Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard and Most Loved in All the World by Tonya Cherie Hegamin

 from goodreads

5 stars

My four year old brought this book home from her school library. There were many moments when I thought this is exactly how I would react!

Synopsis

It follows the life of a blue bird who woke up on the wrong side of the nest. As he walks through the day, for he is too grumpy to fly, he meets other animals that help him find his happy back.

My Thoughts

I thought this was a very clever book. It shows that you can be grumpy in a non-destructive way. It also shows that when you encounter someone who is grumpy to the extreme you can still be pleasant and not add to the grumpiness. What is so great about this book is it helps us learn about ourselves and how we react to things and teaches our children how to navigate emotions. 

Because of the repetitiveness of the book, my four year old was shortly reading this to me! It was nice to be able to foster her reading and storytelling confidence.

This is a fun read that child and parent enjoy and will be laughing at together.

from goodreads

3.5 stars

This book is beautifully illustrated by Cozbi A. Cabrera.

Synopsis

This is a beautiful book of a mother, who is a slave, and her daughter. The mother creates a quilt with each square representing something. In the end the mother sends her daughter, along with the quilt, with people belonging to the underground railway. It is a book about love and sacrifice. 

My Thoughts

This is a book that shows the difficult choices that many faced during this hard and sad time of history. Families were broken apart. Children sent with others in the hopes that their future would be brighter. It is heart wrenching.

I liked how this book allowed us to bring up the topic of slavery and race relations. I was able to explain to my children what it meant for someone to be whipped and why freedom was so important. For my children it is hard to for them to fathom a person owning another person. They are so blessed. This book helped them understand kindness and empathy towards others.

The illustrations in this book are beautiful. Many pictures use textiles so we can actually see the quilt the mother is diligently making. The other pictures, while beautiful, are somewhat abstract from a child's standpoint so a child may not enjoy them as much as an adult.

The flow of the book was, at times, awkward. Some of the words more in a southern type voice while others were not. It may have helped to have it all one way or the other.

On the whole it was a great book and a great conversation starter.

The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

from goodreads

2.5 stars

This is the first book of a trilogy. It has been translated from French. It has interesting ideas but on the whole this was not one of my favourite reads.

Synopsis

This book is set up in three parts. Part one is set in 1896. It follows a man named Andrew Harrington, a young man about to commit suicide on the eight year anniversary of the murder of his true love, a prostitute in Whitechapel in London, who was killed by Jack the Ripper. He is stopped and, with the help of author H.G. Wells, is given a chance to perhaps change the future.

Part two follows a young woman named Claire Haggerty. She comes from the upper class and hates the time she lives in. She has dreams and ambitions that she is not allowed to follow as her role is to marry well and produce children. When her friend invites her on the second excursion of Gilliam Murray's voyage to the year 2000 she is determined to stay in the future. There she meets Captain Derek Shackleton, the man who saves mankind from automatons . Wells makes an appearance in this part as well. (I would say more about his role but it would give things away.)

Part three begins with a run strange murders happening in London. Three bodies have shown up with giant holes burned through their chests. There is no weapon of the time that would inflict such a wound. At each body there is a passage from books that have not been published yet. Wells tries to figure out how to keep his work, and that of his contemporaries, in the annals of history.

This book is definitely time travel with a twist.

My Thoughts
I thought that this book was going to be great and was really excited to read it and figure out how they were going to put the pieces that are found on the book cover synopsis together. However, I found the book cover synopsis a bit misleading.

I found that this book was really hard to get into. It was kind of slow and I wanted to tell the Andrew character to get a life and some gumption. It was so melodramatic. Some holes were poked into the story. Marie (the Whitechapel prostitute) had a husband, then all of the sudden he wasn't around. The book picked up once H.G. Wells came into the picture. So I kept reading and was excited for the second part, but it went back to a dull story. Readable but dull.

I found that the flow of the parts was a bit off as well. The first two parts are somewhat similar in feel and fit nicely together. The third part was different and I felt as if it was tacked on.

There are some interesting questions that come up. Are there parallel universes? Is time really a fourth dimension in which we can move? Do we have free will or is everything destiny? But it was not well explained and on the whole the book did not hold my interest. It was very easy to put down and do something else instead of saying "just one more chapter".

So to sum up, sounded interesting but a let down.

The Grave Robber's Apprentice by Allan Stratton

from wpl website

5 stars

I love this book. This was the book that made me start thinking about doing a book review blog. I want everyone to know about this book. I loved it so much

Synopsis

This is a story about a boy who was washed ashore while a baby. A grave robber found the baby and adopted him to be his son, and to help him rob graves. At age thirteen the boy pairs up with a princess who is fleeing the evil archduke. Through this meeting the boy is flung into adventure and find out his true identity.

My thoughts

This book is the perfect blend of adventure, humour and romance. the pace is perfect. It keeps you engaged and not lost. You can perfectly picture what is going on. For me a sign of a good author/book is when I can see the action playing in my mind like a movie. This book does just that. I could see clearly what was happening, what the characters and locations looked like.

This book would be great for boys and girls. I know that is hard to find books these days that really get boys excited about reading. There is enough adventure and action happening that it would keep a boy's attention.

It is also so nice and refreshing to read an adventure book without having to worry about explicit scenes occurring. You could just get lost in the adventure and not have to read through, swearing, gore, and sexual intentions. Nice and clean.

Although the book is meant for kids 10 and up I think adults would love to read this book. It would be a great one to read together as a family.

A Conspiracy of Faith by Jussi Adler-Olsen

from goodreads

I don't know what it is about the summer but that is when I seem to read all my psychological thrillers. Maybe summer is the time to be more edgy and daring, or perhaps since my summer mainly means going to kid activities I need a bit of excitement in my life, so I live vicariously through these books.

4 stars

This summers line up of Nordic crime novels did not disappoint me. At the top was Adler-Olsen's third installment of his department Q series. This is a series I love and each book leaves me longing for the next one to come out. While some elements continue from one book to the next, such as the shooting that injured the protagonist Carl Morck and his partner, it is not necessary to read all the books leading up to this one. You will not feel completely lost, though you will want to read every book in this series. Have I said how much I really love this series?

Synopsis

The book starts with the discovery of a message in a bottle in Scotland. The message was sent 15 years earlier from Denmark. The message lands on Department Q's desk. As Morck and his team decode the message it puts them on the trail of a serial killer who selects his pray from various closed community religious sects. The killer's new victims have been chosen and it is up to Morck and his crew to find them before it is too late.

My thoughts

I think this is one of the best ones yet. Although the first book in the series, The Keeper of Lost Causes was pretty awesome too. Adler-Olsen is really good at getting inside the head of the killer and showing how methodical he is at covering his tracks. Though the killer uses a lot of schemes, they are simple and therefore believable.

I like how we get to really love the characters, especially Carl and his work mate Assad. You care what happens to them and want good things for them. I like how we get to see Carl's home life so we can relate and sympathize with him. Though, in this book there is less about his home life than in previous books. Carl can be a bit of a prickly person, yet we see that he does have a soft side and does care for those around him, no matter how much he might complain about them at other times.

This book moves along fairly well and you can't wait to find out how they figure it all out. I must a admit I skipped ahead sometimes because I was so impatient. I wanted to know right then.

The translation I think was well done. I think the translator was from Great Britain, or trained in British English. There were a lot of terms that we, in North America, don't use, such as bloke and chap. As well, in the book the first floor referred to the upstairs floor. In North America we would call that the second floor. But that did not distract from the story. It was just an interesting point.

I also like how this book could be used as a social commentary for the state of affairs in Denmark. I am not really up on any Danish politics, but the reaction that people have when they see Assad (who is from Syria) as well as the budget cuts and money concerns in the police make me think if I knew more about it I would probably thinking, man, that's a good dig.

So I hope you give this book a try and enjoy it as much as I did.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

from goodreads

3.5 stars

I just finished reading this book for one of my book clubs. This is a captivating book about the deportation and forced labour of Lithuanians in 1941 by the Soviet regime.

The Synopsis

This story follows a young woman named Lina. She is the daughter of a university professor. Her father was already taken from them. Lina, her mother and younger brother were taken from their homes and put into cattle cars and sent to labour camps in Siberia.

While in the camps Lina uses her incredible artistic talent to draw what she sees happening around them. She also creates secret messages, which she passes along to others, in the hopes that they will reach her father so, he can find out where they are and let him know they are still alive.

Lina discovers her will to live no matter the circumstances. She learns the power of love and kindness even amongst, hardship, abuse and despair. She learns that things are not always black and white but life often is amongst differing shades of gray.

My Thoughts

Even though  my degree is in history and I took a lot of courses about this time period, I really didn't know much about this event in history. I knew that Stalin had slave labour camps in Siberia and I knew that the conditions in those camps were harsh, but I didn't realize how harsh. I also didn't know the extent of the expulsion that occurred in the baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, also to a degree Finland. Over 1/3 of the population in these countries, were gone. It is definitely a part of history that I want to learn more about.

The author does a good job to help us know the harshness of Lina's new reality. Yet, she does it in such a way that is not so graphic that it is horribly disturbing. I want to know what happens, I want to know the extent of suffering, yet I don't need a blow by blow, and an in depth description of how skeletal they are, or the way their dead bodies crumpled when they fell. Some things my imagination can picture quite well. So, the author did a good job of letting us know enough and then letting our imagination fill in the rest. She did not hide the horrors, she just didn't beat us over the head with it.

I also like how she showed the relationship between the different characters. It was through these relationships that we see the gray areas of life. Her mother and one of the soviet guards, Lina and another Lithuanian youth, the grumpy old man and everyone else. It is through these gray areas we see where love and kindness can flourish in difficult circumstances.

I recommend this book. Though it is a teen fiction book, teens and adults alike would like to read this. This would be a great book to read as a family or in a classroom to get a good discussion going on difficulties in life. How we can face things in a negative way or a positive way and the difference our attitude can make.

Welcome

Have you ever read a book that you need to tell everyone about. You want the whole universe to know how awesome that book was. Or you want them to know to avoid it like the plague. Well this is what this blog is for me. It gives me the chance to let people know about the books I've just read, what it's about and what I think about it.

I will have a new post every Thursday (to start off with). I will rate it (see tab for rating system) and give a bit of a synopsis. Since I am open to reading anything, the books will be anything from children's books to adult's, non-fiction to the greatest fantasy.

I love the library! I love that I can read as many books as I want and it doesn't cost me a thing, well, as long as I get them back in time. So the books I will be reviewing will have come from the library or at least can be found at one (some may be from my personal collection). I will try my hardest to make sure that the books are accessible to everyone. Some of the Canadian books I review (because I am from Canada) may not in the library of other countries. So sorry about that in advance, but they may be worthwhile trying to find.

All the books I post about will have been the books I have just finished reading. I have a few books in my personal archive, so I during busy times I can write about them.

I am not getting paid by anyone to do this. I just like sharing a good story. All the books are just what I feel like reading, or they were on my book club list (which the members make themselves). If ever my readership is such that I get approached by a publishing company or author I will let you know where I got the book, but the rating and comments about it will still be my own.

So hopefully this blog will help inspire your next read and will help broaden your reading scope. Happy reading!