As usual, Vivian Vande Velde has given me something that I have found charming and entertaining. Cloaked in Red contains eight different re-tellings of Little Red Riding Hood, all of them entertaining. In this book you can see the story from the perspective of Little Red, the grandmother, the wol...
Emily causes quite a mess, lucky for her her sister is on her side. There are real consequences in this book, sure there was a hopeful note, but what happened doesn't get swept away nor was saving Emily as easy as finding out why she needs to be saved in the first place. All in all a soothing rea...
This is one of our Sunshine State young reader books and I kept shoving it to the bottom of the pile because I thought it looked so dorky but boy was I wrong. The title describes the plot exactly. A squirrel gets chased into a school by a dog and he seeks refuge in every classroom, where there ...
I picked up this book as I was reading through this year's Beverly Cleary Children's Choice Award Nominees. This one was a really quick read. I especially liked how each chapter was told by the point of view of a different class pet or animal. This would be a great read-aloud for a 1st-3rd gra...
These versions of familiar fairy tales are quite enjoyable. Well, the Hansel and Gretel one was disturbing, but most of them have endings I prefer to those of the original, particularly 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' which is funny. These are the story titles:'Straw Into Gold'***'Frog'****'All Point...
What I liked about this book was the idea that you could build an entire story just to make a statement. I suppose that's all anyone ever does when they write, but it was obviously done. Before you even begin the story, there is the page that is made to look like a gift certificate, which sets th...
When Ted's five-year-old sister Vicki invents an imaginary friend, no one is too concerned...until they realize that her friend can move things. Ted is sure that Vicki's "friend" Marella is a ghost. But why would a ghost haunt Vicki? And why does Marella seem to be terrified of another ghost-a da...
I don't love vampire books, for the most part. The ones that I've read tend to be a little mindless, full of hot, leather-clad vampires and the humans who happily get sucked into their glamorous world of the night.And that's why Companions of the Night is my favorite vampire book. It takes the ty...
I finished "The Book of Mordred" by Vivian Valde and now I have all these conflicting feelings. If I should give it a vote I would give it 4/5 or 3.8/5 just for the ending because even if I liked most of it I didn't like the very ending.And now, spoilers.(view spoiler)[I started this book knowing...
Magic Can Be Murder ReviewtWhen thinking of magic and witches the stereotypical mean, warted, big nosed, long haired, ugly, heartless witch comes to mind. This witch usually has a broom, spell book, and a big spell pot. However, in the book Magic Can Be Murder, by Vivian Vande Velde, I liked how ...
Lisette Beaucaire was angry when her parents sent her away from Paris that September day in 1940. And although she knew that with the Nazis occupying the city she'd be safer at her Aunt Josephine's farm in the Dordogne valley, Lisette resented her "exile." She'd miss her friends and the excitemen...
The wizard has big summer plans: to garden, to fish, and to nap. The only thing better would be if he had someone nice to share the days with. But the only people who show up want him to rescue yet another princess, lift the usual vile curse, confront a fearsome ghost, deal with a pack of magical...
A boy is trapped in a possessed car that has stalled in the path of an oncoming train. A girl is dragged into a crypt during a field trip to an eighteenth-century cemetery. A group of friends meet their fate after an unsettling visit with a backwoods psychic. And that's just the beginning. Celebr...
Fifteen-year-old Raquel Falcone is, as one of her classmates puts it, the kind of kid who has a tendency to be invisible. That is until the night she's hit by a car and killed while walking home from the movies. In brief, moving chapters, we hear about Raquel from her classmates, her best frie...
You probably already know the story of Rumpelstiltskin. Just in case you don't quite remember it, here are the details: A poor miller tells the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. But she can't. The king then brings the daughter to the castle to spin some straw into gold. She is very...
Oh book, why you make me so torn?I first heard about Dragon’s Bait through this piece on Entertainment Weekly about unmissable teen reads. And because it was an older title and because the Publishers Weekly review (which I sought after I read the EW article) said it is a “thoughtful mainstream fa...
3.5 starsI recently found out that one of my childhood favorites, Heir Apparent, had a prequel of sorts written about a decade prior. User Unfriendly was in no way at the same level as Heir Apparent-it was a mere shade. This book had your typical medieval game adventure story with a distant outsi...
Selwyn, seorang pemuda tujuh belas tahun, baru saja putus dari kekasihnya. Anora, nama sang mantan kekasih, lebih memilik Farold yang lebih kaya. Selwyn baru saja meratapi nasib malangnya akibat dicampakkan sang mantan kekasih dan dipermalukan Farold, ketika warga Penryth menuduhnya telah membunu...
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Smart Dog by Vivian Vande Velde. I grabbed it on a whim, because we needed another read aloud book for my 4 and 5 year old boys. As it turned out, they were hooked along with me, my husband, and my 9-year-old daughter. My boys have a problem wit...
Old Friends Three good deeds... If his parents were not going to pay attention and be helpful, Howard would just have to do as the old witch wanted. It can't be that hard, he reassured himself. He had stumbled into doing the first good deed almost right away. If the old witch was going to count s...
Zoe’s ponytail elastic is once again holding her hair. She is embarrassed for herself—and furious with herself—that she wanted to look nice for Daniel. She has never felt so betrayed. Not when her mother would hit her. Not when her father would pretend he didn’t notice. Not when her friends and h...
Brian turned on the overhead light and glanced again at the directions to Kyla Zolla's house. "She might have just said, Drive till you get to East Nowhere," he grumbled to himself, "then keep on driving till you run out of gas or fall off the edge of the earth, whichever comes second." If he had...
These webbed feet are quite handy, she thought. And then wondered if feet could be handy. A few hundred jumps and three gnats and a fly farther on, she reached the stream that would widen into a pond when it got near the mill. Well, she reminded herself, I AM a frog. That part was obvious. I am a...
Therefore, one of my duties as guest of honor at the dog’s house is to see that everyone is comfortable. I do not believe the smaller boy could be comfortable when he is Outside with body covering that is meant for Inside. I get out of my nest, which at this moment I am positive must be the warme...
The young sorcerer gathered a pile of books and papers off the table and put them on a nearby chair. Then, realizing that he had now filled the only available chair in the house, he picked them back up and looked around helplessly before adding them to an already tilting stack of boxes on the flo...
Personally, I wouldn't consider any of us particularly reliable. Since Kevin was a boy, and since he was born five years before I was, we had few common interests. That meant we didn't consider each other competition, and that, for the most part, kept us from finding it useful or especially grati...
School Bus Madness "Earth to Wendy," Nancy Jean said. "Earth calling Wendy." I turned from gawking at Julian York and saw that my friends had all been watching me watch him. Shelley told the others, "Wendy has developed a sudden fascination with Julian." "No, I haven't," I protested. I didn't wan...
Oliver shook his head, with his best don't-ask-me-you're-in-charge look. "I'll do whatever you want me to do," he said. She had no answer for him either. They rounded a corner and saw Leonard standing on the lawn, facing the castle. And singing. He had accompaniment: bored-looking servants playin...