Theodore Boone: The Abduction is the second in John Grisham’s mystery series for kids. In my review of the first book, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, I said: “I appreciate Grisham’s handling of young teens and his respect for the family. The story has plenty of excitement without vulgarity or gore. It can be done!” I…
Author: Diane Pendergraft
The Odyssey – Discussion Questions
As I said in this short report of one of my classes, there are countless people more qualified than I am to analyze The Odyssey. So I don’t pretend to be anything other than someone who has read the book many times and walked students through it more than once. This year, I taught a…
Danny and the Dinosaur
Syd Hoff was a well-known cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine before he began writing “I Can Read” books for children. Danny and the Dinosaur, Hoff’s first book for the series, was published in 1958, the year after Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) began the series. I discovered Syd Hoff in our school library when…
A Baby Sister for Frances
A Baby Sister for Frances is the second Frances book written by Russell Hoban (1964), but the first illustrated by his wife, Lillian Hoban. Frances is obviously struggling with the fact that she is no longer the center of her parents’ attention. Frances is well known for her little songs, but no one even comments…
Bedtime for Frances
Russell Hoban wrote nearly four dozen books for children over a span of more than fifty years. Though I haven’t conducted a scientific poll, I’m going to venture that the character he created for his very first is still the most popular and well known. Bedtime for Frances was published in 1960, and Hoban featured…
Bibles and Bestiaries: A Guide to Illuminated Manuscripts
Bibles and Bestiaries: A Guide to Illuminated Manuscripts is the seventh book in our Medieval Manuscripts Children’s Book Resources list. Bibles and Bestiaries: A Guide to Illuminated Manuscripts should, perhaps, have been the first book in this series. But I didn’t know about it until I read Magic in the Margins. This is the book…
The House of Sixty Fathers
As the setting is developed in the first couple of paragraphs, it might be any typical peaceful opening scene; just a boy sheltering from the rain on a boat with his pets. Except that the rain dripping on the boy’s sleeping pig is coming through a bullet hole in the roof. During China’s war with…
Green Grass of Wyoming
Green Grass of Wyoming is the third book in Mary O’Hara’s “Flicka” trilogy. It seems that often, when Sara and I find a book series we love, we regret that the author propels the main characters to maturity faster than our young readers can grow with them. Ken McLaughlin is ten years old at the…
Magic In the Margins
Magic In the Margins is the sixth book in our Medieval Manuscripts Children’s Book Resources list. The author information on the dust jacket says, “Mr. Nikola-Lisa’s interest in medieval bookmaking began many years ago as a second grade teacher, when he ended each year with a unit on the Middle Ages.” In his preface, Nikola-Lisa…
Thunderhead
Thunderhead is Mary O’Hara’s sequel to My Friend Flicka. I’m not a big sequel fan. When I read both books many years ago, I remember being surprised that I liked Thunderhead more than Flicka. It’s obvious to me now that I wasn’t thinking about children when I read these. Thunderhead is not a story for…
My Friend Flicka
By Mary O’Hara With all his heart, Ken McLaughlin wants two things; to be friends with his father, and to have his very own horse for his best friend. But Ken is a daydreamer. He has a habit of “getting into another world” while looking at a painting, or clouds, or watching horses run. This…
It’s Like This, Cat
Until a couple of years ago, I had never read a book simply because it had a Newbery Award seal on the cover. However, I had begun to notice, as I happened upon Newbery books, the uneven quality of the winners. I looked into the founding of the award and the stated goals, then discovered…
House of Dreams: The Life of L. M. Montgomery
Liz Rosenberg When I read fiction, I like to know a bit about the author, just to have an idea of his or her perspective. Often, the blurb on the book jacket is enough for context. I’m not typically one who needs or wants all the intimate details of an author’s life, though it can…
The Candy Bomber
Michael O. Tunnel Our children need stories like this. We need stories like this. The first chapter of The Candy Bomber briefly outlines a complicated political situation – the Soviet blockade of Germany’s capital city, Berlin, in 1948. When WWII was over, the Allies divided Germany into four occupation zones. The city of Berlin was…
The Sailor Who Captured the Sea
by Deborah Nourse Lattimore In a couple of other reviews of books I’ve used for introducing children to the topic of ancient manuscripts, I listed The Sailor Who Captured the Sea as a beautiful illustration resource. It is truly lovely. In her prologue, Deborah Nourse Lattimore briefly describes the Book of Kells. As is fitting…