Eve of the Emperor Penguin

by Carol2 Comments
Eve of the Emperor Penguin (Magic Tree House #40) by Mary Pope Osborne Description: Jack and Annie continue their quest for the secrets of happiness—secrets they need to save Merlin. This time, the Magic Tree House takes them to the one continent they haven’t visited before: Antarctica! What can they hope to learn about happiness in such a barren place? Only the penguins know for sure . . . Jack and Annie are about to find out! My thoughts: This is another great book in the series. Amber and I have read all of them and we saw the musical in Pittsburgh last year, which was a lot of fun by the way. She loves this series because of the blend of fact and fantasy. The nice thing is that we both learn something in most of them, whether it be facts about Antarctica and penguins or what a selkie is in mythology. What I learned this time around is that there is an active volcano on Antarctica,...
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Game Night

by Carol4 Comments
Dominion by Rio Grande Games Author: Donals X. Vaccarino, Development: Valerie Putman & Dale Yu, Illustration & Layout: Matthias Catrein Description: In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can "buy" as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end. From the back of the box:  You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land,...
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Too Tall Alice

by Carol2 Comments
Too Tall Alice by Barbara Worton From the dustjacket: Alice is tall. Not T-Rex or Empire State Building tall. Just four inches taller than the other girls in her class, and Alice is worried. FOUR INCHES! That's a lot of inches taller than everyone else. Her mom says it's okay to be tall, and her dad says it's okay to be tall. IT'S OKAY FOR THEM TO SAY THAT. THEY'RE NORMAL! Alice wishes, really wishes, she was just like everyone else. Then, her dream takes her to the place where the tall girls live, and she sees, really sees, herself for the first time. My thoughts: I love the message in the story. Alice learns to accept herself for who she is and that she is special. She learns that being "too _" isn't so bad, after all. It's a great message for all girls, not just the too short, too tall, too __ ones. The story is definitely designed to raise girls' self-esteem. The part I didn't...
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A Killer Collection

by Carol2 Comments
A Killer Collection by J. B. Stanley Description: Introducing amateur sleuth Molly Appleby, a sharp-witted writer for Collector's Weekly magazine. She has a keen knowledge of antiques, and a special fondness for collectibles. And when a fellow collector is murdered, Molly quickly develops an uncanny understanding of the criminal mind. My thoughts: The part of this book that I loved was the information on Southern pottery. It is fascinating how an potter can take a lump of clay and turn into a piece of art, whether it be beautiful or, in the case of the face jugs, ugly. I wish the photos in back had been in color, but the descriptions of the pieces throughout the book were well done. Also, the collectors who visited the kiln openings and auctions were certainly an interesting breed. The mystery and the main character, however, weren't outstanding for me. The story was okay, but not enjoyable enough for me to continue on with the series. I can't even put...
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Carol7 Comments
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson From the dustjacket: A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It's about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden...and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance . . . and about Lisbath Salander, a twent-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age - and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it - who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism - and an unexpected connection between themselves. My thoughts: This book did start slowly,...
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