Wednesday, November 11, 2009

3 More Books for Cybils

Brushing Mom’s Hair – Andrea Cheng
Publisher: Wordsong
Pages: 59
Source: Review Copy from publisher


This is a simple yet beautiful book about the way a young girl deals with her mother’s breast cancer. It is written in a series of poems. Each poem expresses what is happening at that time with her mother or else with her own emotions. The reader can feel the emotions and the helplessness in the voice of them poems. She handles her worries by dancing and making pottery. Through these two creative outlets she can let out her frustrations and deal with not only the everyday things a girl of fifteen must deal with, but put into perspective her mom’s cancer. Wonderfully written with a great message.

Mudville – Kurtis Scaletta
Publisher Knopf
Pages: 267
Source: Library


Roy McGuire is like a lot of twelve year old boys, he loves baseball. Unlike a lot of twelve year olds he has to go to a neighboring town if he wants to play. It has rained every day in Moundville for twenty-two years straight. Some people think the town has a curse on it. Roy believes it all boils down to statistics. Roy goes away to baseball camp and when he returns he finds a foster kid living in his house. It had always been just he and his father. His mother was always jet setting around the world. Sturgis Nye has his own parental problems. He likes Roy’s dad. He always laughs at his jokes and seems to love his dad’s weird food concoctions. The one thing they have in common is baseball. Roy is a great catcher and Sturgis is a great pitcher. The day after Sturgis arrived the rain stopped. They go to the ball park to get it straightened up. They can play baseball now. Unfortunately the end of the rain means the end of Roy’s father’s business. His job was rainproofing houses. Things go along great until Sturgis decides to join the opposing team.

I will be the first to say that I don’t care a whole lot for baseball. I played it some as a child but have never been to a professional game. I probably would not have read this book had it not been on the Cybils list. I am so glad it was. This was a great book. It was full of baseball lore yet I didn’t feel like I was reading all about baseball. The plot was so much deeper. Part of this was a coming of age story. I think this is one I will definitely purchase for my shelves. I will recommend this to all of my students and will be checking out some of this authors other books.

Lucky Breaks – Susan Patron
Publisher: Atheneum Books
Pages: 176
Source: Library


Lucky Trimble believes that at age 11 she is so much more grown up. Her word for it is intrepid. This prompts her to do things she would not have done at age 10. She is surrounded by an eclectic group of kids. Lincoln is becoming known for his knot tying ability, and miles is a six year old genius. The lady who is Lucky’s guardian runs a French Restaurant. Then there is Lucky. If she just had a best girl friend everything would be alright. Enter Paloma. Lucky invites Paloma to spend the weekend with her. Her parents agree as long as Lucky acts responsibly. Lucky has all of the great plans and they start going wrong putting people in danger. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here about friendship and growing up. It wasn’t preachy about these topics in any way. This was a sequel to the book “The Higher Power of Lucky”. Since I had not read it I must now go out and find it and read it.

The opinions expressed in these review are mine alone and do not represent the views of the panel.

1 comment:

  1. These sound great! I'm not much into the MG's but I have several younger friends whom I will recommend these too. Nice reviews!

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