For the month of May our Book Club selection was “Five Summers” by Una LaMarche. This was the perfect book to get our summer started. LaMarche’s book chronicles the friendship of four girls, Emma, Maddie, Johanna and Skylar as they spent their summers from age nine to thirteen together at camp. Then, three years later…
Book Club Day: Golden by Jessi Kirby
Our April Book Club was “Golden,” the latest contemporary novel by Jessi Kirby, whose roadtrip coming-of-age tale “In Honor” we raved about last summer. If you like books by Abby McDonald, Morgan Matson, and Justina Chen, be sure to check this wonderful pick for your summer reading. The reviews for “Golden” were positive by those…
Book Club Day: The Obvious Game by Rita Arens
“Everyone trusted me back then. Good old, dependable Diana. Which is why most people didn’t notice at first.” “Your shirt is yellow.” “Your eyes are blue.” “You have to stop running away from your problems.” “You’re too skinny.” Fifteen-year-old Diana Keller accidentally begins teaching The Obvious Game to new kid Jesse on his sixteenth birthday….
Book Club Day: Return to Me by Justina Chen Headley
Return to Me by Justina Chen Headley Release Date: Jan. 15, 2013 | Publisher: Little, Brown, 352 pages | Buy it About the book: Nothing is going as planned for Rebecca Muir. She’s weeks away from starting college–at a school chosen specifically to put a few thousand miles of freedom between Reb and her…
January Book Club: Return to Me by Justina Chen Headley
After reading our TLR friend Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s Odyssean adventure “Summer of the Mariposas” in December, we took a short break to recoup, consider our favorite books of 2012, and only then did we pick our January read. We chose “Return to Me” by Justina Chen Headley based on “North of Beautiful,” which I read…
Book Club Day: Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall Release Date: Oct. 1, 2012 | Publisher: Lee & Low, 337 pages About the book: When Odilia and her four sisters find a dead body in the swimming hole, they embark on a hero’s journey to return the dead man to his family in Mexico. But…
Middle Grade Mondays: Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
Life isn’t like the movies and 11-year-old Turtle is no Shirley Temple. She’s smart and tough and has seen enough of the world not to expect a Hollywood ending. After all, it’s 1935 and money and sometimes even dreams are scarce. So when Turtle’s mother gets a job housekeeping for a lady who doesn’t like…
Book Club Day: Skinny by Donna Cooner
“Skinny” by Donna Cooner Release Date: Oct. 1, 2012 | Publisher: Scholastic, 272 pages About the book: Find your voice. Hopeless. Freak. Elephant. Pitiful. These are the words of Skinny, the vicious voice that lives inside fifteen-year-old Ever Davies’s head. Skinny tells Ever all the dark thoughts her classmates have about her. Ever knows she…
Book Club Day: ‘The Stone Girl’ by Alyssa B. Sheinmel
About the book: She feels like a creature out of a fairy tale; a girl who discovers that her bones are really made out of stone, that her skin is really as thin as glass, that her hair is brittle as straw, that her tears have dried up so that she cries only salt. Maybe…
Book Club Day: The Forsaken by Lisa M. Stasse
About the book: As an obedient orphan of the U.N.A. (the super-country that was once Mexico, the U.S., and Canada), Alenna learned at an early age to blend in and be quiet—having your parents taken by the police will do that to a girl. But Alenna can’t help but stand out when she fails a…