Weekend Reads September 27th

What are you reading this weekend?! I am back in the reading groove and have three books on tap for this weekend. Now that the weather is getting cooler, it feels like the perfect time to read. And I've got three spooky books to start getting into the Halloween Spirit!

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

This book just came out this week and I've jumped on reading it. It is wicked cool. A really cool and unique "boy" book (I hate labeling books based on gender...ugh). This book is about super human beings gone bad. You always expect the superhero to be good but what happens when they get drunk with power? I'm only about 45 pages in and the book has me completely hooked. It's a large and beautiful hardcover and I'm so excited to add this to my home library. 

Dead Reckoning by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill 

I'm pumped to read this book. 1867 Texas and zombies are on the loose?! You know I will like this book. Especially because it sounds like there is a lot of girl power in this book. The protagonist, Jett (a girl) goes around disguised as a boy and living as a gambler as she searches for her long lost twin brother. She encounters Honoria who is a fierce inventor who travels the prairie alone. Reviews are saying it's a "steampunk Zombie Western". Um, yes please. 

Freaks by Kieran Larwood. 

I'm a little under halfway done with this one. And I like it. It tells the story of the wolf girl, Sheba, covered in fur and sitting in a sad old Freak Show in a small sea side town. Her owner sells her and she is whisked away to Victorian London where she goes to live with a group of peers; more 'freaks'. This band of performers work together to solve the mystery of why London's poorest children are being snatched by the banks of the Thames River. What is really cool about this book is that it is a Common Core title. If you are involved even remotely with education in the United States, you know that Common Core is a buzz word. This is a well researched books with many real facts about London and the Crystal Palace Exhibition that took place in 1851. A very fun read for kids who need some non fiction done in a cool (and sneaky) way. 

So I've got a lot on my plate this weekend! I can't wait to start. So, what's it going to be for you? Zombie Western? Evil super heroes in Chicago? Or a freak show in Victorian London? Where will you be traveling to this weekend?

Workshops, Giving, and Memories

Today I am going to a workshop on book fairs. I love to hear from people on how they get their kids excited about reading. It is so incredibly important to find the book that will make a child a life long reading champion! 

I have several influential reading champions in my life. Most distinctly, I remember my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Hull. I was the frequenter of our classroom library. Probably twice a week I would check out at least two books to read. It was through this little miniature library that I discovered The Giver by Lois Lowry. I was totally consumed with that book! I read it over and over and over again. I loved the crazy futuristic world that saw no color and where individuality was discouraged. Sometimes I felt like my small Connecticut hometown could have been where Jonah was living. I was obsessed. Mr. Hull noticed how much I loved the book and at the end of the school year he pulled me aside and gave me the well loved copy from his library. I remember him smiling and handing me the book and saying to me "This book should belong to you. Keep reading." I was a lucky kid to have received many books from my family and friends but some reason, this gift really stands out to me. I still have my hardback ) copy of The Giver. It has a place of honor on my nightstand. I'm also super pumped they are making it a movie starring Jeff Bridges! 

How ironic (or convenient) that one of my favorite memories of giving the gift of reading would be about book that gives the gift of memories. 

How can you be a reading champion? Who was your reading champion when you were little?

Stung by Bethany Wiggins

Stung by Bethany Wiggins

Imagine waking up in your childhood bedroom. You are exhausted, your body feels heavy and the feeling of strangeness grows even more when you look at your once white eyelet curtains and see they are yellowed with age. The carpet has a thick layer of dust and there are no sheets on your mattress. You can remember falling asleep a thirteen year old girl but when you look at yourself in the mirror, you have the body of an adult. Four years have passed and you are now awake in your abandoned house. You glance down at your hands and see a tattoo of a bug with ten legs. When you move to go to the bath room you realize there is blood, dried and fresh, on the floor. And you realize, you aren't alone...

 Bees are dying. And when the bees die, nothing will pollinate the flowers and plants and without plants, what will the animals eat? In the Western United States, Fiona wakes up and finds her house abandoned and in ruins. Stranger than the eerie silence of an empty home and abandoned neighborhood, Fiona finds an odd tattoo on her hand, a black oval with five lines on either side. She comes to find that those who bear the tattoo are violent, mindless beasts that consume the unmarked. They live in sewers and in empty streets while a select few live within the high walls of a fortress protected from the monsters. And what is worse, she is one of them. Will she find her family? Can she find protection from the ravenous beasts with their marked hands? Can she find protection from herself in case she turns?


I loved this book. I need something to kick me out of my reading slump. I overloaded with books in the spring, took it easy in the summer, and have been slacking this fall so far! I've started so many books but can hardly get through them because none are catching my attention. But the opening of this book completely changed that. I was so hooked then minute I read the first chapter that I finished the book in just two days. I also love a good dystopian (if you haven't figured that out yet) and this has a new take: apocalyptic sleeping beauty! I also appreciate, like all good dystopians, the element of "Oh crap, this could really happen".


 What I really enjoyed about this book was being kept in the dark.  So often are you reading a book and the back story is giving and you can understand everything. With this book, it is as if you and Fiona have both woken up from a four year coma and you have to figure out what's happening as it comes. It's got a pretty solid romance (though not really my cup of tea) and good relationship building. Just wait until you read the final chapters of the battle in the pits. It's sickening. Sickening for its violent description and sickening because it's so well written.

If you have ever been stung by a bee or liked the taste of honey, you should probably pick up this book. You never know, both of those things could becoming incredibly valuable one day...