Monday Reading Recap - Love these Books!

          

    Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they and others have been reading! Your TBR lists will grow!

     For those of you celebrating, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving! We have some snow coming to Denver, but a lot in the mountains, moving in from that big California storm! If you're traveling, hope all goes well for you! 

              Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin's collaboration for this new book about the time in Bletchley Park gives a new personal perspective of this quite secret place formed to combat Hitler's march to capture Europe! I write "personal" because they have introduced imagined characters, a brother, Jakob, and sister, Lizzie, and new friends who happen to already live in that area or who work there. There's also a host of essential characters in charge whom we have known from history, like Alan Turing and Dilly Knox. Jakob, a whiz at math, is already working in secret to break the codes. Lizzie, 14, is on her way to escape to America, ordered there by a wealthy grandmother. She manages a swift escape in order to stay, much to the outrage of her grandmother. 

            This family has an American mother, Willa, working at the American embassy, who's last known to be in Poland, but many believe she's been killed. Others suspect she has betrayed the British and become the enemy. Lizzie keeps faithfully denying, ever pursuing the truth. In alternating chapters, the events of Jakob's and Lizzie's lives are told as month by month, the Germans get closer, and stories of some unravel, both sad and wonderful to discover. Occasionally, there are photos included of the Enigma machines, newspaper headlines, war pictures. It's a book of a time kept secret, some finally allowed to share decades later, and some who never told. Let Sepetys and Sheinkin take you time-traveling eighty-five years to Great Britain preparing for war. You'll be fascinated by their story! 

        For everyone who has adored the intriguing humor of the books by Edward Gorey, here is a picture book highlighting this man who entertained readers and playgoers throughout his life. Matthew Burgess shares, at the book's beginning (of Gorey's early years), when toddler Gorey saw a train and created his first art, "a sausage train," which his mother kept. Readers learn of Gorey teaching himself to read at three and a half, eventually reading Dracula before he was six! Later in life, he designed the sets for the Broadway play Dracula! He led a singular life, eventually retiring to an old home on Cape Cod. It's a fascinating book about him, brought to us in dynamic, intriguing illustrations by Marc Majewski! 

    When I looked, this evidently was created from a Webcomic, and its spooky tale from Blackwater, Maine, full of high school teen troubles, kept me wondering, "Oh no! What horrors could be next?" Two boys keep it all going, along with a goth girl, a ghost fisherman, and creepy changes page by page shown so wonderfully. I wasn't sure if they were real or a sad reflection of teenage emotions crying out for a lot of help. It's an all-inclusive tale that feels very real, pulls at one's heart for these young ones who need a lot of understanding and help. 

          With the dryest of humor and the most intriguing and inventive illustrations, Alex London and Paul O. Zelensky have created a book for quiet viewing while smiling a lot and then laughing out loud! Most of us readers know what a still life is, however, discovering also what it is not, what it does not do, lies in the hilarity of their new book. Remember, when a candle is placed into a still life, "The candle does not flicker, glow, or drip." There is more, and I would love to read this aloud! Be sure to find this book!

Currently Reading:  I did finish Anne Nesbet's The Long Way Around and it is very good, but no time to write a review! I'm not sure what's next.