Monday Reading Pleasures

           On Mondays, we are lucky to link up to share books we've read that are for children and teens with Jen at TeachMentorTexts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders. Others link to share adult books with Sheila at Book Journeys who started the meme a long time ago. It's great to read about so many good books available, new and old! Come visit, and tweet at #IMWAYR. Thanks to Jen, Kellee, and Ricki for hosting!

See the buttons on the right for Myra Garces-Bacsal's Gathering Books Award Winning Book Challenge and the MustReadIn2015 challenge hosted by Carrie Gelson at There's A Book for That. You can read my "must read" list above. The following book meets the criteria for both these lists.

      It's been a long time since I read nearly all one day. I guess one reason is that I'm on vacation. And the second one is that All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a wonder of a book. It also won the Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. First of all, I loved the adult complexity of the book, the way that Doerr wove his story back and forth among characters and back and forth in time. The story is set before, during and after World War II, includes several interesting characters, but the main ones are Werner, a gifted young orphan who is German, and who gets the chance to go to a special school for preparing boys for war (unheard of for his background) and a young girl, blind, living with her father who works at the Natural History Museum in Paris. The characters, the details in their lives, and the events surrounding them built with such tension, continually parallel and intertwine. I sometimes had to stop and wonder what I would do in such a time, or I would stop to re-read a passage to be sure I hadn't missed anything or to appreciate the beautiful language. The parts included that touch on light in hundreds of ways are magical. Here are a few examples of sentences I marked. Concerning peaches after an arduous escape from Paris: "Seconds later, she's eating wedges of wet sunlight."  When a soldier enters a room of children in an orphanage: "His handgun is black; it seems to draw all the light in the room toward it." Upon a first experience at the ocean: "At least, out on the beaches, her privation and fear are rinsed away by wind and color and light." When one of the main characters is asking questions of life: "Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?" I marked many more. This may not be the book for you, but it certainly pleased me.

The Night World - written and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein            What a magical book this is, and how clever are the illustrations. Along with the spare words, the pictures too, but slowly, bring hints of what all the animals are saying: “Here it comes!” “it’s on its way!” and finally, “Good night.” or “Good morning.” A young boy says goodnight to his cat Sylvia at the beginning, with twilight showing some color out the window. Soon, all the scenes are blacks and shades of grey, the colorless world of the night. Yet, if watched carefully, one notices the sky’s changes, darker, lighter, lighter grey.  The night, however full of animals prowling and shadows wavering is changing. It’s a visual delight, will bring so many questions from those who get to read it, or have it read to them.

The Princess and the Pea - written and illustrated by Rachel Isadora

              It is wonderful to read and see another book by Rachel Isadora. The story is what you’ve known, a young prince wants to marry a real princess, yet finds it hard to tell which one he meets is real. In this story, the mother helps by making a test with twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds with the pea under all that. One princess passes the test; she was the one! This well-known story is set in Africa this time, with a few African words thrown in, in addition to Isadora’s collage illustrations reflecting that colorful continent beautifully.

My Heart Will Not Sit Down by Mara Rockliff and illustrated by AnnTanksley is a book to add to the books about giving to others. This story is based on an African village (always poor) that sends $3.77 to America to help those who were hungry during the Great Depression. There is extensive back matter to the story, adding even more examples of those who have little still sharing what they can. It reminds me of the book 14 Cows for America. This time, a young girl's teacher in a school in Cameroon, a missionary from America, tells the class about the hardships happening during the Depression, and Kedi goes all over the village telling about this, and asking for money. Very little money is available to anyone in that village. They are poor, themselves, yet still must scrape enough coins to pay head taxes (during colonial times). Kedi is sad, says her "heart will not sit down", a Bulu saying from an ethnic tribe in Cameroon. Those from her village did not let her heart stay that way! The pages are filled with vibrant, colorful illustrations.

Next: A Handful of Stars by Cynthia Lord, will try for Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley for the coming twitter chat, and a pile of picture books, PLUS still reading for #CyberPD. I also have what sounds like a terrific new dystopian novel from Net Galley. It sounds great! Happy Reading Everyone!