Teenage fans of Alyson Noel's The Immortals series will be familiar with Ever's younger sister Riley. With Radiance, Alyson Noel gives us an entirely new series for a completely different audience. Whereas I recommend The Immortals for teen readers, this novel is completely appropriate for young tweens. For those unfamiliar with the series, Riley, her parents, and her dog Buttercup died in a car crash (big sister Ever lived and is featured in The Immortals series). For a while Riley refused to "cross over," and lived sort of in limbo, visiting Ever and staying on the Earth plane. This story picks up with her living in "Here & Now." Her life is much like it was on earth, with her parents, her dog, school. But she's also training ...
Category Archives: Gift Ideas
Weird & Wonderful
Children's literature has had an unarguably interesting history, and it's no doubt that today's popular books for kids often have little resemblance to their ancestors from days gone by. When I think of old school literature, Goodnight Moon and Pat the Bunny come to mind- modest and gentle books from a simpler time. But that image was shattered as I read Welleran Poltarnees' new book Weird & Wonderful: Discoveries from the Mysterious World of Forgotten Children's Books. Honestly, I'm still a little flabbergasted after reading this book once straight through, and flipping back through it several times in the last few days. Odd, bizarre and just plain weird are most definitely words that can be used to describe the illustrations and texts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Poltarnees has collected and ...
Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon
If there was an award for a unique and catchy book title, I'm pretty certain that Mark Di Vincenzo's Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That, and Go There would be among the finalists. Eye-catching and perfectly summarizing what a reader should expect, most definitely! Based on extensive research conducted by Di Vincenzo, a journalist by trade, this book includes information and answers from experts through interviews or readings. The topics covered range from when to make purchases of everything from eggs to homes, when to travel, and when to get some items on your to-do list crossed off. Issues revolving around personal health care, education, and employment are also included, as well. With such a wide range of information included in this small book, ...
LEGO: A Love Story
This book has a fantastic cover that initially drew me to it. The idea of an adult man reconnecting with a childhood love of building bricks was also fascinating. It's billed as a memoir, or at least that was what I thought it was, and has elements of a "project memoir" wherein the author delves into a certain subject or theme with a goal in mind. In this case, Jonathan Bender wanted to research AFOLs (adult fan of LEGO) as well as become one himself. But I would call LEGO: A Love Story more of a researched book than a memoir. Yes, Bender shares some of his personal experiences, and the story is told through his eyes as he joins LEGO conventions and tours the headquarters in Denmark and the U.S. headquarters in Connecticut, ...
Books Make Me Happy
This book arrived in my mailbox by surprise and at first I looked at it with some suspicion. After all, the cover art was kind of curious. However, once I glanced at the whole title - Books Make Me Happy: My First Reading Log - I was eager to crack open this book and find out what it was all about! Stay with me here because this is awesome.... Want to get your kids hooked on reading this summer? Books Make Me Happy beats out any library reading program that I can think of, with all due respect to the library. Come up with your own reward at the end of this if you must - and it'll ...
Books on Screen: Molly Ringwald movies
In Molly Ringwald's new book Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick, she looks back on her teen years that she spent on the big screen. Molly Ringwald is about my age, and so I grew up watching her, and the John Hughes movies that she starred in are so typically 80's, that I just had to revisit them. Read my interview with Molly Ringwald over at 5 Minutes for Mom, and enter to win a copy of her new book Getting the Pretty Back. The book is fun. It's not a beauty book, or a fashion book, or a self-help book. It has elements of all of this, but reading this book is just like having a good candid chat with a girlfriend. Ringwald dishes on personal style ...
My Quotable Kid
One of the things I am most thankful that my mother-in-law did in recording my husband's childhood was recording all of the funny things he said when he was younger. All of my in-law siblings have these amazing scrapbooks full of their own quotes and whenever we look through them we spend time laughing and snickering at what everyone said. It's so hilarious spending time with your spouse when their logic was still in development stages! So, when I saw that Chronicles Books offered My Quotable Kid: A Parents' Journal of Unforgettable Quotes I knew I had to have a copy for our family! I do like to scrapbook, and I copy down statements that I want to save and remember to include. However, I don't always ...
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Jennifer Donovan
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