Book Write Up #3: Chapter Book #6

Author: Bodil Bredsdorff

Title: The Crow-Girl

Genre: Fiction

Subgenre: Young Adult

Theme: Bravery and courage is within our soul.

Primary and Secondary Characters: Crow Girl, her grandmother, Rossan, and Eidi.

Awards and Date of Publication: Winner of the Mildren L Batchelder award, published in 2004.

This book is about a girl named Crow Girl, she gives this name to herself. She loves looking at crows, and she feels that they will guide her through her life. She lives with her grandmother, who is real old and is dying. They live in a cottage by the sea. They live all by themselves, and they live off the land eating claims, and fishes. Crow Girl collects all the food, does all the cleaning, and cooking. She is very strong and has a peaceful soul. Crow Girl's grandmother eventually dies, and Crow Girl has no other family or friends. She has to fin for herself at such a young age. When her grandmother dies, she is alone and leaves the cottage. She comes across this little boy who is two years old, his name is Doup. She takes Doup in and cares for him and herself. She eventually makes a friend named Eidi. Eidi's father beats her mother. One time he beat her mother real bad, and they decided to stay with Crow Girl. However, a man named Rossan takes them all in. He sells mostly everything he has, to feed them all. Eidi and her mother eventually leave Rossan's house. About a year later Eidi and her mother come back to see Crow Girl. By this time Crow Girl and Doup are still staying with Rossan, and they are doing real well. Crow girl went through a lot, but now things are looking up.

This book is a good book to read to children to show them that through bad times people grow, and to show that we all have control of our own destinies.

Book Write Up #3: Chapter Book #5

Author: Judy Blue

Title: Are You There God: It's Me Margaret

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Subgenre: Young Adults Book

Theme: Adolescents is made easier when you get to talk to someone, even if that someone is God.

Primary and Secondary Characters: Margaret, Nancy and Laura

Date of Publication: 1970

Publishing Company: A Dell Yearling Book

This book is about a girl names Margaret who is in sixth grade. She grew up with no religion since her mother is Christan and her father is Jewish. She has to do a year long project in school, and she decides to do it on different religions. Margaret also confronts many other pre-teen female issues, such as buying her first bra, having her first period, and having jealousy towards another girl who has developed a womanly figure earlier than other girls, liking boys, and whether to voice her opinion if it differs from those of her friends. She gets comfort from spending time with her grandmother on her father's side, who is Jewish. On Margaret's quest of finding a God, she also finds herself. This quest helps her deal with the real life issues that are going on around her. At the end of the story she believes there is a God, but just not sure what kind of God. But, she knows there is a higher power.

This is a good book for pre-teen girls to read. This will help them adapt to the changes that are going on with themselves from puberty.

Book Review #3: Chapter Book #4

Author: Mary Borsky

Title: Benny Bensky and the Perogy Palace

Illustrator: Linda Hendry

Genre: Fiction (mystery)

Subgenre: Children's Book

Theme: The bad guy always gets caught.

Primary and secondary characters: Benny, Rosie, Fran, and their parents.

Date of Publication: 2001

Publishing Company: Tundra Books

Benny Bensky used to be a happy dog living with his humans, Rosie and her parents. But things are not happy in the Bensky house. Rosie’s mom and dad operates the most popular restaurant in town, the Perogy Palace. At least, it used to be popular. Now customers are staying away in droves. Even Benny will not eat there anymore. Benny, Rosie, and Fran try to solve the mystery, on why people are not coming to the restaurant anymore. They use their detective skills, but get into a little mischief, and Benny gets sent to obedience school. This stalls their mystery, but when Benny comes back they are better then ever. They realize that someone is switching out the labels to the ingredients, and putting different stuff in each container. Benny catches Ms. Viola Pin, and traps her. Mrs. Viola gets startled and falls into a bucket of soapy water. The cops come in, and they were about to take Benny, when Rosie and Fran tell them what happened. They take Viola instead.

This book is a good book to read to students to teach them that they are not too young to be detectives.

Book Review #3: Chapter Book #3

Author: Lois Lowry

Title: Number the Stars

Genre: Realistic History

Subgenre: Young Adults

Theme: Courage comes at any age.

Primary and Secondary Characters: Annemarie, Ellen Rosen, Lise

Awards and Date of Publication: Newberry Award Winner, published in 1989.

Publishing Company: Houghton Mifflin Company

Number the Stars is a courageous story about a ten year old girl named Annemarie Johansen. In 1943, Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, has been occupied by Nazi soldiers. Soldiers stand on every street corner. Wartime food shortages and the psychological terror of the Nazi takeover have made life difficult for Danish citizens. Nazis have decided to relocate all of Copenhagen's Jewish families. Soldiers stand on every street corner, and life is changed irrevocably for ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen. Ellen is Jewish, and is scared the Nazi's will come to get her and her family. Annemarie lost her oldest sister, Lise, just two weeks before her wedding day. When Nazis raided a resistance meeting. She was intentionally run down and killed by a military car. Later in the novel, Annemarie follows her sister's example, risks her own life to help Jews. Jews and non-Jews alike among Denmark's population suffer terribly at the hands of the Nazis. Ellen and her family flee Denmark on a boat, with Annemarie's help. They flee to Poland where they are safe. After the war Annemarie asks her daddy if she can get Ellen's Jewish necklace fixed so she can give it to her when she comes home.

This book is a good book to read to students to teach them how devastating life was for Jews and non Germans during this time. Also, to teach them that even kids can have courage to help people that need it.

Book Write Up #3: Chapter Book #2

Author: Lois Lowry

Title: The Giver

Genre: Chapter book

Subgenre: Young Adult

Theme: Feelings are powerful, and what makes us human.

Primary and Secondary Characters: Jonas and the Giver

Award and date of publication: Newberry Award Winner, published in 1993.

Publishing Company: Houghton Mifflin Company

Jonas lives in this community where people do not think on their own. In this community there is a committee that matches marriages together by compatibility. These couple are assigned two kids, one of each gender. In this community the people can not have any emotion or feeling, they have to watch what they say, and the world is pretty much mapped out for them. When Jonas turns twelve he is given a job as a receiver. It is the receivers job to hold keep the memories and feelings away from the people. There is a receiver who teaches him how to perform his job, and his name is the Giver. The Giver helps Jonas store these memories, and deal with these foreign feelings. The first memories are happy memories, that Jonas enjoys. However, soon enough he was given memories of grief, loneliness, and despair. He has never felt these feelings before. The community is denied these feelings. Once Jonas started realizing there is another way of living he decides, everyone should experience these feelings and become individuals. With the Givers approval Jonas decides to flee his town and run away to another town, so the memories will be lost. Once the memories are lost the town will be able to get these feelings back. Jonas went on a hard, long, difficult journey to lose these memories, and give this gift to his town. In the end, he accomplishes this dreadful task.

This is a good book to read to students and to express how wonderful feelings are. Each feeling that we have expresses the way we feel, and this is what makes us human.

Book Write Up # 3: Chapter Book #1

Author: Patricia MacLachlan

Title: Sarah, Plain and Tall

Genre: Chapter Book

Subgenre: Children's book

Theme: When tradgadie strikes, there is always hope.

Primary and seconday characters: Anna, Caleb, their dad, and Sarah.

Award and date of publication: Newberry Award Winner, published in 1985.

Publishing Company: A Charolotte Zolotow Book

This book opens with a young girl, Anna Witting, telling her younger brother Caleb the story of his birth. She always ends the story early, not wanting to discuss how their mother died the next day. They talk about their mother this time anyway, with Caleb fixating on their mother’s singing and wondering why their father, Jacob, doesn’t sing anymore. When he brings this up with Jacob, the man responds by saying he has put an ad in the paper for a wife and mother to come join the family on their farm, and has received an answer from a woman named Sarah in Maine. Sarah and the Witting family decide to give each other a one-month trial. Sarah experiences everyday life and a few adventures with the Wittings, but she also misses her family and the sea. Sarah leaves on a train to go visit her family. Caleb and Anna begin to worry: at the end of the month, will Sarah decide to leave? Sarah comes back and the children are so excited. She tells them she will always miss her old home but she will miss them more.

This book is a good book to read to students to teach them that when tragedies happen, there can still be a happy ending. In the end Caleb and Anna get the mother they lost.

Book Write Up #3: Picture Book #10

Author: David Elliot

Title: In the Wild

Illustrator: David Elliot

Genre: Realistic History

Subgenre: Children's book

Theme: The animals in a safari jungle.

Primary and secondary characters: All the animals in a safari jungle.

Date of publication: 2010

Publishing Company: Candlewick Press

This book describes all the animals in a safari jungle. The author spends a page on each animal. For example in talking about an elephant the author explains, "Big, yet moves with grace. Powerful, yet delicate as lace. As to color, plain and ordinary gray. But once we start to look, we cannot look away. When peaceful, silent; when angry, loud. Who would have guessed the Elephant is so much like a cloud." In another example the author explains a panda, "You're a bamboo bandit; You're a piebald dream. You're a bear in silk pajamas; you're cookies and cream. You're the wizard of the mountains; you're pres-ti-di-gi-ta-tion! You're nature's best example of bear imagination." This book does a good job in explaining animals of a safari jungle in a poetic way.

This book is a good book to read to students, and to introduce to them animals of a safari jungle.