As usual, Vivian Vande Velde has given me something that I have found charming and entertaining. Cloaked in Red contains eight different re-tellings of Little Red Riding Hood, all of them entertaining. In this book you can see the story from the perspective of Little Red, the grandmother, the wol...
Emily causes quite a mess, lucky for her her sister is on her side. There are real consequences in this book, sure there was a hopeful note, but what happened doesn't get swept away nor was saving Emily as easy as finding out why she needs to be saved in the first place. All in all a soothing rea...
This is one of our Sunshine State young reader books and I kept shoving it to the bottom of the pile because I thought it looked so dorky but boy was I wrong. The title describes the plot exactly. A squirrel gets chased into a school by a dog and he seeks refuge in every classroom, where there ...
I picked up this book as I was reading through this year's Beverly Cleary Children's Choice Award Nominees. This one was a really quick read. I especially liked how each chapter was told by the point of view of a different class pet or animal. This would be a great read-aloud for a 1st-3rd gra...
These versions of familiar fairy tales are quite enjoyable. Well, the Hansel and Gretel one was disturbing, but most of them have endings I prefer to those of the original, particularly 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' which is funny. These are the story titles:'Straw Into Gold'***'Frog'****'All Point...
What I liked about this book was the idea that you could build an entire story just to make a statement. I suppose that's all anyone ever does when they write, but it was obviously done. Before you even begin the story, there is the page that is made to look like a gift certificate, which sets th...
I don't love vampire books, for the most part. The ones that I've read tend to be a little mindless, full of hot, leather-clad vampires and the humans who happily get sucked into their glamorous world of the night.And that's why Companions of the Night is my favorite vampire book. It takes the ty...
I finished "The Book of Mordred" by Vivian Valde and now I have all these conflicting feelings. If I should give it a vote I would give it 4/5 or 3.8/5 just for the ending because even if I liked most of it I didn't like the very ending.And now, spoilers.(view spoiler)[I started this book knowing...
Magic Can Be Murder ReviewtWhen thinking of magic and witches the stereotypical mean, warted, big nosed, long haired, ugly, heartless witch comes to mind. This witch usually has a broom, spell book, and a big spell pot. However, in the book Magic Can Be Murder, by Vivian Vande Velde, I liked how ...
You probably already know the story of Rumpelstiltskin. Just in case you don't quite remember it, here are the details: A poor miller tells the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. But she can't. The king then brings the daughter to the castle to spin some straw into gold. She is very...
Oh book, why you make me so torn?I first heard about Dragon’s Bait through this piece on Entertainment Weekly about unmissable teen reads. And because it was an older title and because the Publishers Weekly review (which I sought after I read the EW article) said it is a “thoughtful mainstream fa...
3.5 starsI recently found out that one of my childhood favorites, Heir Apparent, had a prequel of sorts written about a decade prior. User Unfriendly was in no way at the same level as Heir Apparent-it was a mere shade. This book had your typical medieval game adventure story with a distant outsi...
Selwyn, seorang pemuda tujuh belas tahun, baru saja putus dari kekasihnya. Anora, nama sang mantan kekasih, lebih memilik Farold yang lebih kaya. Selwyn baru saja meratapi nasib malangnya akibat dicampakkan sang mantan kekasih dan dipermalukan Farold, ketika warga Penryth menuduhnya telah membunu...
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Smart Dog by Vivian Vande Velde. I grabbed it on a whim, because we needed another read aloud book for my 4 and 5 year old boys. As it turned out, they were hooked along with me, my husband, and my 9-year-old daughter. My boys have a problem wit...