Non-fiction book review - National Parks of the USA

National Parks of the U.S.A. by Kate Sider

I'd wager most of us can't name more than one or two national parks. This book is a nice introduction to a few of those parks. It's a curious selection, some well known some more obscure. The selected parks get a short overview, a brief description and a few animals, plants, and natural features one might see at the park. Parks are organized by region, allowing the reader to see the spread across the country, which may lead the curious to look into how each park was founded.

More information: National Parks of the U.S.A. releases July 3.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Book review - Kid Normal

Title: Kid Normal
Author: Greg James and Chris Smith
Genre: sci-fi
Similar books: School for Sidekicks by Kelly McCullough
                      Earthling by Mark Fearing
Rating:

superhero fun

Summary (provided by publisher): When Murph Cooper begins his new school several weeks into the year, he can't help but feel a bit out of his depth. And it's not because he's worried about where to sit, making friends, and fitting in. It's because his mom has accidentally enrolled him at a school for superheroes. And unlike his fellow students, who can control the weather or fly or conjure tiny horses from thin air, Murph has no special abilities whatsoever.
But Murph's totally normal abilities might just be what the world needs. Because not far away is a great big bad guy who is half man and half wasp, and his mind is abuzz with evil plans . . . and when he comes after the best and the brightest, it's up to Murph to be the real hero.
With black-and-white illustrations throughout, this laugh-out-loud story proves that heroes come in all shapes and sizes.

My opinion: Exploring the realities of being a non-powered kid in a world of superheroes isn't an unheard of concept in kid's fiction. As is the idea of having limited or strange powers. Authors ask us to consider if having super powers automatically makes you better than others. James approaches the subject with a fair dose of humor, making this quite reeadable in spite of being ultimately predictable.

More information: Kid Normal releases June 19th.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley.

Note cards

A few weeks ago I shared an image of some cards I'd drawn for a craft fair. Here's most of the rest of the cards I designed, with varying degrees of detail and quality of image.

That racoon looked really horrible in early stages but came together surprisingly well in the end

 

Books on Screen

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

I wasn't sure at first that this book would work as a movie, for a couple of reasons. 1) The book is largely focused on Jess's internal journey. It's a story of recognizing possibility, of embracing your creativity in a world that demands you become more practical. 2) It's a little dated. While the central barrier to Jess's dreams is poverty, we also see some political issues. There's mild racism and sexism, radical politics. In modernizing the story for the movie, they had to modernize Leslie's differences. She's more quirky than enlightened. The bigger difference is the portrayal of Terabithia. In the novel, we're mostly just told that Jess and Leslie imagine an involved world out in the woods. The movie presents us with several scenes in which this imagined world is almost real, to the point that it borders on delusion. Over all, the tweaks that modernize the story work well and make the movie accessible while remaining true to the intent of the original story.

Non fiction book review - Grandad Mandela

Grandad Mandela by Zazi, Ziwelene, and Zindzi Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of those figures I grew up hearing about but I never really knew much about him, just that he was imprisoned for protesting apartheid. So I learned a lot from this book about his career. It might have been nice to see the book explain more about apartheid, especially regarding the role of colonialism, but a picture book has inherent limitations. What this becomes, then, is a great way to start a conversation about racism and justice with young readers.

More information: Grandad Mandela releases June 28.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley.

Book review - Wild Blues

Title: Wild Blues
Author: Beth Kephart
Genre: realistic fiction
Similar books: Chasing Helicity by Ginger Zee
                      The Girl in the Well is Me by Karen Rivers
Rating:

not exactly thrilling

Summary (provided by publisher): Thirteen-year-old Lizzie’s favorite place in the world is her uncle’s cabin. Uncle Davy’s renovated schoolhouse cabin, filled with antiques and on the edge of the Adirondacks, disconnected from the rest of the world, is like something out of a fairy tale. And an escape from reality is exactly what Lizzie needs. Life hasn’t been easy for Lizzie lately. Her father abandoned their family, leaving Lizzie with her oftentimes irresponsible mother. Now, her mom has cancer and being unable to care for Lizzie during her chemotherapy, Mom asks her where she’d like to spend the summer. The answer is simple: Uncle Davy’s cabin.
Lizzie loves her uncle’s home for many reasons, but the main one is Matias, Uncle Davy’s neighbor and Lizzie’s best friend. Matias has proportionate dwarfism, but that doesn’t stop him and Lizzie from wandering in the woods. Every day they go to their favorite nook where Matias paints with watercolors and Lizzie writes. Until one day when Matias never arrives.
When news breaks about two escaped convicts from the nearby prison, Lizzie fears the worst. And when Uncle Davy goes missing, too, Lizzie knows she’s the only one who knows this area of woods well enough to save them. Armed with her trusted Keppy survival book, Lizzie sets out into the wilds of the Adirondacks, proving just how far she’ll go to save the people she loves.

My opinion: This is not a traditional narrative. It's presented as the protagonist relaying a tale to some, initially unidentified, listener. Thus, she of ten speaks to the listener directly, telling the facts of events rather than putting the reader in the moment. The story unravels slowly, through somewhat dispassionately, and not in chronological order. We have escaped convicts and a child lost in the woods. It could be pulse pounding but instead its sort of quiet and contemplative.

Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley

Travel games

A while back a friend offered me a supply of empty Altoid tins. I knew they would be useful but never had a plan for them. Until this most recent craft fair when I turned them into some travel games.