the junior year of high school for Chloe, the main character.  It explores the topics of friendship, romance, and popularity like most books aimed at teens.



I've had this book on my Amazon wish list for years, but I was recently shocked to find that my library had gotten a copy and I immediately reserved it.  I got home, and read it immediately (and quickly), and decided I had to promptly tell you that I really liked this graphic novel.

Then, I began to ponder how to describe it and it all seemed so generic.  It's about romance, and popularity, and friendship, and getting to know yourself.  Can't that describe almost any work aimed at young adults?  But, it transcends that simplistic description by being realistic, a word I find is often hard to use when it comes to describing characters in young adult novels.

Chloe, the main character, is flawed.  At times, she's cruel to Adam, though never intentionally.  She's a touch triumphant at another character's pain near the end.  She makes stupid decisions.  The thing about her is that she's also likable and human and the choices she makes are understandable.  She's a teenager and she's learning from the mistakes she makes, as well.  I never wondered where her actions came from, they all seemed so natural.

Her three closest friends also all seem very real, even Mackenzie, who quickly emerges as an antagonist to Chloe.  Mackenzie never seems to be acting maliciously just to be malicious.  She has clear reasons for the way she acts, even if those reasons might not seem good enough to a person reading from Chloe's viewpoint.

I was cheered that the ending, while happy, wasn't saccharinely so.  I can't use the word real any more in this review, so I'll simply say that it felt less like an ending and more like a simple step to the next point in Chloe's life.  By the end, Chloe seemed to better know who she was and what she had to do to make herself happy with regards to both friendship and romance.  I can't imagine a better ending than that!

Since this is a graphic novel, I feel that I must point out that the art is very good.  It's easy to separate the characters just from a glance, and every page looks polished.  It was rather neat to see the way Adam's looks evolve over the course of the book as Chloe's opinion of Adam evolves.  I'd love to check out more work by Christine Norrie, the illustrator.

Verdict:  8.  I think it's time to re-add this to my 'for keeps' wish list.

Thoughts:  Why did this never get more reviews?  It only has six reviews on Amazon!  I'm so happy that Comics Worth Reading mentioned this work years ago!  Also, it's kind of odd it is set in an artsy school, but didn't seem to capitalize on that fact.

Books My Son Loves: Snow by Uri Shulevitz

I've decided to introduce a new feature (again) to the blog!  I have a very young child (two and a half years) and we've been reading together a lot recently and borrowing books from the library.  I want to highlight some of the books he loves for our memories and for your edification.  I plan to try and post these on Wednesdays.

The first book I plan to start with is Snow by Uri Shulevitz, a book that I had thought that my son would not like.  It turns out that the Caldecott committee that decides which books are noteworthy are vastly better at figuring out my child's interests than I am! 

This story is about a young boy with a dog who notices some flakes of snow and his enthusiasm for the snow even in the face of everyone's disbelief of the snow lasting.  After the snow really starts to fall, the boy and his dog play and dance in the snow while it swirls around them.

I'm going to tell the truth and say I was not impressed by either the illustrations or story in the beginning.  I read it tentatively to my son, and he so enjoyed the beginning of it that I have read it several times since.  While he tends to lose interest at the point that the snow falls heavily (my favorite part), he loves the early parts where a certain number of snowflakes fall.  He likes to count the snowflakes and point them out to me.  This makes the reading last a little longer which is nice. 

All in all, my son rates this pretty highly.  From his enthusiasm, I'm going to rate it around a seven for him.

The Seasons On Henry's Farm by Terra Brockman

From the author's website:  Through closely observed natural phenomena and engagingly told stories, The Seasons on Henry’s Farm takes readers deep inside the world of a small-scale farmer, and in so doing, opens a window into what sustainable farming really entails and why it is vital and relevant to everyone who eats.




Every year, when Christmas comes around, I panic and buy my husband a book or three as stocking-stuffers.  The last several years have seen a few fantasies and one or two non-fiction books about cooking and restaurants.  After doing some gardening with him this year, I decided to get him a book about something we're both interested in -- the local farm scene.  I had initially wanted to get him My Empire of Dirt, but I always hesitate before giving a book I haven't read which has received lukewarm reviews.  Luckily, the Amazon page for that book recommended the much more popular The Seasons on Henry's Farm.

After my husband opened the book, I couldn't help myself and I started to nibble away at the book.  It's conveniently set up to have a new chapter for each week through one year of farming.  A week here, a week there.  The next thing I knew, my husband was a few weeks in and I was done it. 

My favorite parts of this book were definitely the chapters in which she goes into detail about either what gardening needs to be done for the season and how hard it is and who does what task or the sections in which she talks about the CSA her brother runs.  These feel both informative and entertaining.  For instance, one of the beginning chapters which is all about the hardships of planting garlic makes me want to go buy some farm stand garlic and it also makes me want to try growing garlic!  Another chapter which easily sticks out in my mind is the one in which she discusses her brother's attempts to stop using plastic bags at his farm stand and the response of people who are resistant to this change.

While some of the chapters that only barely touch on farming, focusing instead on her family or the state of gardening today, drag or feel overly preachy, it's worth reading through them to glean the bits about gardening that sit within.

Overall, I really liked this book and I'm happy that I got it for my husband.


Verdict: 7.  Definitely had enough enjoyable bits to easily outweigh the sections I found dull.

Thoughts:  It's been a while since I last read non-fiction, but this makes me want to find other books about sustainable farming.  I think it might be time to start ratcheting up how much non-fiction I read since the last several books I've enjoyed the most have all been non-fiction.

Just The Sexiest Man Alive by Julie James

From the author's website: "Nothing fazes Taylor Donovan.  In the courtroom she never lets the opposition see her sweat.  In her personal life, she never lets any man rattle her–not even her cheating ex-fiancé.  So when she’s assigned to coach People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” for his role in his next big legal thriller, she refuses to fall for the Hollywood heartthrob’s charms.  Even if he is the Jason Andrews.

Jason Andrews is used to having women fall at his feet.  When Taylor Donovan gives him the cold shoulder, he’s thrown for a loop.  She’s unlike any other woman he’s ever met: uninterested in the limelight, seemingly immune to his advances, and shockingly capable of saying no to him.  She’s the perfect challenge.  And the more she rejects him, the more he begins to realize that she may just be his perfect match. . ."

Just the Sexiest Man Alive came so close to getting a spectacular grade from me.  I enjoyed its fast pace, it's 'witty' banter, and the main two characters (mostly).  Ugh, notice how I'm already hedging on a positive review by putting the witty in quotes and the mostly in parenthesis there?  That's not fair to this book, which is a good one.  In fact, I'm half afraid that my low score comes from the fact that I think it could have been so much better with a few changes.

Taylor is a good protagonist.  She's got a career, ambition, friends, and family.  She loves what she does.  She knows who she is.  There is much to love about Taylor, but the book doesn't focus as much on the things to love as it does on who she loves.  Taylor's life appears to fail the Bechdel Test.  Perhaps this is because I was reading a romance, but all her conversations with her closest friends revolve around guys and how she should get over her ex-fiance and how Jason is the total cutest boy ever.  Her friends giggle and shriek over Jason and other actors. 

It's tiring, but possibly a true representation of life.  If my closest friend started to date Brad Pitt or Ryan Reynolds, perhaps I'd shriek and giggle too.  On the other hand, her friends are nothing like me.  They immediately look at Jason as a possible serious relationship even though Taylor has yet to even date him at a point in the book.

Jason comes off better in the book.  He's arrogant and conceited and silly in the beginning, but it allows for him to show more growth and of a more serious kind, as well.  Plus, when things happen to Jason that humiliate him, it both makes him sympathetic while also giving this reader a bit of a thrill to see it happen.  Jason's friend, Jeremy, does better duty as a friend than Taylor's do.  He has a legitimate reason for jumping immediately to the idea that Jason might be serious about Taylor.

The first several meetings between Jason and Taylor are delightful, though I was quickly over the idea that even they seemed to believe their patter was witty. I think one or more less witty conversations might have helped me believe a little more that they knew each other in some way when they started to think so seriously of each other.  However, the story still progressed easily and nicely.  Perhaps too much so.

At this point, the author introduces the OTHER MAN and he is EVIL.  In fact, she realizes this, and throws a mocking jab at it.  I almost wondered if she had been forced to put him in there by an editor or by people who originally read her book.  The other actor is so blatantly and obviously evil that sections containing him ring untrue.  If he had been competitive with Jason, but a good guy, or a decent but dumb man, then it all might have read better, but it doesn't.  He is there only to be a rival to Jason and to suck.

Once the story gets past this section, it picks up once again, going back to Taylor's career and how it does not quite mesh with Jason's career and their feelings for each other and why they each have issues they need to work past.  While I was not happy about the resolution of the story, at least it was cohesive and fast-paced.

Verdict: 6.  So close to true greatness, but not quite there.  (Started with an 8.  Deducted a point for Scott being a tool of a character.  Literally.  And another point for Taylor's resolution to her career storyline.)


Thoughts: I think this book will date itself fairly quickly with some of its pop culture references, which is a terrible shame because I enjoyed the book!

Friday Links: I WANTS!

Truth time -- I love childhood classics. I'm obsessed with them. I reread them when I'm a little sad, or a little happy, or when it's a special occasion. I used to read Little Women, Heidi, and Swiss Family Robinson annually. The sad part of this is the classics my mom bought me were clunky, ugly, hefty things.

But... what if my mother had bought me some of these?




Anthropologie is selling super sweet little canvas bound copies of the classics. They only have six, but at least three are regular reads still in my life.

What do you do once you have the sweetest classics ever? Put a bookplate on them so everyone knows they are yours and if they attempt to keep them while they are on loan, you'll attack. But, wait! Don't get an ugly bookplate to go with your super cute book. Get a cute bookplate from Sarah Jane Studios.



If you love to write as well as read, you might want to pick up one of her pretty little journals too.

Happy Friday!

Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison

I could not find a blurb on the author's website, though I did find an excerpt.  I will attempt to summarize myself:  Madison Avery is a young dead teenage girl with several problems besides being dead.  While at the prom, she got killed by a reaper, and she found out that Barnabas, the angel in charge of guarding her, had failed.  However, she managed to grab her killer's magical amulet, and now she's trying to make it work and avoid getting her soul destroyed (and her unlife ended) by her killer.


Let's start with the bad and end with the good, shall we?  Harrison throws you into this story without a life vest.  She throws you in without swimmies.  You've got to fight through the first few chapters, trying to figure out what the hell is going on because you don't know the characters, the world, what's happened to the main character to get her into the situation she's in, and you probably don't care.  Perhaps she does this on purpose.

But, it's not well done. 

It's aggravating and I almost gave up reading.  Why did I continue?  The little I could understand was interesting and easy to read, so I kept going.  Around half-way through the book, I realized I was into the story.  I was into the Grace, the guardian angel who composes limericks.  I liked Madison when she wasn't vrooming wildly between goth and faux-aggressive Buffy-esque chick.  The plot, when you threw away all the overly-dramatic bits, was pretty darned good. 

By  the time I got to the end, I was happy I had stuck it out.  I liked the resolution of the action and I found the premise interesting enough that I added the sequel to my library wishlist, and I looked for the novella that probably came before! Sure, the last chapter was sort of cheesy, but the chapters that preceded it were so strong that I was willing to forgive and forget.

Verdict: 6.  I'm glad I kept reading this book, even though I struggled through the beginning chapters.  I think if I had not finished it, I would have mentally given it a 3 or 4, but the ending showed so much promise, that I ratcheted up the score.

Thoughts:  I know that Kim Harrison likes to write in anthologies, but this is ridiculous.  The beginning of this book practically required that you had pre-read Prom Nights From Hell.  And from the small excerpt I read of that short story, she greatly changed the supporting characters, such as Josh, around by the time she wrote this book.  I'm almost angered by this whole fact.