Crows

Crows.  as I have mentioned before, some people have a thing about crows.  One for Sorrow has this poem, called Counting Crows. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret, never to be told, eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, ten for a time of joyous bliss.  
Is it weird that a really creepy ghost story from Mary Downing Hahn is a joyous blissful thing for me?  I don't know, but it is!  MDH is one of the most talented, creep-tastic, excellent writers ever.  And this new one is no exception.  Not for someone looking for a joke ending or assurances that creepiness is not real.  Great, great, great.

Sewickley!

I was actually sitting in my car, in Sewickley, just before work, listening to Wolf Hollow when I heard the narrator say, "Moreover, we did eat at Lancaster's in Sewickley twice a year."
That was very exciting!   Because I didn't realize that the book was set in Pennsylvania before hearing that!  Later on the book does make mention of Pittsburgh and Aliquppa, too.  But it was very exciting to hear "Sewickley" while in Sewickley!
Wolf Hollow is getting Newbery buzz.  And I did like Wolf Hollow.  And I do wonder if it will win the Newbery.  But man, it just wasn't all I thought it would be.
I agree with people who have said it was reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird. But that's the thing, it was a too too too much like TKAM.  And it also was a little too much like Stepping on the Cracks.  To be totally WOW for me.  I wasn't sucked in or blown away.  But it was good.  It just wasn't WOW.  3 of 5 stars for me.

I Survived....

The Blizzard of Glass:  The Halifax Explosion of 1917 was a great kids/tween non-fiction book by Sally M. Walker, a new-to-me-author that I will be reading more of, for sure.  The Halifax Explosion itself was new to me.  I did spend twenty minutes in a rest stop in Nova Scotia back in the 2000s, but I don't recall there being a pamphlet about it there.  It was 2:00am, so I might be wrong.  
This was an excellent book and sure to be popular with those who like the I Survived series and books by the awesome Jim Murphy.
That is picture was taken on Prince Edward Island.

The War to End all Wars

When I was young I always thought that "the war to end all wars" was WW2.  Later I learned that it was WW1.  Sadly I don't know much about WW1.  The only thing I ever really knew about it was All Quiet on the Western Front, and not even the book, but the made-for-tv movie starring John-Boy.  I knew about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the sinking of the Lusitania, and the bungled Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.  I knew about mustard gas and the trenches, but that was it.
So it was only right that I read The War to End all Wars:  WW1.  I can't say that I remember too much more than what I knew before, except that I knew I never really knew how it was a war that started because of a lot of misunderstandings and that no one really wanted the war in the first place.  This book was good, but it wasn't my cup of tea.