Librarian teacher discusses children's books. Students are encouraged to contribute their own book review or short summary of fiction or nonfiction books. This blog is of interest to 3rd through 6th graders.

Inkheart

"Look. (Grown-ups skip this paragraph.) I'm not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending, I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there's a lot of bad stuff coming." William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Each chapter of Inkheart begins with a quote from a book that you may or may not recognize but will appreciate. It gives a little clue about what the chapter is about. It seems that all the SJV students who have read this book by Cornelia Funke have said to me "You should read this book —you would really like it". Well, I've finally gotten around to reading this adventurous book and yes I am really enjoying it. It is full of magic and interesting characters and it is about books, storytelling, villains, trickery and a family of book-lovers! What more could one want?

Twelve-year old Meggie has lived an usual life since her mother left and her dad has been hiding the mystery of her disappearance. Now he can't keep it a secret because Meggie and an eccentric aunt are swept up (literally) in the story (literally again) with Mortimer (her dad, who she calls Mo) and must use their ingenuity to escape this frightful fantasy they are in.

One of my favorite quotes from the actual story—"She usually found it so easy to escape somewhere else, to get right inside the minds of people and animals who existed only on paper, so why not now? "Because fear kills everything, " Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination."

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

As Chris entered the library today he said "I looked online and I saw that the next Percy Jackson book won't be out until May of 2009! I started jumping up and down because it just can't end like that."
Pepperwolf - "End like what?"
Chris - "I won't give out too much information but it ended when a character named Nico came to Percy's house to tell him something very important. I can't wait for the story to continue."
Pepperwolf - "You've read all four books in such a short amount of time, why were the books so good?"
Chris - "The books are about a boy named Percy Jackson who found out his dad was an Olympian god and his dad's father named Kronos is getting an army and rebuilding himself because the Olympians cut him up with his own scythe and he wants to destroy the Olympians. There is so much adventure and excitement and action all that in four books."
The series: The Lightening Thief, Sea of Monsters, Titan's Curse and The Battle of the Labyrinth. If you've read any of these good books, feel free to post your own comment for the blog.