Dot – Saturday Story Spotlight

Sep 032011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Dot by Patricia Intriago
Published by Margaret Ferguson Books, an imprint of Macmillan

Patricia Intriago’s Dot is a stark, sparse study in opposites. There are dots that are up and down, happy and sad, yummy and taste bad. Having the illustrations consist of little more than dots set against a solid background – most often black dots on white – means that there is little to distract from the attributes that define each set of dots. Daniel is particularly taken with the dots that are yummy and taste bad. Each of the two appears to have a bite taken out of it, but the bad-tasting dot has its missing piece next to it on the page, as if someone tasted it and then spit it out. Every time Daniel sees Dot, he grabs the book from my hand and starts flipping through the pages asking, “where yummy one?”

Although it isn’t as ornately illustrated as most of the picture books we read, Dot is attention-grabbing in its simplicity, as evidenced by the fact that Daniel latched onto one of the sets of dots almost immediately, after only one or two reads. We are enjoying Dot very much.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny – Audiobook Spotlight

Sep 022011

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny, narrated by Ralph Cosham
Published in audio by Macmillan Audio, published in print by Minotaur Books, both imprints of Macmillan

In the fall of 2009, I discovered the amazing crime fiction blog, Jen’s Book Thoughts. If you don’t know Jen’s blog and you ever read (or listen to) crime fiction, you must hie yourself over there immediately, er, as soon as you finish reading this post. One of Jen’s recent posts in particular caught my eye, her effusive review of Louise Penny’s The Brutal Telling. She sold me on it, and a few months later I read the first book in Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, Still Life and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, those were the days before I had FictFact to manage my series intake, and I managed to more or less forget about the Gamache series for some time, until this latest book, A Trick of the Light was released. Suddenly I find myself in possession of the most recent audiobook, after hearing over and over again from Jen and other bloggers I trust how fantastic the audiobooks are, but at the same time being told that I really should read at least the two previous books before getting to this one. Here’s a description of A Trick of the Light I found on Indiebound:

“Hearts are broken,” Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. “Sweet relationships are dead.”
But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow’s garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara’s solo show at the famed Musée in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and there he finds the art world gathered, and with it a world of shading and nuance, a world of shadow and light. Where nothing is as it seems. Behind every smile there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship there hides a broken heart. And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they’ve found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light.

soundbytes picture If you suddenly see an influx of Louise Penny reviews on this blog, you’ll know why. It is me, desperately trying to catch up so I can listen to A Trick of the Light. If you’re curious, you can listen to a clip and see why I’m so looking forward to it.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly – Book Review

Aug 032011

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
Published by St. Martin’s Griffin, an imprint of Macmillan

This is the first book in the Rose series.

Fiona Finnegan may be a poor Irish girl living in Whitechapel, but she has big plans with her sweetheart, Joe Bristow. Together, they are determined to save enough money to marry and open a shop of their own, something that can take them away from a neighborhood where Jack the Ripper roams the streets after dark. When Joe takes a better paying job, it pains them to be apart, but seems a means to an end, until three tragedies rip Fiona’s life asunder and she is forced to face life on her own, with only her young brother by her side.

The Tea Rose is not a short book, and it is just the first in a trilogy of equally long books. Thus it is only to be expected that there is quite a bit of initial set up and characterization. This resulted, however, in a slow first 100 pages or so. Fiona was engaging the entire time, but her poor-but-getting-by family and her dreams of a future with Joe went a bit longer than would be optimal. Around page 100, though, things begin happening, and Fiona really begins to show her mettle and the story takes flight. Fiona is a strong character, without being too overly modern. She is certainly bold and willing to break out of societal molds, but never comes across as anachronistic.

Once it gets going, The Tea Rose is completely engaging late 19th-century historical fiction, an epic that captures the imagination. I cannot wait to read the rest of the series.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

If you are already a fan of this series, the third book, The Wild Rose, was just released by Hyperion Books. Buy it from:

Powells | Indiebound*

Source: personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Lost and Found Pony – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jul 232011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

The Lost and Found Pony by Tracy Dockray
Published by Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan

The eponymous and unnamed pony is small, but she (or possibly he, along with being unnamed she is never explicitly given a gender, but let’s just make her a she for the sake of argument) is perfectly happy with herself. That happiness is even more pronounced when she is given to a young girl as a birthday present. She and the girl are a perfect match, until one day it becomes apparent that the girl has outgrown her, and the girl’s parents replace our dear pony with a larger horse.

The pony is sold off to the circus, which is not a bad life, but she misses the girl each and every day. Still, life goes on – until the circus begins to lose money and the animals are sold off. This is perhaps the scariest time in our pony’s life, but it results in a reunion with her girl, now all grown up.

This is just a lovely book. Dockray’s illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. I wanted to reach into the book and stroke the pony’s muzzle in the early pages. The circus illustrations are particularly vibrant, the ones of the circus’s dissolution still beautiful but tinged with despair. The story is incredibly sweet as well. The pony knows love and won’t give up on it, but also makes the best of the situation at hand. Her reunion with her long-lost girl makes me go “awww.”

My only real problem with The Lost and Found Pony – which is not a fault of the book itself, but evidence of a slight mismatch between the book and my family – is the fact that it is far too long for even my book-obsessed two year old’s attention span. Although I assumed she would be reunited with the girl, I never actually made it all the way through until I reread it prior to writing this review. Still, he enjoys the half or so of the book he’ll sit through, and absolutely adores the pictures (horsey! elephant!).

The Lost and Found Pony will definitely be keeping a place in our permanent collection, so we can continue to revisit it as Daniel grows older and can perhaps even sit through to the ending.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Review copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Jack and the Beanstalk – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jul 162011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Jack and the Beanstalk by Nina Crews
Published by Christy Ottaviano Books, an imprint of Macmillan

When Jack finishes doing chores for his neighbor Mrs. M, she gives him nothing more than a handful of beans. He’s disappointed, yes, but he decides to plant them as she suggested. The next morning, he finds a large beanstalk outside his window, and decides to climb it.

You likely know the rest of the story, but Nina Crews has updated and condensed it somewhat from the original. Although there is a golden harp in the pictures, the only treasure of the giant’s explicitly mentioned, and the only one Jack steals, is the hen that lays the golden eggs. When the giant catches Jack in his kingdom in the clouds, he puts him straight to work cleaning dishes, instead of threatening to eat him. The biggest divergence, however, is what happens when Jack chops down the beanstalk: the giant and his wife fall from the sky, but instead of being killed, they appear from under the beanstalk as normal-sized people, and it turns out that the giant is actually Mrs. M’s brother.

My reaction every time Daniel and I finish Jack and the Beanstalk is to be angry at Mrs. M. She gave Jack the beans in order that he might manage to save her brother. At an earlier point in the book, the giant’s wife tells him to be careful with this boy, as he doesn’t know his own strength. This implies to me that Mrs. M has sent other boys up and bad things have happened to them. It is quite selfish and slightly evil of her to be sending young boys into the sky to save her brother at their own peril without even telling them what they will be doing. This isn’t really addressed in Jack and the Beanstalk, though, there is simply a happy reunion between brother and sister.

Before the part where the characters make me angry, though, I love this update of Jack and the Beanstalk. The illustrations are live action photographs, which helps it stand out from all of the other picture books we read, most of which are either pictures of individual things, not whole scenes, or they are not photographs at all. The editing is very well done, so that giant beanstalks and people 5 times normal size look as if they are actually all together, making it all look very realistic. I also appreciated that the people pictured were multi-cultural.

This is a fun story made special with its live action photograph illustrations. Plus, it keeps my two-year old engaged, which is the most important thing.

Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Melvin and the Boy – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jul 092011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Melvin and the Boy by Lauren Castillo
Published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Macmillan

When a child – or anyone, really – wants something, sometimes it seems as if they are the only one around without that thing they want. In the case of the protagonist of Melvin and the Boy, the desired object is a pet. It seems like everyone besides our unnamed narrator has one: dogs, cats, rabbits, anything and everything. The main character isn’t terribly concerned about what kind of pet he gets, but his parents turn down all sorts of things as too noisy, too much work, too big. When he finds a turtle at the park, one he names Melvin, none of their usual objections apply, but can a wild turtle be happy as a pet?

If for no other reason, Melvin and the Boy is worth picking up for the beautiful illustrations. Every picture is just beautiful and charming, with fabulous contrast between bright and subdued colors. There is so much to look at on every page that the squirmiest toddler is sure to focus, and yet Castillo manages not to go too far in the other direction and make the illustrations too busy, they are just wonderfully nuanced.

In addition to the beautiful illustrations, there is also an important message in Melvin and the Boy about letting wild creatures stay wild. Melvin is unhappy living in an apartment where the only thing that feels vaguely familiar is the bath tub. There is also a bonus for older children at the end of the story, a full page spread of very interesting turtle facts. Daniel is a little young for that part, but he loves the rest of the book and, quite frankly, I have spent some time reading the turtle facts myself, as they are really quite interesting. Did you know that turtles have excellent eyesight?

Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Tumford the Terrible – Saturday Story Spotlight

May 282011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Tumford the Terrible by Nancy Tillman
Published by Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan

Tumford isn’t really terrible, exactly; in reality, he is a very nice cat. The problem is that, like many cats, he has a tendency to make messes and, when he does, he has a very strong aversion to the words, “I’m sorry.” Day after day he gets into scrapes around the house, and instead of owning up to what he has done, he hides all over the place from his very pleasant human parents. Tumford’s parents are understandably very frustrated with the situation, but instead of getting angry, they decide to try a different technique. They will give him a treat, take him to the big fair that is in town, if only he will promise to apologize for anything he does that goes wrong. As you might guess, Tumford isn’t able to behave himself completely at the fair. His first reaction when things go oh-so-wrong is still to hide, but as he is hiding, Tumford thinks about his parents, and realizes what he really wants to do is to make them proud.

Tumford the Terrible is a very sweet book. Tillman found a very good balance with Tumford’s actions. He is never deliberately malicious, just naturally curious in the way that cats and small children tend to be and, as is often the case with cats and small children, his curiosity has a tendency to end messily. Hiding from one’s mistakes is an unfortunate reaction that people of all ages have, so showing children that it is better to own up to one’s mistakes is a very good message. Even better, Tillman manages to keep the message from becoming a heavy-handed MESSAGE.

Part of what keeps Tumford the Terrible from becoming too preachy is Tillman’s jaunty verse, but most of the credit belongs to the absolutely gorgeous illustrations. You must find a copy in a bookstore and flip through it, my personal favorite is when Tumford and his family are marching off to the fair. The picture is a full spread, with Tumford marching assertively in front of his family wearing yellow boots. It is absolutely gorgeous.

So clearly I like Tumford the Terrible, but what about my toddler? Some of the pages have a bit more text than he likes to sit still for, but they are well-balanced with much shorter pages to keep the story moving for younger readers, which keeps him actually seated and engaged for the entire book. An even better measure of enjoyment, though, is the fact that the “cat book” has become a frequent request.

Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Review copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Mothers & Daughters by Rae Meadows – Book Review

Apr 132011

Mothers & Daughters by Rae Meadows
Published by Henry Holt & Co, an imprint of Macmillan

Motherhood has changed Samantha. Her life is consumed by her baby daughter and, quite frankly, Samantha likes it like that. Part of it is her fear that motherhood has so changed her that she will no longer be able to create her art, but she also just can’t bear to leave her daughter. Complicating this dance of early motherhood is Samantha’s grief over the death of her mother Iris, just a short time before the birth of her daughter. When Samantha’s brother sends her a box of Iris’s things, she begins to learn truths about her family that have been long hidden.

Mothers and Daughters is told from the perspective of Samantha, Iris, and Iris’s mother Violet. I found Violet’s story to be both the most compelling and the most disconnected from the rest of the book – which sounds like a negative comment, but isn’t. Violet grew up in New York with a spoiled, dissolute mother who could not – or would not – care for her properly, and who ended up putting her on an orphan train. (Side note: I was more than a little shocked to learn about the orphan trains. After reading Mothers and Daughters I did more research on them and understand the sentiments behind them a bit better, but I was furious for large portions of Violet’s story). It makes perfect sense, really, that Violet’s story seems so disconnected from those of Iris and Samantha, because the life she lived as Iris’s mother in the Midwest was worlds apart from the one she lived growing up in New York City in the early 20th century.

I loved Meadows’s writing, and the way her story was constructed, but perhaps the most stunning thing about Mothers & Daughters is just how quickly I connected with the characters. The narration was done on a rotating basis, so the first three chapters contained one chapter in each woman’s voice, and each of them gave me something in their first chapter that made their stories compelling. Often when the points of view switch in a novel like this, a reader will have a favorite character to narrate, but I can honestly say that I did not. I could connect with each woman, even Iris whose story took place in such a different stage of life than my own. Not only was each woman compelling in her own right, their interactions and influences upon one another were fascinating and meaningful, without ever feeling contrived.

Just one teeny tiny thing: I really, really wanted Samantha to have a flower name, with her mother and grandmother named Iris and Violet. Either that, or I wanted for one of them to not have a flower name. I know, I have a weird thing about names, which is particularly odd since if a character’s name doesn’t bother me for some reason, I likely won’t even notice what it is. I know which character is which because of their characterization and am often hard pressed to remember names even upon looking up from the book for a moment.

Overall, I adored Mothers & Daughters. Highly recommended!

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Author’s agent.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Mapping of Love and Death by Jaqueline Winspear – Book Review

Apr 012011

The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of Harper Collins

My reviews of the first six books in the series: Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, Pardonable Lies, Messenger of Truth, An Incomplete Revenge, Among the Mad.

The son of an American mother and a British father raised in the United States, Michael Clifton feels the need to fight for his father’s country as soon as he hears about the outbreak of World War I. As a mapmaker, he has skills that are invaluable to the war effort. Unfortunately, Michael goes missing during the war with his entire company. When they are discovered, dead in a bunker, Michael’s family is able to retain his personal letters and journal and discover that he was involved with a nurse during the war. Hoping for someone who can serve as a connection to their son, the Clifton’s engage Maisie’s services to find the girl, but looking over the autopsy, Maisie can see that there is a bigger mystery: Michael was murdered before the bunker was bombed.

This was another well-put together case and mystery for Maisie, Winspear is doing a fabulous job keeping the mysteries fresh and the cases unique. However, in this case, I barely paid attention to Maisie’s case because of some interesting personal developments. Maisie’s personal emotional growth has been happening slowly over the past few books, ever since a case took her to France in Messenger of Truth, first as she came to terms with her psychological scars from the war, then as she began to try to live a richer life in the present. Without being too specific or introducing spoilers, The Mapping of Love and Death holds some progress in this area, a means of progress that had not occurred to me, but which make me incredibly happy.

I’m not sure what higher praise I can give to this series than to say that I’ve been reading one of Winspear’s books every two weeks for the last two and a half months, and I cannot wait to read the next book, and I have no idea what I’m going to do when I do, because then I’ll have to wait an entire year for the next book.

Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear – Book Review

Mar 222011

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear
Published by Picador, an imprint of Macmillan

My reviews of the first five books in the series: Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, Pardonable Lies, Messenger of Truth, An Incomplete Revenge.

Christmas, 1931. Not the happiest of holidays. Doreen, the wife of Maisie’s assistant Billy Beale, is still suffering severe mental anguish about the death of their daughter a year ago, to the point where she can barely care for their two boys. And yet, the Beales are in a better position than many in London. There are men everywhere with war injuries both physical and psychological. This is something Maisie knows all too well after her own wartime injuries and the psychological scar that is only just now healing. The pain of so many, though, is brought into stark relief when a man commits suicide with a grenade on a busy street right in front of Maisie, knocking her unconscious. As if a concussion wasn’t bad enough, an anonymous letter writer threatening the lives of Members of Parliament if something is not done to draw attention to the plight of the invisible veterans. Now Maisie must give up her solitary ways and work with Scotland Yard in order to find this man before he unleashes havoc on all of London.

This is the part where I start to get all gushy about this series. I said in my review of An Incomplete Revenge that I really, really liked it, and that it was the best of the series so far. Well, Among the Mad blew An Incomplete Revenge out of the water. Part of the appeal of Among the Mad was the necessary immediacy, the initial note giving them only two days before the writer began taking unspecified action. Unlike the other Maisie Dobbs books, it had elements of a police procedural, but it also got even deeper into the psychological ramifications of the war on the British people than any of the previous books.

Between the focus on shell shock and psychological affects of warfare and the increased sense of danger and anticipation, I could simply not put Among the Mad down and I absolutely cannot wait to pick up the next book in the series.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Older Entries Newer Entries

Devourer of Books

Dot – Saturday Story Spotlight

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny – Audiobook Spotlight

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly – Book Review

The Lost and Found Pony – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jack and the Beanstalk – Saturday Story Spotlight

Melvin and the Boy – Saturday Story Spotlight

Tumford the Terrible – Saturday Story Spotlight

Mothers & Daughters by Rae Meadows – Book Review

The Mapping of Love and Death by Jaqueline Winspear – Book Review

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear – Book Review

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