Beastly by Alex Flinn

This is a totally fantastic, wonderful modern day retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Kendra, a witch, who is the Forrest Gump of fairy tale land, has changed the handsome, rich, self-centered Kyle, whose parents are equally self-absorbed, into the beast that he is inside. He has two years to find a girl who will love him as a beast and who will kiss him to remove the curse or else he will stay a beast forever. Punctuated with chat room dialogues of people who have been transformed including a frog and Snow White - "no, not that Snow White", and Mr. Anderson, whose initials must be H.C., this modern day fairy tale flows seamlessly and is a fun, sweet romance filled with the love of books, as Beauty and The Beast should be.

Noah Zarc Mammoth Trouble by D. Robert Pease

Twelve year old Noah has lived a secluded life traveling through space and time with his family collecting two of each animal from various time periods on earth to repopulate the planet once it again becomes habitable and to save the animals from the extinction they once went through.  On their time traveling space ship, the Arc, they encounter trouble from Haon, a nefarious man who kidnaps Noah’s mom and thwarts them at every turn trying to destroy the animals and to allow the humans who are living on Venus to repopulate earth rather than saving earth as a wildlife habitat.  With unexpected twists in the plot, the addition of a brilliant cave girl, parallels to Star Wars and The Hitchhiker’s Guide, this was a book that I could not put down!  I read it in two days and enjoyed it thoroughly!  I look forward to reading more books by this author!

I received this book to review as a part of this blog tour http://www.drobertpease.com/site.cfm/Books/Blog-Tour/Notes.cfm

Bewitching by Alex Flinn

I got the book Bewitching free to review through Goodreads. It is a fantastic book! I totally loved it! It is well written and filled with humor, fantasy and a bit of romance. Kendra Hilferty, a witch, tells how she found out she was a witch and how, kind of like Forrest Gump, she has been around for most of the major events in history. Remember the witch who made the gingerbread house? Kendra knew her. While telling how she helped Ella, a modern day non-wicked stepsister to deal with her rather wicked poor stepsister, Kendra also tells a few other twisted versions of tales we all know. The plot is filled with unexpected twists and funny events and is just a joy to read. I always feel kind of sad and empty when I finish reading a really good book, because it is over, and I have to leave the world that it created in my mind. Luckily for me, this author has written other books and I have not read them yet! I look forward to reading more of Alex Flinn's books

The Grace Effect by Larry Alex Taunton

I felt like this book was telling two different stories.
The author begins by letting us know that he is friends with Christopher Hitchens and that they discuss and debate Christianity vs. athiesm together. Then, he goes on to tell the story of his family adopting a little girl from an orphanage in the Ukraine.
He tries to sell the point that the Ukraine is an unfriendly corrupt country due to the influence of athiestic socialism - which may be true, and that the US is a friendly, loving, non-corrupt country due to the Christian influence. I think that might be a debatable point to many people.

I really enjoyed his story about his daughter's adoption and all that they went through in order to adopt her.
I found his version of Ukranian history interesting and humerous - especially the part where Prince Vladimir crossed his legs after hearing about the Jewish practice of circumcision, decided not to chose the Muslim religion since they did not allow vodka and picked Greek Orthodoxy since he could keep his nether regions intact and drink vodka and because he had heard tales of how beautiful the Haigia Sophia was.
I also thought it was funny that they have a bumper sticker with a high heeled boot on it on cars with women drivers to warn other drivers in the Ukraine.

The book is well written and interesting and I enjoyed his story about adopting his daughter, but I think that there are many people who would disagree with his concept of the "Grace Effect" of the Christian religion on society. I don't think he gives much support to that concept.  If being a Christian nation makes us less corrupt and more polite and caring, then what about what happened in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit - how horribly people behaved, compared to how civilized and polite the Japanese were during and after the recent earthquake and nuclear meltdown?  I don't think that the "Grace Effect" helped the Americans to behave well and the Japanese who behaved so much better are not Christians.  I am not sure that the US government is any less corrupt than that of the Ukraine - they just admit it and have it out in the open and we hide it.  I don't think that the "grace effect" has eradicated slavery and treating other people badly in the US - we just hide that better too.  There are plenty of slaves in the US; most of them picking produce and most of them don't speak English and are not here legally. We don't see them or know about them so that makes it ok.  And our whole society is built on products that are made by people who live in slavery or sub-standard conditions in other countries.  But since we don't know about it, we don't feel responsible for it.  That "grace effect" just seems to hide things, not make them go away.
I got this book free to review from Booksneeze.

Free-Range kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry) by Lenore Skenazy

This is a funny book full of serious advice about child raising.  Today's parents have become overly cautious about our children fearing that they will be abducted at any moment, largely due to the media frenzy that surrounds such rare events, and we have become so over-protective that we do not allow our children the freedom to become responsible and mature on their own.
Despite the increase in media coverage, there has not been an increase in child abductions since I was a kid and I was allowed to run and bike ride all over the neighborhood by myself with no cell phone - they were not invented yet - and my parents had no idea where I was and I survived.  Do I let my kids do that?  No way.  And, according to the author of this book, I am stiffling them and harming their future and self image and independence which will lead them to a lifetime of therapy.  Or maybe not.  But, there is hope for me and my children!  The author has filled her book with free range baby steps, brave steps and giant leaps to help us to give our children the independence that they need.  This book is funny and practical and I really enjoyed it and I highly recommend it.

Marzi: a memoir by Marzena Sowa

This is the first graphic novel that I have read. I thought I would read through it quickly, but it took me longer to read than a regular book because I enjoyed looking at all of the pictures.  It is a memoir, Marzi's story of growing up in communist Poland during the last 10 years of communism.  She shows what it was like to live under the communist regime from the viewpoint of a child.  She tells about standing in long lines at stores when they got one product in, and hoping that they did not run out before it was her family's turn to buy it.  She wonders about the constant grumbling of the adults and their unhappiness due to the political situation.  They had to sign in with her parent's bosses and march in the Labor day parade and smile and pretend to be happy. It was very frightening for her when her father went on strike with his company and did not come home for many days.  She illustrates her day to day life in Poland as well, of going to the family garden plots and orchards and harvesting produce and bringing it home and selling it.  She tells of visiting relatives and playing games and going to school and trying to find out what solidarity was and what it meant to her country.  She describes the quiet end to communism in her country followed by the others of the soviet bloc and the falling of the Berlin wall. 
I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it!  I think it could be used in schools and that students would relate to Marzi and it would make history more real to them.
I got this book to read and review from Goodreads.

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller

Throw away the reading logs, novel reading unit activities, and reading comprehension worksheets.  Do not require your class to all read the same book at the same time.  Forget book reports. 
Allow your students to read books that they want to read and they will become life-long readers and have higher reading comprehension test scores.

The author of this book requires that her 6th grade students in a Texas school read 40 books in a school year - with a requirement that there be a certain number of books from selected genres. 
They do book commercials and write their own teasers for the books and communicate about their reading with the teacher through a journal and frequent book talks.
The author shares her enthusiasm for reading with her students and they share their enjoyment of reading with one another. 
It sounds so wonderful!
I really enjoyed this book! I think that the author is totally correct in her assertion that students should be allowed to read books of their own choice in reading class and should not have to answer meaningless questions about them and read class sets of novels that they may not be interested in.
I taught middle school in Texas for 13 years. For the first 9 or so years, I taught reading - 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. I also taught some remedial classes for students who had failed the reading portion of the state test. I was successful. Those students all passed the test after my class except for one who raised his grade from a 27 to a 57, which is still pretty goood. But, I did it by drill and kill. I was not allowed to let my students just read books the way the author does. I had a certain number of worksheets that my students had to do each week and I had to document it. One year, I was told that I could not even assign reading for book reports until after the state test - in May.  I finally begged to be allowed to teach social studies instead of reading.
I taught that for a few years before quitting to stay home with my own children.
I am currently substitute teaching in two Texas school districts.

I was amazed that so much of the research that the author cited that proves that students need to read actual books to improve their reading skills is from from years and years ago, yet none of the schools that I have been in have ever allowed teachers to do what the author does in her classroom. The author repeatedly states that she is sad that other teachers don't encourage free choice reading the way that she does. I think that she is in a unique situation to be allowed to do that. Her situation works well also because she only has 55 students. In middle schools if Reading is taught as it's own class rather than as part of Integrated Language Arts, teachers have about 130 to 180 students. If it is taught as part of Integrated Language Arts, they have about 80 to 90 students or so. That makes it a bit more difficult to do some of the things she does.
The author also has a huge classroom library of books that she has bought mostly with her own money.  I used to do that too.  It makes me sad to walk into a reading classroom that has very few or no books in it.

I wish that principals, superintendants and curriculum planners would read this book. I think it would be fantastic if all reading classrooms were libraries where children could choose their own books to read and learn to love reading and share it with one another.