Mission: READ

I am not by any stretch of the imagination a chick-flick or chick-book person.  Give me fantasy or sci-fi and I’m thrilled! However, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate some excellent realistic fiction when it crosses my plate. 

Although it was published in 2003, I have just read Frances O’Roark Dowell’s Where I’d Like to Be, a story about Maddie Byers, an eleven-year-old girl living in a children’s home in Tennessee. After living with Granny Lane until she got too sick to care for her, Maddie has been shuffled through foster homes and has resigned herself to the fact that she won’t be adopted and will just have to stay put until she grows up and gets a home of her own.

When new girl “Murphy” (not her real name) moves in, she seems to “get” Maddie, especially understanding the scrapbooks of wishes she keeps–magazine picture cut-outs of people and homes that she has collected for years. The two girls form an odd group of friends with six-year-old Ricky Ray, tough-seeming, talkative Donita, and Logan, a boy who lives with his parents but who seems largely ignored by them most of the time.  They work together to build a fort in Logan’s backyard, and it becomes a home of sorts for all of them.  The characters are not perfect friends–they let each other down and suffer through rough times both alone and together. And above all, this novel has genuine, memorable characters, and it really explores the ideas of home and family and can open your eyes to new meanings for those words.

It is worth mentioning that Dowell’s books have some of the best opening lines out there. 

• Where I’d Like to Be: When I was just a baby, a ghost saved my life.
• Chicken Boy: You might have heard about the time my granny got arrested on the first day of school.  
• Dovey Coe: My name is Dovey Coe, and I reckon it don’t matter if you like me or not. I’m here to lay the record straight, to let you know them folks saying I done a terrible thing are liars…. I hated Parnell Caraway as much as the next person, but I didn’t kill him.  *** Best one! That’s why it rates a whole paragraph!***

Want to know more about Where I’d Like to Be?  Then check it out, and read it yourself! CJHS IMC owns one copy: FIC DOW

Mission: Accomplished 

• Comments Off

Like millions of others this past weekend, I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It is difficult, then, to write something that reviewers all over the world haven’t written already.  However, since I didn’t read any of the reviews before (or after) seeing the movie, you readers are getting an honest response from me, despite what others have said about the movie in their reviews.

Let me first say that I am so glad that this movie was rated PG-13.  As Harry Potter readers know, this fourth book is more intense than the others.  To try to cut things out to make it a PG movie would have been cheating readers/viewers out of the whole tone of the book and the seriousness of the events that take place. Thus, there is a fair amount of blood, truly menacing Deatheaters, and Voldemort’s rebirth scene which keeps you on the edge of your seat–and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Speaking of cutting things out, everyone knew from the beginning that there were lots of things that just wouldn’t fit if the movie was going to be under, say, five hours long.  I think some excellent choices were made. For example, although I would have loved to have seen some games played at the Quidditch World Cup (the stadium itself was breathtaking), this sequence was quite short because it really had only two jobs to do: 1) establish what a portkey was and how it worked and 2) show the Deatheaters wreaking havoc. A number of subplots were eliminated altogether or given a brief brush-by, but I didn’t think anything crucial was left out (unlike The Prisoner of Azkaban).

Another strength of the film is that it showed Harry, Ron, Hermione, et al. acting like teenagers. The “fights” between Harry & Ron and Hermione & Ron were quite believable. The way the ball (dance) sent everyone in a panic about whom to ask and how and when and a million other things also rang very true. Although I have read all of the books as an adult, I am glad that the movies have been “growing up” along with the readers.

This may be my favorite of the four films, and I am tempted now to read all 752 pages again so that I can catch all the little things that I don’t remember or weren’t shown in the movie. I give it five stars.

Those are just a few thoughts of mine about the movie. Now, what do you think?????

Mission: Accomplished

• Comments Off

Good Mooooorning, Chargers, and welcome to Mrs. Glatt’s Mission:READ, a blog about books!

I thought this would be a great way to share all the new books I’m reading and to hear from you as well.  In fact, the first CJHS student (use only your first name and team) to post a comment wins a Charger’s Choice award and a KING-SIZE Snickers bar!

Now, on to our first book EVER: The Penultimate Peril, book 12 in the Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. 

Just to let you know, I absolutely LOVE these books.  I wait for them to come out just like a Harry Potter book–no kidding.  But I don’t read them…. Instead, I listen to them on CD because the reader, Tim Curry, just makes the book come alive (a phrase which here means, makes you feel like you are in the book and Count Olaf is after you instead of after three unfortunate orphans).  Tim Curry’s Count Olaf is way better than Jim Carrey’s. Even though I am only part of the way through this book, I am enjoying it a ton.  The Baudelaire Orphans are disguised as concierges working at the Hotel Denouement and trying to get ready for a big VFD meeting. The hotel’s floors, guests, and, well, everything, is arranged by the Dewey Decimal system.  For example, the educational convention guests are housed in Room 371.  So right now there are lots of inside jokes for librarians (betcha didn’t think those existed). There also lots and lots and even more lots of references to the other 11 books in the series, so you can’t just start reading this one. This book is the penultimate book (a word which here, and everywhere, means next to last.) So there will be a thirteenth book maybe…click here to read what Lemony Snicket says about when the thirteenth (and last) book will hit the shelves.  

Want to know more?  Then check it out, and read it yourself! CJHS IMC owns two copies of The Penultimate Peril and one audiobook on CD (when I finish and return it). 

Mission: Accomplished

• Read comments... (1)