Average Girl Reads

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Harry Potter series made it difficult for me to pick up any other books about magic. Every one that I picked up seemed to pale in comparison. I'm glad that I've finally gotten over that mental block; otherwise, I would have missed out on a great story in Skulduggery Pleasant. It is about a 12-year-old girl named Stephanie who discovers a magical underworld in her city when her uncle dies. She is led on a tour of this underground community by her uncle's best friend, who happens to be an undead skeleton called Skulduggery Pleasant.

The author did a good job creating a new universe for his novel that didn't make me compare it to other book in the genre. The explanations of how magic worked in that universe and who the bad guys were was The banter between Stephanie and Skulduggery made my 12-year-old and 16-year-old giggle. As for the ending, it was just right. It made me want to read the next book without resorting to a cliffhanger.

The only hesitation I have about recommending this book is that there is more death than I expected in a kids' book. I would say that if your child can handle The Graveyard Book or the final Harry Potter book, then she can handle this one.






View all my reviews.

Penned by Dani in NC at 9:00 AM | 1 hushed asides to the librarian Links to this post    
Labels: fantasy, fiction, middle school

I've mentioned on this blog before that I use Goodreads to keep track of the books I want to read. It occurred to me that I should also be using it to keep track of where I heard about the book. Today I was constructing the opening paragraph of a book review in my head, and I couldn't remember how I found the book. It isn't a hot title like Twilight that has been mentioned repeatedly in various media outlets, which means that I most saw it mentioned on another blog. I've been finding a lot of books that way lately, and I think it is only fair that I give the bloggers a little mention when it happens. So now when I add a book to my Goodreads TBR list, I plan to type the name of the blog in the Recommended By field.

QUESTION: Do you try to keep track of who told you about a book?


The strange thing about my TBR list is that I keeping adding to it but I haven't been reading anything on it. When I hear about an interesting book, I check my local library. If they have it, I either check it out immediately or add it to my TBR list. So most of the books on my Read list have never been on my TBR list. At one point this year, my TBR list was almost 200 titles long. Once I weeded out the books that weren't in my library, I was still left with 80 titles. Starting this week, I will be attempting to check out books from the TBR list exclusively. I doubt that I can read 80 books in 6 months and I can't promise that I won't still be adding books to the list, but I hope that I will either have less than 50 titles on the list by the end of the year or that I will have rotated off the current titles and have all new ones. Wish me luck!

QUESTION: Do you have a crazy long TBR list?

Penned by Dani in NC at 10:58 PM | 6 hushed asides to the librarian Links to this post    
Labels: Sunday Salon

Can You Get An F In Lunch? and Madame President are the first two books in a series by Nancy Krulik called How I Survived Middle School. My twin daughters, who just finished 6th grade, sped through these books and asked for more so I thought I should read them myself.

The series chronicles the experiences of an 11-year-old girl named Jenny McAfee as she starts 6th grade in a new school. The main conflict is whether Jenny should stay true to the person she was in elementary school or try to act older and look cool like some of the other kids in middle school. This comes about when Jenny returns from sleep-away camp and discovers that her lifelong best friend Addie no longer wants to have anything to do with her. Addie spent the summer hanging out with 7th graders and started the school year as one of the "Pops", or popular kids. Jenny finds her own group of friends by the end of the first book, so one of the themes ends up being Pops versus non-Pops.

These books are a quick read; even C2, my reluctant reader, managed to finish one in a couple of hours. Krulik addresses the common fears that a new middle schooler might have, such as getting lost in a bigger school building and not getting a morning snack like you got in elementary school. The author also comes down on the side of not growing up too quickly, which parents will love.

One thing that annoyed me was the constant mention of middleschoolsurvival.com, which is the website that Jenny turns to whenever she has a problem. It is a real website run by Scholastic, and all the quizzes that Jenny takes in the book are on there. The frequent references broke the flow of the story for me ("I wonder if Addie is really my friend? I'll go take a quiz and find out!") My daughter C1 even asked me why the website existed. I'm sure some kids who don't like reading that much will think the connection to the internet is cool, but an avid reader may find it a nuisance.

All in all, I believe this series makes good summer reading for girls during the summer before 6th grade, especially if they will be going to a different school. It will help them prepare for the changes they will encounter while presenting characters they can care about.

Penned by Dani in NC at 9:00 AM | 1 hushed asides to the librarian Links to this post    
Labels: fiction, middle school

The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History by Katherine Ashenburg

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


Since I only made it through half the book, this isn't a proper review. Rather, I will be sharing my impressions.

This book is a history of bathing and the varying importance placed on a clean body. The author was very thorough, which made some of the passages repetitive. Bathing was good, then bathing was bad, then bathing was good again, etc. Ashenburg's writing style isn't as dry as some history books can be, but her attention to detail still made it dense. I only made it up to the 18th century before the book had to be returned to the library.

This is not a book I would buy for myself. However, I wouldn't mind receiving it as a gift, if only to be able to skim it at my leisure and share the craziest excerpts with my husband.


View all my reviews.

Penned by Dani in NC at 9:00 AM | 0 hushed asides to the librarian Links to this post    
Labels: nonfiction

Squids Will Be Squids by Jon Scieszka

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a picture book of modern fables, and it features Scieska's quirky sense of humor. Some of the morals to these one-page tales are straightforward (like not telling people that your mom has hair on her upper lip), while others are just weird. All of them made my kids giggle, which is the point of the book. If you are expecting life lessons, these aren't the fables for you.


View all my reviews.

Penned by Dani in NC at 8:00 AM | 1 hushed asides to the librarian Links to this post    
Labels: middle school

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Penned by Dani in NC at 1:08 PM | 6 hushed asides to the librarian Links to this post    
Labels: Teaser Tuesday

My favorite movie of all time is The Women (1939). However, before I even found out that it was a movie, I was in love with the stage play that it is based on. When I was about 12, I would check out copies of famous plays from my local library. I loved the snappy dialogue in plays, and this play by Clare Boothe Luce had it in spades.

Even though I can rent the movie version whenever I want, I got a hankering this week to read the play again. Imagine how disappointed I was to find that the book was no longer in my library's collection. I know that a library can't house all the books ever written, and new books are in higher demand than something that is old and relatively obscure. Still, it was a letdown because this is the same library that I've been borrowing books from since I was 10. I keep expecting that my old favorites will still be there, but they've got to make way for the books that the current crop of 10-year-olds want to read. I guess this is the sort of occurrence that makes the rest of you out there buy books.

------------------------------------------------

In other disappearing news, you may have noticed that I've taken away the By My Bedside widget from my sidebar. It was powered by my Amazon affiliates account, and that account was closed this week. Apparently, North Carolina is working on a law that would make it too complicated for affiliate programs to deal with residents of this state, so Amazon decided it would be easier to cut us off now. I have mixed feelings about this. I should be saying "good riddance" because I never made a penny from the Amazon links on any of my blogs. On the other hand, I was hoping that if I improved the quality of my blog, I would increase my traffic and more people would use the links. Ah, well. Now I can stop worrying about it and get back to reading!

-------------------------------------------------

READ: I zipped through The Big Skinny and one of my kids' books Babymouse: The Musical (click links for my reviews). Both are graphic novels and quick reads. I took a break from my other book to read them so that I could reduce the stack of library books by my bed.

CURRENTLY READING: I'm still working my way through The Dirt on Clean. The book is filled with fascinating tidbits, but it doesn't compel me to pick it up. I read a few pages at odd moments, like when I'm waiting for my teakettle to boil. At this point, I may have to skim through the rest of it so I can be ready for the next stack of library books that I'll be picking up tomorrow.

UP NEXT: Besides a collection of Noel Coward's plays, I have nothing but kids' books on my table. I may have to read a couple of them because I am tired of non-fiction at the moment. I want to be swept away by a story. Maybe a romance would fill the bill.

Penned by Dani in NC at 8:56 AM | 5 hushed asides to the librarian Links to this post    
Labels: Sunday Salon