Today is the last day to shop at the Scholastic Book Fair. I want to thank all the moms who volunteered their time to support this event which in turn supports the library. Extra special thanks to Saskia Choudry for taking on chairperson duties again this year. Saskia, you are a rock star! Here is a picture of what the library looked like before the Book Fair came in and also a picture of the Book Fair.
The library will open again next week with lots of new books to check out before the break.
In other news, I have finished three audio books this week and a pair of socks. However, I have not done any holiday shopping or any other kind of preparations for the coming holiday, but that's none of your concern. You want to see the socks, right? I named this project A Study in Emerald, after a short story by Neil Gaiman.
Getting back to the books, the first audio book I finished was
Crispin: At the Edge of the World by Avi. This is the sequel to
Crispin: The Cross of Lead which I listened during the summer. Crispin: A the Edge of the World felt like a bridge book to me. A third book in this series was released this year,
Crisin: The End of Time, which I will be listening to soon, and Edge felt like it had no other purpose but to get the reader from the first book to the second book. It picks up right where Cross of Lead leaves off and follows Crispin and Bear as they flee from their pursuers. Along the way, they meet a young outcast girl and she joins them as the attempt to leave the country. The story is well written and the characters are strong and empathetic but the story felt a little pointless, except as a lead-up to the next one.
The next book I listened to was
Swindle by Gordon Korman. This is the story of boy who finds a valuable baseball card and, not knowing the value of what he had, he sells it to a shifty dealer who tells him it is a reproduction and not authentic. When the boy discovers the true value of the card and realizes he's been taken advantage of, he and his friends plan a heist to reclaim his treasure. The story is amusing but the ending was not very believable. The kids break into a man's home and cause all sorts of damage and they receive no consequences for these actions when they are eventually caught, which left me feeling a little unsatisfied.
This brings me to the final audiobook,
The Revenge of the Shadow King by Derek Benz and J. S. Lewis. This is book one in the Grey Griffin series. The story centers around a group of friends who have bonded over a card came called Round Table, a Dungeons and Dragons style game with battling fairie creatures, wizards, witches, and other magical beings. As it turns out, the creatures depicted on the cards are real and have torn a hole in the barrier between Fairie and the real world in search of magical jewel that has the power to destroy the real world. Of course, the kids have to figure out how to stop the fairie creatures from finding the jewel and save the world. This was an enjoyable adventure, and even though it's the first in a series, it reads just fine as a stand alone title.
Now, you may have noticed, as I have, that the second story, which was realistic fiction, I said had an unbelievable ending while the third story, which was very much fantasy, I did not say was unbelievable, even though a small band of 10 year olds save the world. I have been thinking about this and will share my ponderings in my next post.
I just finished listening to Airman by Eoin (pronounced like Owen) Colfer. Wow! What a fantastic adventure! This book has everything! A murderous villain, a wrongful imprisonment, a daring escape, swordfights, betrayal, flying machines, and the rescue of a princess. The story takes place in the late 1800's on the Saltee Islands off the coast of Ireland. Fourteen-year-old Conor Broekhart witnesses the treasonous murder of the King of the islands and is framed for the crime. He is thrown into prison and forced to mine diamonds by the very traitor responsible for the King's murder. But Conor has the mind of a scientist and he spends his days planning a bold escape. When he finally does escape three years later, he realizes that he must confront his nemesis before he kills again. I must say, the villain in this story is one of the most dastardly villains I have come across in literature lately. He is wicked to the core, and at the end, we have to wonder if this is the last we will see of him. If you enjoy stories like The Princess Bride or The Count of Monte Cristo, I think you will enjoy this book. It's really more of a young adult title but I think a mature, well-read 5th grader would be fine with it. This one is definitely going on my favorites list.
This is one of the things I was knitting while listening to Airman. It was kind of a long book so I knitted another thing but that has to stay secret for a bit longer.
Not long ago, I wrote about the book Swindle but it turns out, this book has another tale to tell. I make it a practice to listen to or read books that can be found in the Marshall Lane Library so when I write about them here, you know you can check it out there. Well, I realized while listening to Swindle that Marshall Lane's copy of the book was actually missing and I was going to have to buy a replacement for it. But I received a little surprise in the mail yesterday. Somehow, this book had traveled across the United States and had been turned in to a library in Buffalo, New York! Well, very kindly, the librarians in Buffalo were able to track down our address (due to 'Marshall Lane' and 'Campbell Union School District' being stamped on the inside of the book) and they mailed the book back to me. This made me very happy - and very curious as to how this book got all the way to New York! I wrote a nice thank you note to the Buffalo librarians and will pop that in the mail tomorrow. So there is the story of Swindle and the story of Swindle: There and Back Again. If only the book could talk!
