FEBRUARY 2012
Stuart Little - 4 - E.B. White - read aloud with the younger boys, one of my favorite stories.
The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels - 2 - Ree Drummond - Not as great as I expected. If she took out all the references to kissing and his biceps, she' lose 100 pages of the book. I know it is a love story but I get it already. Like to kiss, love his biceps.
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay - 4 - Suzanne Collins - I know these are YA, but I would not give them to a YA to read. I found them interesting in the originality of the story, but the writing was definitely YA level. I gave them a 4 because they gave me a lot to think about in terms of the use of propaganda, how the media can be used by the government for control, etc.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - 4 - JK Rowling - read aloud with the older boys. They love the series, so I know what we are reading before bedtime for the next several months!
Pippi Longstocking - 4 - Astrid Lindgren - read aloud with the younger boys. They really liked it. Then we watched the 1973 movie. Now THAT was creepy!
Stuart Little - 4 - E.B. White - read aloud with the younger boys, one of my favorite stories.
The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels - 2 - Ree Drummond - Not as great as I expected. If she took out all the references to kissing and his biceps, she' lose 100 pages of the book. I know it is a love story but I get it already. Like to kiss, love his biceps.
The book overall was interesting, but only because I was already familiar with The Pioneer Woman from her blog and her cookbook(one of my faves, btw). The constant ongoing kissing, kissing, all they do all the time is kiss, along with the ongoing discussion of his biceps, did nothing but distract from what could have been a much more interesting story.
I would have liked her to plumb more emotionally what it meant to give up her lifestyle and career dreams to be with this man. It seemed like she was going for a Green Acres/fish out of water approach, and maybe that is all that this book was supposed to be. She goes on and on about not having access to lattes and sushi, and that really sounds so surface and trivial. There is a lot more involved in what she did. That is what I would have liked to have read about, about the deep changes she was making for this man and how she grew as a person through it. I know there was some of that, but overall, I think she could have maintained the humor (loved the story about taking the cow's temperature) and made it a much more compelling book.
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay - 4 - Suzanne Collins - I know these are YA, but I would not give them to a YA to read. I found them interesting in the originality of the story, but the writing was definitely YA level. I gave them a 4 because they gave me a lot to think about in terms of the use of propaganda, how the media can be used by the government for control, etc.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - 4 - JK Rowling - read aloud with the older boys. They love the series, so I know what we are reading before bedtime for the next several months!
Pippi Longstocking - 4 - Astrid Lindgren - read aloud with the younger boys. They really liked it. Then we watched the 1973 movie. Now THAT was creepy!
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Just curious as to why you would not recommend The Hunger Games triology to YA.
ReplyDeleteJennifer
Because they are violent, and with each book the ways human beings are killed gets creepier. I guess YA in high school would be fine, they are certainly milder than the garbage I read in high school. BUT - Scholastic (who I ordered my copies from) is selling them in middle school catalogs, and I do not think that they are appropriate for that age/emotional maturity level.
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