More Sheparding

True West is another play by Sam Shepard.  And I really enjoyed this one, too!
This is the story of two brothers, one an education, ivy-league writer and one a drifter, thief.
They haven't seen each other in a while and the two come together at their mother's home while mom is visiting Alaska.
One of the reviewers on goodreads.com said that the whole play was character development and that is totally true.
Great play, powerful, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1983.  And until right now I didn't know "nominated" meant actually won!  So now I have read two Pulitzer Prize Winning Dramas.  And I liked them!

Paperboy

Are there still paperboys anymore?  Around my town papers are delivered by folks in cars.  I don't know if it is like that everywhere!  I accidentally listed to The Paperboy thinking it was Paperboy and I wondered why this was so short!  I was worried that I had listened to another one of those graphic novels!  But then I kept asking people who read Paperboy, "Is it a graphic novel?  Are there a lot of pictures?"  and the answer was always, "Um...no."   So then I figured out that I had a completely different book! 
Paperboy was really, really good.  It was a slice-of-life kinda book.  A look at life in a neighborhood in Memphis in 1959 from the POV of a young teen boy who has a stutter.  I loved, loved this kid's family and the kid himself.  Vince Vawter has an author's note at the end.  What a wonderful, wonderful book.  I also learned what a U.S. Merchant Marine is! 

Those Presbyterians....

When I read The Wednesday Wars I couldn't help but wonder if the author, Gary D. Schmidt is a Presbyterian.  He really knows them well!  I say that with all love and respect, as you know.  :)
So I read Okay for Now and loved that.  I had to read this one, in which Doug from OFN is a minor character.  TWW takes place before Doug moves to Marysville from Long Island and doesn't really feature Doug as much as his tough brother, who is a source of misery for Holling Hoodhood, the only WASP in his class and therefore the only kid who has to stay behind on Wednesday afternoons instead of going to religious education classes at the local Roman Catholic Church or synagogue.
The backdrop for this story is the Vietnam War and wow, there is a lot of powerful stuff here.  When kids come in looking for historical fiction, the tendency is for them to look for books on the American Revolutionary or Civil War and to a lesser extent, WW2, but this is one that I will push and push along with with Shooting the Moon and Countdown, One Crazy Summer and others that are from less written about time periods in history.
There is so much in this book.  The dynamic between Holling and his father, his sister's trip out west, so much more.  It is so neat to see the way that Holling develops in the book.  And it even made me want to read Shakespeare!  Fantastic book.  It also taught me what a jerk Mickey Mantle was!

Tiger, tiger burning bright....

The whole "Tiger, tiger burning bright" is the only part of the poem The Tiger that I remember at all, but I think we had to memorize it back in high school.  So much for that.  How sad.  I've also seen it written with a "y" instead of an "i" but I don't why.  Oh!  I am a poet!
Not really.
Okay.  So my friend, Mrs. Sawyer, her grandson is in Thailand.  And here he is with a tiger!  Is that not the coolest thing you have ever seen?  Apparently before tigers get to be two years old, you can hang with them like that!  Of course, I think maybe all of the tigers that Ted took a picture with are girl tigers and who could resist a guy like Ted!  Is he adorable or what?  You can read about all of his journeys here.
Of course, I am rambling.  I don't know what to say about DiCamillo's The Tiger Rising except that it is one of those books that everyone should read.  Kids, teens and adults.  I feel that way about The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, too.  Great, great stuff here.  It makes you understand that a writer like DiCamillo just KNOWS more about life than a lot of us, well at least more than me anyway, that is for sure.  A wonderful, beautiful book.

Brendan Buckley!

 

Happily, Brendan Buckley's Sixth Grade Experiment was another great book about this very cool dude.  I am pretty embarassed that I hadn't previously heard of him and his talented creator, Sundee T. Frazier.    Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything In It was wonderful and so was this one.  I emailed Ms. Frazier and asked if there will be any more BB books, and she wrote back right away!  So that was super nice.  Super sad, though, because it doesn't look like there will be anymore books about Brendan.  She does have a new book in the works though, and I will be reading that for sure.  Brendan and his dad are the main focus of this book.  Great, great book!  You can learn about biomass and anolis lizards, but not in a preachy or weird-through-in-there-as-education way.

Horror Story

Yeah, Because I am Furniture is a horror story, for real.  It is realistic horror.  And horror like this happens every day and that makes it even more horrific.  Anke's father is super abusive.  A true monster.  But there is more Anke.  I just love her.  She is fighter and real and just a true hero.  Powerful book.  Very. 

Summer with Greg

Jeff Kinney had to slow down the books if he wanted to stretch them out and I am glad he did.  Dog Days is the fourth and still as funny as the first three, in the DOAWK series.  Greg's family is going through a "tight time" and so there's not going to be a family vacation this year, but there is still lots for Greg to do.  Greg is hard to like and that surprised me!  Rowley is my favorite character.  I worry that Greg will end up just like Rodrick.  But there is still time...

I think young Spenser and The Boy would have been great friends.

In fact, when I was reading Chasing the Bear, I sort of forgot that it wasn't a Paulsen story, given, yes, that I have read so many Paulsen this month, but also because Robert B. Parker and Gary Paulsen seem to be men cut from the same cloth.  Men of honor.  That's what their writing suggests, anyway.  They might be, or have been, as in Parker's case, big weenies, but you won't convince me.
In any case, I can say for sure that if you like Paulsen, you will like Parker and vise versa.
This is a Young Spenser Novel, as it says on the cover, but I don't know if there are others.  No.  I just looked.  No more.  Who knows if there would have been though, as Parker died in 2011 and this was written in 2009.  It really is a retelling of some incidents in Spenser's teen years, as Spenser and Susan sit talking.  I love the dialogue, as always.  I've read all of Parker's stuff but this one and the one I am reading now, The Boxer and the Spy and Edenville Owls which I will certainly read as well.  I had forgotten about these titles and man, it is like finding money in the couch or in a pair of pants.  This treasure that was lost and now is found.  How I miss RBP.

A Zebra Forest...

Adina Rishe Gewirtz is a brandy new author and Zebra Forest is her first fiction book.  I will most certainly be looking for her next one, as this one really stuck with me.  I bought it to listen to and I'm glad I have it, because I'll want to go back again.  Annie and Rew never live with their grandma, who is a good lady, but sometimes she isn't quite there.  Their mother took off and all Annie remembers is that she said she never really wanted kids.  Grandma has always told Rew and Annie that their dad was killed in a bar fight.  But one day there is a break at the prison just through the zebra-looking forest in their backyard and man shows up, and wouldn't you know, sometimes the dead aren't so dead after all.  Annie tells the story and she is a smart kid, a neat kid.  And so is Rew.  A story of love and family and forgiveness and yeah, just a really great story.

Why Do You Hit?

Dead Ends is a really, really good book.  Erin Jade Lange wrote Butter, which didn't click with me that much but this one, it just sucked me right in.  Dane Washington is a smart, tough, cool kid, living with his mom and this pent up anger.  He gets an itchy feeling in his palms and he just has to HIT someone.  He doesn't consider himself a bully, he hits guys who have it coming.  And he'd never hit a girl and he doesn't hit "retards"- a word he throws around without thinking, until he meets Billy D.  Billy D has just moved in across the street and lives just with his mom, like Dane.  Both Billy D. and Dane have no idea where their dads are.  Dane doesn't know who his is, and he says he really doesn't care.  Billy D. wants to find his dad so badly and he seeks out Dane's help.  This is just a beautiful, painful, smart, important book.  So different.  So great.  Can't wait for it to come out so that I can recommend it to all!  Thank you, netgalley and Bloomsbury. 

Man...

Defending Jacob was a seriously good book.  I did see the end coming, which is very rare for me, but that didn't make it any less of a great great.  Set in Massachusetts, the story is told from the POV of the first ADA who starts out investigating the murder of a 14-year-old boy named Ben.  Ben was found stabbed three times in the chest, in a park on his way to school.  Not soon after his murder, Andy, the ADA, finds that his son is going to be arrested for the murder.
This is just a good and creepy book.  And it gets better with every page.  A must-read.

So that's an interesting title...

Maybe there is just something wrong with my mind and the way I think. Maybe no one else even thinks twice about the title of the book Shooting the Moon.
I just absolutely loved this book. I thought it was beautiful and wonderful and simple and complex and powerful. Frances O'Roark Dowell is a truly blessed author. She is excellent at character development and putting the reading right inside the character's head.
The last book that of her's that read was Ten Miles Past Normal, which I loved as well.
Shooting is told from the POV of Jamie a twelve year old girl who lives the on the US Army base of Ft. Hood in Killeen, TX. Her father is a Colonel and pretty much the top guy at Ft. Hood. Jamie and her brother TJ have always grown up loving their country and the army. Their family is tight and strong and pretty cool. The Colonel is a serious man who loves his family first, then the army, then football, as Jamie sees it.
TJ is set to go off to college in the fall but instead, he enlists in the army because his best friend is MIA in Vietnam. Jamie is thrilled. She can't wait to hear all about war and she wishes she could enlist as well. The Colonel and Jamie's mom aren't quite so excited and try to talk TJ out of it, but his mind is made up.
While TJ is in country, he sends letters home to his mom and dad and undeveloped film home to Jamie. Jamie learns to develop the film and learns a lot from what she sees and from getting to know the other young soldiers at Ft. Hood.
Man...man...this is just a really solid, good, good historical fiction book. I can't see anyone not loving the way this story is told and the questions and emotions that it will raise.