middle school – Page 2 – Carol's Notebook

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan I finally got around to reading this, months after Amber (10) was raving about it. It's no wonder she loves this series. It's full of adventure and mythology, trustworthy friends and angry monsters. Percy Jackson is having a tough time. He's being kicked out of boarding school, but that's the least of his problems. Percy's discovered he's a demi-god, son of Poseidon, but, not only that, he's accused of stealing Zeus' lightning bolt, which explains why all the monsters are after him. In a way, it's nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's raining on top of everything else, most people might think that's just really bad luck; when you're a half-blood, you understand that some divine force really is trying to...

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, illustrations by Dave McKean (Reading level: Ages 9-12) I just finished The Graveyard Book, and no one warned me. No one told me how attached I would become to the graveyard residents and Bod's life there that I would end up crying when Bod had to leave. A little boy's family is killed, but he escaped and wandered to the graveyard at the top of the hill. The ghosts who live there decided that he can stay and he takes the name Nobody Owens. The Owens become his parents and Silas, who is neither dead nor alive, his guardian. The ghosts are his friends and Silas his protector. He is safe in the graveyard, but no where else, as the killer is still out there. I enjoyed this a lot, more than I expected. I liked meeting all the people and reading about Bod's adventures both in the graveyard and in the real world. One of his closest...