VVMBookBlog

Ready to read a romance with a little bit more?  Monsoon Summer tells us about 15-year-old Jasmine who has so much going for her.  She is tall, strong and athletic and a star of her track team.  She has a great family, including her bug-loving younger brother.  And she and her best friend Steve have a successful business selling souvenir photo-postcards on the Berkeley campus.  But, she also has a secret crush on her life-long best friend Steve and doesn’t recognize her value to him or to any other part of her life.  And now she’s going to India for the summer!

Why India?  Jazz’s mother was living in an orphanage in India when she was adopted by an American couple.  Now as an adult she has acquired a grant that allows her to go back to set up a clinic at the orphanage for other poor, pregnant women to help ensure more healthy babies.  Jazz and her family will all go to India for the summer to support her mother and her project.

Their family has always observed customs from India, including foods from India and learning to speak Hindi.  Jazz still had trouble taking in the poverty and crowded conditions in India.  And, because it was during the summer months for Jazz, that meant it was monsoon season in India and raining all the time.

Read Monsoon Summer to see how Jazz figures out how she fits into this summer of giving by her family, how she works out her relationship with Steve from thousands of miles away, and learns how to see herself with new eyes.

Bert and Will are the twin sons of the baron of Ambercrest, born many years after the events surrounding the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs story.  The two boys get into trouble often, usually because of Bert who is the braver and more mischievous of the twins.  When their antics become too much for their father, the baron, he decides to separate them for the summer and send Will off to his Uncle Hugh at The Crags, a more rustic castle in the north.

Bert knows this move will be hard on the more timid Will, so the two boys switch identities and Bert soon finds himself exploring the mysteries of The Crags, leaving Will back at home.  One of these mysteries is a secret passage leading from his room to an enchanted mirror (remember Snow White?) that is ready to satisfy all his wishes.  Or is it?

Read The Mirror’s Tale, a 2008 Maud Hart Lovelace book, to find out the story about this magical mirror and what happened to the Seven Dwarfs, called Dwergh in this story, in the years after Snow White is rescued.

Here’s another book from the 2008 Maud Hart Lovelace list and what a great story!

Scott is nervous about going into high school as a freshman.  He and his friends have the usual problems with upperclassmen on those first few days of school.  But even as Scott is adjusting to high school, his world takes on a new dimension when his parents tell him that his mother is having a baby in the spring!  He’s kind of used to being the younger brother and the youngest kid, so what will this new creature do to his comfortable world?

Well, the combination of his school experiences and his still-embryonic sibling causes him to begin writing a survival manual for high school…and many other aspects of life.  In fact, his writing skills lead him to joining the school newspaper, and other school activities in his quest to get the attention of Julia, who suddenly turned beautiful over the summer!  Whatever he does in school has surprising results and usually no one is more surprised than Scott himself.

Very funny, very entertaining!  Lots of life lessons from Scott’s survival manual and journal (NOT a diary), but really funny and reader-friendly!

First of all, here are the Division II (grades 6-8) winners from the 2007 Maud Hart Lovelace list from the whole state of Minnesota:

1st place
Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick

2nd place
Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech

3rd place
Last Dog on Earth by Daniel Ehrenhaft

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now here below is the new list for 2008. Lots of good ones here! Start now and be ready to talk about them when school starts.

Mirror’s Tale by P. W. Catanese

Flush by Carl Hiaasen

Jackie’s Wild Seattle by Will Hobbs

* Soldier Boys by Dean Hughes

Day of Tears by Julius Lester

Gossamer by Lois Lowry

Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar

Heat by Mike Lupica

Shackleton’s Stowaway by Victoria McKernan

Monsoon Summer by Mitali Perkins

Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

* So B. It by Sarah Weeks

[*Titles for mature readers]

I know, what took me so long?? I should have read this LONG ago. But, I didn’t and now I did and I can see why lots of students like it…and all the books that come after it. And, it’s one of the 12 books on the new 2008 Maud Hart Lovelace list!

Percy Jackson (Perseus?) is in 6th grade and has always had trouble in school. He’s dyslexic and has ADHD, and his behavior problems have caused him to be bounced around 6 different schools in 6 years. But then something happens on a field trip to an art museum in New York City. An incident there leads to him being expelled and ultimately finding out that some of his teachers weren’t human at all but other-worldly beings that, up to now, he only knew as mythological beings.

It’s finally at Half Blood Camp, after escaping the minotaur in a battle that might mean the end of his beloved mother, that Percy learns who he really is, who his father is, and gets the details of his upcoming quest. The quest is to do something that will save the world, except he and his 2 friends, have to accomplish this task by the summer solstice, June 21st, which is in 10 days time. Now get ready for a wild ride!

This is a great story because it’s funny, contains lots of social comment if the reader is paying attention, and is entertaining. Maybe it’s even better because it really makes mythology come alive…literally! As different mythological beings were mentioned in the story, I was wishing I knew or remembered more about them. Classic Greek poet Homer wrote two epic poems, The Odyssey and The Iliad, that were mentioned in the course of the story. The reading challenge would be greater but it might be fun to find the same Lightning Thief characters in a work done in 8th century BC.