The Wicked Tree by Kristin Thorsness

Genre: Middle Grade, Mystery, Horror

Source: I won a copy from LibraryThing. The opinions expressed here are my own

Tav and his mom have moved back to her old home estate due to finances. Four years before, Tav's father died in a fire and Tav feels responsible. When they move back to the old family estate he decides his great-grandmother is not very likable and his cousin Millie is nuts. She keeps talking about an old book and the woods. Mrs. Green the housekeeper and her daughter Harper also lives in the estate. She has forbidden her daughter from going into the woods.  Tav's mother thinks it is okay for Tav to go into the woods. Tav begins having dreams about an old tree, then he sees a boy in one of the cabins he discovered in the woods. Harper is drug into the mystery because she wants to help Edward, the boy whose picture is in the photo album Millie showed him. Somehow this kid has been on the property for over a hundred years. 

This story is full of creepy mystery with an undercurrent of Tav wanting to do the right thing, the brave thing to hopefully find forgiveness. It would be so easy to get excited and write spoilers so I will stop here and just say that you really need to read this book. 

The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems by Paul B. Janeczko

Genre: Children's Poetry Book

Source: Purchased

        Paul B. Janeczko has collected a group of poems that are cute and in some cases just fun. One of my favorite poems came near the end of the book. It is called How to Catch a Poem by Irene Latham. One of the biggest complaints I hear each year when I tell students we are going to write poetry is, "I don't know how to write a poem".  This year when I did my unit I asked students to sit outside or near a window and observe and make a list of things to write about. It was funny because when they submitted poems they often said it just came to them.  Irene's poem will definitely be read to them before we start the unit this next year.

        Another poem I enjoyed was one that taught me something. I can never remember which camel has one hump and which has two. J. Patrick Lewis took the guessing out by giving us a visual with just two letters. If you turn a D and a B on it's back you have the first letter and the number of humps for each type of camel a dromedary has one hump and a Bactrian has two.  I love it when visuals help me remember something.

        Finally, there were the poems that took me back to my childhood. I grew up in the country in Indiana. Playin' Jacks by Anna E. Jordan took me back to a time when my sisters and I  would sit on the kitchen floor playing jacks. The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson reminded me of the swing my father put up for us attached to one of the largest branches. It brought back memories of trying to swing so high we could touch the leaves. How to Bird-Watch by Margarita Engle took me back to sitting or laying on a blanket in the yard watching the birds in the tree. I sit in my yard swing now and still do that. Irene Latham's How to Be a Tree in Winter was such a visual I could see the bare branches reaching for the sky. Ralph Fletcher wrote How to Make a Snow Angel. My sisters and I would wait each year for the snow to be deep enough to make snow angels. I remember doing this at school as well when we went outside for recess.  Helen Frost, who has been a favorite author of mine for several years wrote Best Friends which brought back memories of calling across the field to our cousins who lived down the road from us. I felt as if someone had followed me through my childhood and taken pictures of my life and written about them in this book.  

        I want to have my students sit with their eyes closed as I read these poems. I don't want them to analyze these poems because to me that ruins them. I want them to tell me what pictures popped into their head. Could they see themselves in any of them? So many teachers of middle and high school students find it strange that I will use picture books in my classroom. Why not? Simple books like this are both simple and complex at the same time. I am proud to put this book on my shelf this next year. I am proud to share these with my students. I hope you will pick up a copy and share it with your children or grandchildren and teach them how to enjoy poetry.

Chronicles of a Nuclear World First Post-Apocalyptic Journal: “ Under the Ground” by Radislav Borr

This book will be available July 12^th.

Genre: Young Adult, Adult, Science Fiction

Source: I received a copy from Booksprout to facilitate my review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

I really enjoyed this book.  In the beginning, I felt it started a little slow. The more I read the longer I read. I sat up until three in the morning finishing this book. A book has to be extremely good for me to stay up that late.  This book is written as the journal of Robert Williams a fourteen-year-old when World War III started.

Robert Williams was one of the lucky ones or was he. When World War III became imminent he and his mom were flown to an underground bunker. Why were they one of the lucky ones?  His father’s position in the Department of Defense gave them a spot in the bunker.   His grandfather on his dad’s side is in a leadership position as well. From the very beginning, we see what led up to WWIII and what life might be like is you were lucky enough to be one of the chosen to survive in a bunker. But this book did something that most dystopian, futuristic books have never done. Instead of focusing on the survivors on the outside, it focused on the survivors on the inside. We get a look through Robert’s eyes of what life like that would possibly be like. I honestly believe that this is probably the most realistic outlook of what that life could be like.

Our main character grows up and becomes a man in this book. He sees his mentor in charge of the library die. What he learned from that man is what turned him into the person he became. There is so much I could say about this book, but this is one that I want to not give away any plot points. Think about what you think life would be like living in a bunker underground. Then read this book and get a new perspective, a fresh look. How do you think you would stack up to all of it?  I will definitely shout the praises of this book to everyone I know.

Author bio: I am a Ukrainian citizen who served as an airborne trooper and in the Security Service of Ukraine. For more than five years, I have been a digital artist in the field of video games development. I write under the pen name Radislav Borr.