Full Moon O Sagashite #1

A twelve-year-old girl named Mitsuki has a tumor in her throat and only has one year to live. She could get an operation, but that means losing her voice so she could never sing again, and her dream is to become a singer because she promised a boy named Eichi when she was ten. She found out that she only had one year to live when two death gods came through her wall and they let it slip out. Using the power of one of the death gods she gets turned into a sixteen year old to become a singer. She passed the singing audition, but who knows what will happen next?

 

I really enjoyed this manga

Surface Tension

I originally picked this book because I really thought The Burn Journals also by Brent Runyon was thought provoking.

Luke is an only child. His family has a tradition of going to the lake to their cabin for two weeks each year. Runyon does not share with the readers any other times in Luke’s life but for the two weeks each summer that are spent at the cabin; yet we get to know him and watch him grow from 13 through 16. (These are times of great change in everyone’s life.) At 13 he is still interested in swimming, fishing, and all the things he has always done at the lake. With each summer Luke changes and what he finds interesting also changes.

For me, I can remember going to a lake cabin each year for those same years. I can remember changing during those years too. I still remember fondly the years we went to Lake Winnie. Going to northern Minnesota is still a wonderful adventure and always makes me feel good.

You can read an excerpt.

Call Me HOPE

I picked up this novel on a day trip to Madison. I love the bookstores there! But we really go to visit the Mustard Museum in Mt. Horeb, the Penzy’s spice store in Madtown, and then the cheese store in Cuba City – we make this trek once or twice a year. While there we  always spend some time in the bookstores. This became one of trips when our daughter was in grad school at the University of Wisconsin.

Gretchen Olson has written a book about eleven year old Hope who is bullied. This bully is not the typical bully we find in novels about bullying and middle school kids; this bully is her mother. Hope says the worst name in the world is STUPID – it seems that no matter how hard she tries to please her mother, her mom just thinks she is stupid and tells her so. This name is certainly not the worst – she is verbally abusive all the time.

Hope tries to cope by creating a point system that in her mind after so many points her mom will stop saying things or glaring at her. Her friendship with two women who run a used clothing store helps her survive. Finally, a school counselor also steps in to try to help Hope.

I think reading this book reminds all of us how hurtful words can be – it really isn’t true that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

The Juvie Three

I know lots of you are Gordon Korman fans – the On the Run, Dive, Escape, Schooled, Swindle, Son of the Mob.

This is a novel about three boys, Gecko, Terence, and Arjay.
“Gecko Fosse is behind the wheel of a powder blue Infiniti M45 sedan, enjoying the thrum of the idling engine and not thinking. Gecko has elevated not thinking to the level of high art. He’s almost as good at it as he is at driving, and that’s very good.”
Arjay is a big kid. There was a fight. Arjay punched someone. A person died. Arjay shrugs, “I hit him, and he didn’t get up.”
Terrence planned a robbery for a gang he wanted to join; they all ended up in jail.

Douglas Healy was once like these boys, and now he thinks he can help them. Terrence only wants to get away, but Gecko and Arjay know that if he does, they will have to go back to detention centers. They don’t want that. One night there is an argument and Douglas is hurt, bad…

I really enjoyed the suspense in this book.

You can read an excerpt.

New Format

So, what do you think? I changed from the other design because I am not knowledgeable about changing the CSS and I wanted to have the tabs. The picture is actually an original — taken by my daughter.