So funny!

A quote from Vivian Vande Velde's book Cloaked in Red:

The man with the long nose was so startled, he dropped to his hands and knees, in the posture of a beast. As awkward as the position must have been, he looked as if he were about to dash into the woods on all fours (84).

Book: The Other Half of My Heart by Sundee Tucker Frazier

The Other Half of My Heart by Sundee T. Frazier

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


11-year old Minni and Keira are twins…but not only are they not identical, Minni is white (she has light skin and red hair) and Keira is black (she has dark skin and dark hair). This difference was able to occur because their mother is black and their father is white. The girls never really gave it that much thought, but Minni begins to notice how some strangers treat Keira differently from her (in school, in stores, etc.), and Minni suspects that it’s because of the color of Keira’s skin.

The girls feel this difference even more when they visit their grandmother and enter a beauty pageant for black girls; the other girls competing tell Minni that she’s not really black because of the color of her skin. On the surface of it all, Minni knows that’s not true, but deep down she becomes confused and wonders if she is white, or black, or…maybe, a mixture of both?

This is a great story about how a girl tries to find herself as she enters adolescence, which is made all the more difficult because her sister’s skin doesn’t match her own. For more books about sisters that readers might also enjoy, try The Sisters Club series (MacDonald).

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Book: The Boy Who Drew Cats adapted by Margaret Hodges

The Boy Who Drew Cats by Margaret Hodges

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I learned about this Japanese folktale from the book Wild Things by Clay Carmichael. This is a story about a Japanese boy who is the youngest boy in his large family. Because he isn’t physically built for farm work like the rest of his family, his parents decide to have him apprentice to the town’s priest so that he might become a priest one day.

However, the boy has an odd desire to draw cats all of the time. When he’s at the temple, he draws cats everywhere—enough to make the priest tell him that he would be better off as an artist—so he gets sent away. Before the boy leaves, the priest tells him to remember to not sleep in big spaces—to only sleep in small spaces. The boy doesn’t understand, but doesn’t ask the priest to clarify.

Rather than go home and shame his family, the boy decides to go to the temple in the next town. When he arrives, it appears as though no one is there. While waiting for someone to arrive so that he could ask to be apprenticed to one of them, he finds some ink and draws cats all over. When it gets late and the boy grows tired, he remembers the priest’s words and decides to sleep in a small cabinet.

During the night, the boy wakes to the awful sounds of screaming and fighting. Terrified, he stays still in his cabinet and doesn’t even peek through the crack until daytime. When finally does, he sees the dead and mutilated body of some sort of huge goblin. The boy wonders who could have killed this evil being until he looks around and sees that all of the mouths of the cats he had drawn are red with blood.

He then understood the priest’s advice…and was able to grow up to be a famous artist!

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Scaring Children

I came across this article today and it's hilarious. Not the article itself, but the pictures it's about.

My favorite one is "whore spider." :)

Enjoy:

Library Laments

Earlier today I saw a little kid (a girl) dressed up as Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I'm sorry, but when little girls dress up as those Disney princesses, like these, or just princess costumes in general, they look like little whores.



It brings to mind that show Toddlers and Tiaras, though I haven't actually ever seen it on tv.

When boys dress up as their favorite characters, they don't look like little pimps!

Generally, I just don't think it's cute to let kids dress up in costumes outside of the house--especially when the costume makes said child look like a prostitute.

Book: How to Clean a Hippopotamus: a Look at Unusual Animal Partnerships by Steve Jenkins

How to Clean a Hippopotamus: A Look at Unusual Animal Partnerships by Steve Jenkins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a cute book! Not only are the pictures adorable, but the information provided is interesting.

The information is presented in an almost comic book format, which is different for a nonfiction book. We learn about animal symbiosis--how certain wild animals/insects/fish/etc. work together to eat, get clean, hunt, and more.

Only 32 pages, it is a quick read!

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Book: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This is a really good book! Yeah, it's for kids, but I totally recommend it. I just got the audio book version of book two, called Catching Fire. Book three is released on August 24. I hope Collins can keep up the good writing for the entire trilogy, as sometimes does NOT happen with these types of books.

Well anyway, here's my review:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this future society, there is no more United States; instead, Panem is divided into twelve districts, each of which must hold a drawing once a year to see which boy and girl will compete in that year’s Hunger Games. The Hunger Games were designed to remind the people of Panem that the Capitol has complete say over what goes on everywhere and that fighting back is futile. So this is why, every year, 24 adolescent participants kill each other off in a Capitol-made arena until there is one participant left—the winner.

Katniss’s name is drawn as that year’s female participant, while a boy she hardly knows named Peeta is drawn as that year’s male participant. Before she can truly grasp what has happened, she is saying goodbye to her mother, sister, and best friend, then being whisked away on train headed to the Capitol, where they provide her and Peeta with all the luxuries one could ask for before being left to fight for her life in the arena.

This is an excellent book that had me hooked from the beginning. The Hunger Games is the first book in The Hunger Games Trilogy. I can’t wait to find out what happens to Katniss and Peeta as they move forward from the terrifying experience of the Hunger Games. For those who enjoyed reading about the fight for survival in a futuristic society, give the Exodus trilogy (Bertagna) a try.

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