Put up 11 fingers

I do this preschool math class, right?  And we do the numbers 0-10 and once as a joke I asked them to put up eleven fingers.

A very smart four year old held up her two pointer fingers, each to look like a one and held them side by side, so she did put 11 in the air.

It was awesome!

And very smart!

Eleven is by Patricia Reilly Giff who has written some super-popular first reader series like The Kids of Polk Street School and Polka Dot Private Eye.

This a mystery book about a boy, age eleven, who discovers something that makes him question his past.  It is a really good little mystery and moves very quickly.

So Strange...

Before You Go is a really weird read.  I thought maybe it was one of those high interest/lower reading level books, maybe but it was wasn't.  It was really hard to finish because it wasn't very interesting or something.  It kinda read like a Magic Tree House book, just so all laid out there.  I read someplace that an author should show you emotions, not have have to spell them all out, like "Jude felt sad."  That's what this book did.  It was just very "whatever" about such a serious topic.  I think it actually was a driver's ed movie, encouraging kids not to drink and drive.  But the thing was...kids did drink and drive in the book, but the accident didn't happen when drinking kids were driving, so it was just...odd or something.  It's about Jude who works at Jones Beach one summer.  He is still understandably upset over the drowning death of his little sister years ago, and now he is starting to put his life together, when the accident happens and well, then the book kind of ends.  I can't really recommend this one, but it does meet the New York requirement!

Presently Joe exclaimed, "Swell!"

The Hardy Boys.  I never read them when I was a kid, though I had lots of their books.  The covers looked so cool and the titles of the mysteries were very intriguing.  I just couldn't get into them.  This week though, I needed an audio book and thought since I had given Nancy Drew a try, why not try The Tower Treasure, number one in the Hardy Boys.

The Hardy Boys are an American institution.  Created by a book packager, the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1927 they are still around today.  Comic books, tv shows, games, they have it all.   It is pretty interesting to read the ethnic and gender stereotypes in the book, even though the book was rewritten in 1958, they still exist.  The son of a building contractor, and loud and boisterous, jolly friend of Joe and Frank is Italian.  The serious and studious boy is Jewish.  The women don't do anything but look very pretty and make delicious picnic baskets for the men.  It is pretty annoying but insightful into the way things used to be and how life is getting better in some ways, since you don't have those kinds of stereotyping in most books today.

The mystery itself was ok.  I won't read another one, but I am glad that I experienced it.