Book Review: Between Heaven and Earth

After his grandfather dies DJ sets out to fulfill his request in Between Heaven and Earth by Eric Walters.   Contained in sealed envelopes, grandfather has assigned each of his six grandsons a task to complete.  DJ is the oldest and must venture to the top of Mt Kilamanjaro in order to spread his grandfathers ashes.  Since DJ is a successful athelete he feels confident in his ability to climb to the summit and complete his task.   In fact, he expects to make it to the top in two days with another day to return.  Even before he begins his climb there is plenty of adventure on the way to his destination in Tanzania.

This is a fun story of adventure complete with maps and twists as the plans unfold on life journeys for each grandson.  Grandfather is dearly beloved by each and this is just one adventure in the seven series, each with a different author.

Warriors: The Forgotten Warrior

Warriors: The Forgotten Warrior

This book is written by Erin Hunter, who also happens to be one of my favorite authors.  She is the author of the amazing Warriors series that is very popular here in North America and it is almost entirely rare to not ever see someone reading it or for it to not be in a library. This is the the type of book that someone who is interested in fiction and fantasy would want to read - even someone like me was able to read it, even though I don't read that often.

This book is confusing, but that's because its the sixth book in the series, so if you're interested in fantasy fiction I would recommend to start from the beginning of the series which is "Warriors: The Sun Trail."  This author also has two other series of books; one is called "Seekers" and the other series, which is as popular and well known as "Seekers" and "Warriors," is called "Surviors."

So to sum up the book without spoiling it (or telling you the main story which would spoil it for you), the book picks up where the previous book left off.  The Star Clan has divided and turned into different groups and when the Dark Forest Sprites start to gain strength, there is no Star Clan anymore so the Thunder Cats (which is one of the many clans in the series) has to step in and try to stop the sprites in the Dark Forest before it's too late.

- BOOK WORM

Magic and the Mafia

 White Cat, by Holly Black, is part mystery, part dark urban fantasy, part twisted romance, and part mob story.  I hope you like your fiction dark and bruised, because this story doesn't pull any punches.  It takes place in a world very much like our own, except everyone has to wear gloves to protect themselves from curses.  And our dubious "hero," Cassel Sharpe, knows a little more about working curses than your average Joe.

Cassel wakes up on the roof of his fancy high school dorm and nearly falls to his death. He's been sleepwalking again, and now the school is threatening to expel him as too much of a liability.  Was he really sleepwalking, or was he cursed? He dreamed of following a white cat....

Cassel is the only nonworker in a family of curse workers.  Since curse working was outlawed in the 1920s, most curse workers are employed by the mob.  At first, Cassel thinks he's only got to con his school into letting him back in.  Then he begins to think that the dream about the white cat might be related to the girl he loved when he was fourteen; the girl he killed. At least, that's what his two brothers told him after they dumped the body.  Cassel doesn't remember why he killed her, only that he was standing over her bloody body.  Now Cassel thinks his brothers are hiding something from him, something important.  To learn the horrible truth, he'll have to find the white cat from his dream. But the truth is a dangerous thing when the mob is involved, and Cassel finds himself caught between murder and treachery in the underbelly of curse worker society.

If you like White Cat, the curse workers series continues with Red Glove and Black Heart.

Happy reading.
~gothbrarian

Do dystopias cheer you up?

I have been thinking a lot lately about why I like dystopian fiction.  Dystopias are so much more than the opposite of utopias.  I mean they have to be, right?!  Who would choose to read about "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives," as Merriam-Webster describes it, when we could read about unicorns and rainbows and endless supplies of chocolate?  Though I don't think there is any one reason that people like these stories, I have to agree with author Meagan Spooner that dystopias "...highlight the flaws in our society and extrapolate them into the future, imagining what our world could become if we don’t repair the cracks now while we still can".  One of the most disturbing "cracks" at present is the rise of incurable, drug-resistant diseases, although historically speaking, I guess ebola and MRSA are no worse than the bubonic plague and polio. Alexandra Bracken's new book, The Darkest Minds, imagines a world where an unknown virus starts wiping out children all over the United States (I'm kind of happy it wasn't some third world country for once!). 

Crafty like a fox!

There are few feelings like the feeling of having made something awesome (or even not so awesome) with your own two hands. You've just created this thing. You create! You're a creator! Mwaaaaahahahahaha!!! (Those in the psychology field call this a God complex; those of us in the art field call it a healthy sense of self-worth.) Thankfully you too can experience this wonderful feeling no matter what kind of creation you're into with the help of your wonderful public library! We've got everything from cupcakes, kawaii awesomeness, and even something for a budding Tony Stark.

Middle School Mayhem

I read so many books that sometimes it's really hard to think about what to write about for this blog; other times, the universe just seems to pull out a topic and advertise it in neon lights. With arrows. And a fog horn. I was talking with a middle school teacher the other day and she was saying how there are so few good books for middle school students. My library is also currently working on a program called Middle School Mayhem. So obviously my post needs to be some of my TOP middle school reads. Without further ado, my fave middle school reads:

It's summertime and the reading is easy...and kinda sleazy

I have no problem admitting this--when the temperature reached 84 degrees inside my house, I put down the William Faulkner book I was dutifully trying to reread for the sake of my brain and reached for my latest fluff pick, Vixen by Jillian Larkin.  This book puts "historical fiction" in the camp of hot summer read!  The time is 1923, Chicago, land of flappers and mobsters, lavish parties and serious segregation, complete with flasks of whiskey in your garter and guns in your trunk.  Each chapter tells the story through alternating viewpoints of three young women; there's Gloria, the naive heiress engaged to the most sought after guy in the city, her jealous friend Lorraine, whose goal is to become the fiercest flapper around, and  "country cousin" Clara, who covers up a past more shocking than anyone could imagine.

A Deadly Serious Cat and Mouse Comic

Maus, by Art Spiegelman, was the first graphic novel I ever read. I was about twelve, I think, and I snuck it out of my brother's collection of comic books. There was just something different about it that caught my interest: it was a real book, heavy, with binding and a hard cover. Yeah, it was a comic book. But it wasn't like the Spiderman or Superman comics that I'd glanced at and found boring. It was a new way to look at a sad, serious subject: the Holocaust.

The end-of-a-series Blues

I hate it when I finish a series. Hate it. Perhaps I am too attached to characters and their fictional lives but the very nature of a story makes you believe there could always be more if someone would only think it up and write it down! Most recently, I finished up Suzanne Collins' amazing Hunger Games trilogy (yes, I am shockingly behind the times) and I've fallen into my usual funk. Just in case any of you are in the same sad boat, I am here to offer you a lifeline--literally! In the same vein, Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker is an exhilarating, futuristic dark work where the remains of sunken ships in the Gulf of Mexico have become a vicious dog-eat-dog world of scavengers--scrap wood, copper, oil, eyeballs, it's all fair game and makes life precarious at best.

When One Book Isn't Enough

Believe it or not, every single one of the favorite teen books in this year's Summer Reading Program was part of a series. This is a great time to be a fan of YA series -- there are so many excellent ones coming out, and the library has a great selection! So if you're going to be bored over winter break, or forced to head off on a holiday trip, why not grab a series or three to keep you entertained?

If you loved Harry Potter, give Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain a try! Think Harry Potter's life started out rough? Imagine if he'd been a lowly Assistant Pig-Keeper, who got all muddled up in magic, battles, royalty, and epic quests! Start with The Book of Three.