Light My Fire

Nothing to See Here was just excellent.  So real and so surreal.  I didn't want it to end!  Unexpected and hilarious and painful, just like real life!

Faith Done Well

The Serpent King was one of those rare books that does faith really, really well.  And even more well because there were SO many opportunities to turn this book into an anti-faith book.  Dill being the son of a preacher who handled snakes before he ended up in prison for child porn and corruption of minors.  But this book...wow.
I can just imagine Jesus reading this book and thinking, "Man, that was really, really well done.  Thank you, good and faithful servant, Jeff Zentner.  I learned a lot about snake handling when it comes to churches, too!  How interesting!

Loved

If I Was Your Girl,  I REALLY liked so much about this book.  No, I will just say it, I really liked this book!
I thought the way that faith was handled was really well done.   And I liked that it was just a love story, too.  And I loved Meredith Russo's note at the end.
Here is something to think about if you google Meredith Russo.  There are some hater sites out there.  And if you look at the sites that make mention of Russo, you will see that these sites have a distinct flavor to them.  Just please remember that in legal/divorce cases there are often stipulations that parties do not disclose information.  Also cases that just "die" and charges and followed up, often do so because they were false!  Just please look at the sources.
Many, many thanks to Russo for this work and blessings to her for future books as well.

Ruby Holler Meets Stargirl! (Plus magic!)

I was really drawn into A Snicker of Magic from the start.  I listened to it on the fabulous app, hoopla.  It really is a sweet little story.  Felicity is twelve and has moved around with her mom and little sister for many years, as her mom has a rambling heart.  Their current stop is their mom's hometown of Midnight Gulch, Tennessee.  Legend has it that this place was once full of magic, but now it is gone.
There is just a lot going on here that didn't seem to come together. The small, country townishness was reminiscent of so many better books, Ruby Holler, Dovey Coe, Faith, Hope and Ivy June, for example.  And then there is this person known as the Beetle (or maybe the Beatle, I don't know because I was listening to the audio!) who does good things for people.  I love this!  But the thing is, what the B does is what Stargirl did.  Looks in the paper to get clues as to what might be needed in someone's life as a pick-me-up or just a kind deed.
I really did like Felicity a lot and the boy who befriends her.  I also like Aunt Cloe.  There is a lot I did like about it.
One of the most memorable passages for me was when Felicity's ramblin'-hearted momma takes her up in a tree and points out lights from cars moving on the interstate.  She says that when she was a girl, she loved looking at them and couldn't wait to be on her way somewhere.  Now Felicity's mom, being a mother, should have realized that it just wasn't right for her to taking her daughters hither and yon, because they didn't have the same ramblin'-heart that she had and they needed stability.  So that was a problem.  But it turns out that she only did that because she was cursed.  I don't know...it was kind of a cop-out in my opinion.  Anyway, I have a ramblin'-heart, but I can't go and ramble because I have responsibilities.  But I could empathize with Felicity's mom.  I think about the song Drinking and Dreaming, but I don't drink, so the drinking part doesn't apply, but I understand.
This passage also made with think of the song Big Wheels in the Moonlight.
Oh and that was another thing, the whole Cleopatra Queen of Denial thing was also a song and had been done before, so that kinda bugged me.  But really, there is nothing new under the sun, right?  So I guess that is okay!

Go To Author

Frances O'Roarke Dowell is a go-to-author of mine and so after finishing Chicken Boy I picked up Where I Want to Be. I am burning through the books this year, at 50 already, but who knows what the rest of the year will show, but for now, I am doing well.
This is a pretty sad book, dealing with foster care and all of its sadness and mess.  Maddie is a young girl living in a group home, after her mother gave her up and the old woman she was staying with lost her eyesight and was no longer able to care for her.  Maddie has great spirit and you can't help but love her.  The book centers around her befriending a new girl in the home and picking a group of friends who build a fort in the yard of a boy from school.  The boy has a family, but it is easy to see that he is also not really part of a home either, as his parents pretty much ignore him.  The book raises a lot of good questions about what makes a house a home and what makes a family.  Good, sweet story.
Oh yeah!  It is set in Tennessee.