0 Comments
Grindelwald has escaped. Professor Dumbledore has asked Newt Scamander to help stop Grindelwald in his quest to rule over all non-magical beings. Of course, Tina and Queenie Goldstein and Jacob Kowalski enter in the mix. This was a fun read illustrated with fantastic line art by Minalima. The camera shot directions are interesting as well. Harry Potter fans are probably all ready all over this as well as the movies.
Darcy Prentiss is a seventeen-year-old living in a small town. She has a "not-so-good" reputation and her behavior like late night swims at the quarry does not help her. The only job she can get over the summer is picking berries at the Wardwell farm. So it is a big surprise when she is nominated to be in the Bay Festival Princess pageant. Was her nomination a joke? To add more pressure on her, the one year anniversary of the disappearance of her former friend, Rhiannon, is approaching her. What happened to Rhiannon? Is she still alive? It takes a lot of grit to tackle all of this in one summer, but that's what Darcy does. This was a fast-paced read. The characters were interesting. Darcy is a tough character with a big heart. She grows quite a bit in one summer. This is a fictional account of how Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. It is 1842 and his latest book, Martin Chuzzlewit, is a flop. In fact, it is such a flop that his publisher is threatening to withhold some of his pay. He is told to write a Christmas book. This puts Dickens in a mood. He is worried about money especially his wife's excessive spending on Christmas decorations and party preparations, the expensive toys his children want, family requesting loans, friends asking him for donations to causes. His Scrooge-like behavior forces his wife and children to go to Scotland. While they are away, he walks the streets of London looking for inspiration for his Christmas book and ends up in his old neighborhood. There he finds meets a woman Eleanor Lovejoy who gives him the inspiration to write A Christmas Carol.
This is a fun story about the making of a Christmas classic. Many of the people in the book are actual people from his time. The author did take a number of liberties with facts, but part of the fun of this story is picking out all of the references to the actual novel, (such as why the novel starts out with Jacob Marley being dead). Fans of A Christmas Carol will enjoy this book.
This memoir tells the story of how Jodee Blanco's life changed after writing her memoir about being bullied in school. She describes how her former classmates who once bullied her reacted to it. The response to her book from teenagers all over the country led her to develop an anti-bullying program for students, teachers, and parents. She talks about how doing these programs affected her. It was an interesting biography--not as powerful as her previous book, Please Stop Laughing at Me--: One Woman's Inspirational Story, but well worth the time. I recommend this book to all those who have read her first book and want to learn more about her life afterwards. |
AuthorMr. Andrusyk is a school librarian at IC Catholic Prep in Elmhurst, Illinois. Past Book RecommendationsClick here to view a listing of Mr. Andrusyk's list of favorite authors, series, fiction, and nonfiction. Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|