Texan Skies

I skipped out on Halloween in my neighborhood this year and instead went over to one of my oldest friends and joined her in walking her son around the local trick-or-treating hot spots, and then we settled in for some good old gabbing. I really like connecting with these friends. I also read a few more
Cybils High School / Junior High nonfiction books, as well as raiding the boy's room to catch up on some graphic novels.

My currently reading shelf continues to hover around 20, but really I'm only actively reading about five books.

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called It's Monday! What Are You Reading so I'll try to sign up there if I'm not too late. Ditto for the children's lit focussed version at sign up at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers.

Started: 






High, David and Nic Sheff. Cybils nonfiction longlist.

Any Old Diamonds, K. J. Charles. Favorite author.

Forest Talk, Melissa Koch. Cybils nonfiction longlist.

Save the Crash Test Dummies, Jennifer Swanson. Cybils nonfiction shortlist.

Mummies Exposed!, Kerrie Logan Hollihan. Cybils nonfiction shortlist.

Rising Water, Marc Aronson. Cybils nonfiction shortlist.

Fighting For the Forest, P. O'Connell Pearson. Cybils nonfiction Shortlist.

HiLo 1: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth, Judd Winick. Recommended by a kid.

HiLo 2: Saving the Whole Wide World, Judd Winick.

HiLo 3: The Great Big Boom, Judd Winick.

HiLo 4: Waking the Monsters, Judd Winick.

HiLo 5: Then Everything Went Wrong, Judd Winick.

Small Kingdoms and Other Stories, Charlaine Harris. How she wrote something and no one told me eludes me.


Completed:



 



Poison: Deadly Deeds, Perilous Professions, and Murderous Medicine,  Sarah Albee. Cybils 2017 nonfiction. A cheerful march through the history of ingesting harmful food, whether by malicious intent, accident, or bad science. The fascination with history, chemicals and science makes the text fun instead of gruesome, and the large pages and recurring themed boxes (misguided beauty treatments under "Drop Dead Gorgeous", etc) encourage browsing and reading just a little more.

High, David and Nic Sheff. Cybils nonfiction longlist. This book's intention is to provide teens with the information they need about drugs, delivered by a former addict and his dad. It does a good job providing information and a dire example of a kid who thought he knew what he was doing but was wrong. The motto is "Just Say Know." But it seemed like every example of someone who tried a drug went on to become addicted, which just isn't true and seems to go contrary to the author's declaration that they are telling all the truth.

Forest Talk, Melissa Koch. Cybils nonfiction longlist. This look at the active interactions between individual trees is a love song to forests, both as integral part of our planet and ecology and as companions and spiritual rechargers. The science is a bit soft -- a lot of the language has the looseness of careless evolution talk, where sentence structure seems to imply volition or intention where really none exist. But lot of interesting facts and a challenge to how things are thought to be. The topic was so peaceful that I kept drifting from the page to gaze out the window at the leaves.

Save the Crash Test Dummies, Jennifer Swanson. Cybils nonfiction shortlist. The cover has a lot of kid appeal -- this is definitely the book that gets the most attention when I show off what I am reading. It's on the easier side, but well laid out and willing to go into detail when necessary. I like the attitude throughout that people made these things and interventions, and here is how the reader can become on of the people who do that.

Any Old Diamonds, K. J. Charles. This is the start of another series (two books?) and it's classic Charles, so emotionally resonant, smart, and plotty. For added fun it's set a generation after the Sins of the Cities books and some of those characters poke their heads in. I enjoyed it a lot.

Mummies Exposed!, Kerrie Logan Hollihan. Cybils nonfiction shortlist. I like the prurient genre of junior high nonfiction, which gleefully admits that gross things are fascinating. Mary Roach mines this vein for adults. Hollihan goes after the less famous mummies, both intentional and accidental (and in between) and documents bodies found in the ice, in bogs, and in tombs, and then follows what people learned from studying them and how they did that. It's cheerfully factual and ends with a discussion of the controversies in studying human remains.

Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. For my Tuesday night book club. I thought I'd love this book, but I felt grumpy throughout and never felt myself sink into the story. The adults seemed bizarrely unaware of how the world worked, and rather callous about danger to people other than themselves, even the good guys. And the child seemed remarkably selfish (even for the natural selfish nature of children). Yes the "bad guy" was the worst, but that doesn't make everyone else OK.

Rising Water, Marc Aronson. Cybils nonfiction shortlist. This was clearly rushed to publication after the event but still manages to give a tight description of what happened. It follows the boys into the cave, then switches to follow the search and then the rescue attempts, working out who was involved, when they arrived and what they contributed. Then the focus goes back to the kids, and the story of where they went afterward. I especially liked the afterward where Aronson discussed how he learned his facts and the efforts he made to diversify his knowledge and how he noticed the limits on where he was getting information from. I wished that part had been more integrated into the text as well -- I love when kid nonfiction takes time to discuss how to do the writing as well as the subject itself.

Fighting For the Forest, P. O'Connell Pearson. Cybils nonfiction Shortlist. This history of Roosevelt's CCC program during the depression is excited both for the lives it changed moving boys from unemployment to adulthood and for the conservation goals and results, from the parks and permanent structures to the wider spread of conservation ideals among the young men and their families that it left behind. It moved along briskly, covering the wider topics but grounding itself in specific people and their experiences to show the human element of the history.

HiLo 1-5, Judd Winick. I borrowed these from my friend's kid and read them in one evening, only to find out that he doesn't have the last one! He made some excuse about how it hasn't been written yet or something, but really! Anyway, I really liked the balance between action, humor, and emotion, with the kids facing down robotic invasions and parental expectations with the same desperate courage.


Bookmarks Moved In:




Son of the Black Sword, Larry Correia. 66/? Baen's podcast serial. History is always with us.

Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan. 3/10 discs. I think I recognize the village.

Book Lust, Nancy Pearl. Made it to the Cs!

One Good Dragon Deserves Another, Rachel Aaron. The bad guys are still advancing.

The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang. Last month's Sword and Laser pick. Still on the hold list.

Shakespeare's Counselor, Charlaine Harris. The last Lily Bard book. Wow, I had forgotten all about Lily's medical problems, and the resolution of Bobo's problems. Heh. I have to figure out how to remember to listen this week when I'm not doing any driving. Hmmm.


Picture Books:

None this week.

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; I use them as palate cleansers between books I'm actually reading.



A Traitor to Memory, Elizabeth George.

The Educated Child, William Bennett.

Cookie, Jacqueline Wilson.

Give All to Love, Patricia Veryan.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt.

Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2017. Finished junior high nonfiction!
2. Cybils 2018.  Nothing.
3. Reading My Library. Nothing.
4. KCLS Ten to Try. All done!