Mary Roach has a gift for making science accessible and–dare I say it?–even funny. In this book, she tackles the digestive system. Covering topics ranging from thorough chewing (as in 700+ chews for One. Freaking. Bite.) to the miraculous properties of spit, from being eaten alive to the possibility (or not) of chewing your way Continue Reading…
It’s 1875 and Archie Dent’s parents belong to The Septemberists, a society dedicated to remembering the damage caused by monsters called the Mangleborn and to preventing them from rising again to destroy civilization. On a routine trip to the Septemberist headquarters, the older Dents are taken over by Manglespawn, children of a Mangleborn, and forced Continue Reading…
Linda, an overweight girl in fifth grade, gives a report about whales one day. Someone passes around a note that “Blubber is a good name for her” and Linda has a new nickname. The other kids start to tease and harass her and just generally make her life miserable. Our narrator, Jill, watches all this Continue Reading…
Anytime kids gather together in the dark, scary stories are inevitably told. Alvin Schwartz gathered a good selection of the most popular and published them in this anthology. I kind of think this scared me when I was little but I don’t actually remember ever checking it out from the library. My theory is that Continue Reading…
Our young British protagonist and his Norwegian grandmother know something that we don’t: Witches are real and they live among us. They look like sweet neighbor ladies but they’re keeping a lot of secrets. Chief among them? They want to wipe out the children of the world. When Grandmamma and Grandson (do we ever learn Continue Reading…
Young Mickey hears a noise deep in the night and finds himself falling into the Night Kitchen, where he has to help the cooks get the milk into the batter. What a fun little book! I never read much Sendak when I was little for some reason, so this was completely new to me. The Continue Reading…
Testimony covers a lot of ground, from the making of the movie, Schindler’s List, to the idea of filming Holocaust survivor testimonies, to the actual project, and now sharing the testimonies and collecting new ones from ongoing genocides around the world. The first half of the book kept my attention better than the second half. Continue Reading…
Scott Landon, award-winning novelist, died two years ago. His wife, Lisey, is finally cleaning out his study. As she goes through his old papers, awards, and photos, buried memories come boiling to the surface. Then she gets a call from a man who tells her to hand over her late husband’s unpublished work or face Continue Reading…
Malala Yousafzai was only fifteen when she was shot in the head by a member of the Taliban for speaking out for education for everyone around the world, but especially for girls, and especially in Muslim countries. She miraculously survived and now has an even larger audience for her message. I think I’d heard a Continue Reading…
Welcome to an alternative England, where characters from nursery rhymes investigate nursery crimes and the investigation is more focused on getting a good story than on getting a correct conviction. Jack Spratt and his new partner, Mary Mary, have just been assigned to investigate the death of Humpty Dumpty. But this seemingly straightforward investigation is Continue Reading…
Bernadette Fox is an…eccentric…mother and wife living in Seattle. Her daughter, Bee, is an excellent student and has asked for a family cruise to Antarctica as a reward for earning all A’s (or her school’s equivalent) throughout her middle school career. Bernadette and her husband, Elgin, can’t think of a reason to say no so Continue Reading…