Category: Books

Happy Fourth of July! We have the day off today, but we already went to a fireworks show, so we'll probably just stay home tonight. A quick reminder, I've got two giveaways going on right now. Breaking up with God by Sarah Sentilles- US and Canada. Today is the last day to enter. A book of your choice - International. You have until the 14th to enter. I got a few books in the mail this week. The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (Won through the Agatha Christie Read-Along) The murder of Colonel Protheroe -- shot through the head -- is a shock to everyone in St Mary Mead, though hardly an unpleasant one. Now even the vicar, who had declared that killing the detested Protheroe would be 'doing the world at large a favour,' is a suspect -- the Colonel has been dispatched in the clergyman's study, no less. But the picturesque English village of St Mary Mead is overpopulated with suspects. There is of...

We were talking last night in Bible study about holding on and letting go. I had just finished reading Soul Surfer a day or two before, but it really fit with the topic. You may remember Bethany's story. She's a surfer and had her left arm bit off by a shark. She held on to faith in Jesus and to the support offered by her family and church. She let go of any "woe is me" attitude and is really an amazing girl. She also held on to surfing, something she loved, learning how to manage the board with only one arm. Soul Surfer was written by Bethany, a fourteen year-old girl, and it reads like that. It sounds like a young teenager, but I mean that in a good way. I think it would be easy for middle schoolers to read and relate to Bethany. It's a refreshingly honest story. Bethany talks about her life and the attack clearly and...

Ice Road by Joan Lennon (Suggested reading level: Grades 4-6) Last time we visited medieval England and the Wickit Monastery in Fen Gold (below) it was summer, but now winter has come to the Fens with a vengeance, the harshest winter anyone can remember. While everyone in the monastery is sick and confined to bed except young Pip, Perfect the dragon gargoyle, and Brother John, not normally the most relied on monk. "And you know," and Brother John leaned close and lowered his voice, as if about to tell [Pip] a deep dark secret, "you don't need to worry so much, because it's really astonishing how much a silly person can achieve if he has to." Then he nodded sagely a few times and even tried to wink. (pg. 78) And Pip has to leave Brother John alone at the monastery tending to all the sick. The winter has transformed the vast waterways of the Fens to a solid Ice Road, a situation King...

Fen Gold by Joan Lennon (Suggested reading level: Grades 4-6) This is Pip and Perfect's second adventure, following Ely Plot. Pip is a young orphaned boy who lives at Wicket Monastery deep in the fens of medieval England. Perfect, his companion, is a small, talking, swimming, flying dragon gargoyle, and they make a great pair, lively, adventurous true friends. It's a sweltering summer when two strangers arrive at the monastery in need of medical help. The first is a man from the King's court, the second is older Norseman who is accompanied by two brawny young men and a girl, the Lady Rane. The Lady Rane was different: exotic, unlikely, a breath of fresh air, wild like the open sea ... golden. In their minds, the Brothers looked for the right words, and often found, instead, memories of things long forgotten, from childhood, or stories of faraway places that had stirred them once, emotions and dreams from the time before the habit of Wickit...

Ely Plot by Joan Lennon (Suggested reading level: Grades 4-6) Amber (10) and I read this aloud together, and I have to say it's one of my favorite middle school books I've read recently. It's a great mix of historical fiction and fantasy, but what sets it apart is the medieval background. Pip is a boy, an orphan, who lives with a group of monks in the monastery at Wickit. Life is pretty boring until he meets a small stone dragon Perfect, a living gargoyle. Now you see why Amber loves the series; she dreams of having a pet dragon. Pip along with his companion and two of the monks travel to the Cathedral at Ely during Holy Week. While there, Perfect and Pip discover a plot against the teenage king, who is also at the Cathedral. The two are determined to help save the King, leading to a daring rescue and dangerous chase through the fens of eastern England. Honestly, I don't remember reading...