blended family YA series.

After reading Winter’s Tide by Lisa Williams Kline, I was excited to share it with my students who are the same age as main characters Diana and Stephanie. I love having “book talks” with my kids, and really appreciate Zonderkids sending along this wonderful addition to my classroom library. This is Book 4 of the Sisters in all Seasons series, previous installments revolved around the other three seasons, very clever. It was a bit juvenile for my ninth graders, regardless of the character’s ages, but we all thought it was a good read regardless. Involving real issues like blended families and death.

A little background, Diana’s mom and Stephanie’s dad got married, blending the two families together. Winter’s Tide focuses on the importance of forgiveness. Diana and Stephanie are not only stepsisters, but opposites, and have always had a rocky relationship. Things get even rockier when everything goes wrong all at once. When Stephanie’s grandmother is hospitalized and Diana is suspended for fighting a bully, the holes in their patchy relationship threaten to grow wider. Oddly enough, it is the beaching of a pilot whale on the North Carolina coast that brings the two girls together and gives them a fresh awareness of their own weaknesses and empathy with each other.

shouldn’t we have an ark on standby?

100 years later, Geoff Williams has taken the event of The Great Flood to a whole new level in his nonfiction book titled Washed Away. Williams compiles the stories of those who survived, those who didn't and those who lost loved ones during the most widespread flood in American history. Millions were left homeless, their homes washed away. With over 700 deaths, it was such a devastating tragedy during that time.

I am embarrassingly uneducated when it comes to our country’s history. Really, it’s terrible. I am assuming someone must have mentioned The Great Flood to me in my twenty-seven years, but I have heard no other information than that, until I read William’s book, which was extremely informative, not to mention interesting. This flood of biblical proportions wiped out fourteen states. That’s pretty huge, and thanks to Williams, the people affected will not be forgotten.

did we just become best friends?

Sometimes you meet a character and you become best friends. Stephanie Plum and I have a relationship like that. It helps that she stars in over nineteen books and that she’s hilarious and likes to eat donuts. Janet Evanovich’s latest installment of the series titled Notorious Nineteen is just as good as the rest of the bunch, as impossible as that sounds.

This installment of the Stephanie Plum Series revolves around Geoffrey Cubbin, who is missing after embezzling millions from an assisted-living facility in Trenton. You can image how Grandma Mazur uses her old lady skills to help out on this case. I love that old broad. On the side Stephanie started body-guarding a pretty dangerous situation with Ranger, you know, for extra cash, and to smell him. Morelli is still in the picture and helps Stephanie and a silly midget solve the Cubbin disappearance case. Lula is on one of her many diets, Vinnie is still gross, Connie takes care of business, and things get pretty hilarious, as usual.

new novel and warm weather, that sounds good, i’ll have that.

Tara Conkin’s The House Girl flawlessly switches between two time periods (pre-Civil War and 21^st century) telling the stories of Josephine, a slave girl, Carolina (Lina), a New York City attorney, and Lina's father, Oscar, an artist.

Josephine decides she must run away from her owners, and sets out to get as far away as possible. Lina, who seems discontent with her own life has been given the chance to head the research for her firm, representing a victim of slavery in a reparations case.

The two are tied together as Lina begins working the case and searching for a living descendant of an American slave, she goes inside of her father's world of art and learns of the controversy surrounding the paintings of the 19th century artist Lu Ann Bell. Through her father, Lina learns that many art critics believe that the paintings were really the work of Josephine Bell, Lu Ann's house girl, Josephine.

Ms. Conklin’s debut novel turned into a “just one more page” read for this girl. Kick ass.

the ultimate obama survival guide.

Welp, didn’t really think that getting a new president would require a survival guide, but according to author Wayne Allyn Root and many others, apparently it does.

In The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide: How to Survive, Thrive, and Prosper during the Obamageddon, Part One is compiled of sixteen short chapters that describe the author's views on the present economic mess we are in and how the big spending and big deficit policies of Bush and Obama helped create it and how Obama's policies are making this mess a long term reality.

Part Two includes sixteen more chapters on Root’s views of surviving the “Obama Zombie Economy”. He is deathly concerned with all the money printing and believes it will turn our currency into confetti at some point. Well don’t hold anything back, Root.

Wayne Root offers claim after claim about how the administration is changing the face of America, he also offers many fact based websites that offer stats that appear to back up his claims. Interestingly enough, Root paints a very convincing picture of a good state government (Texas) and pairing that with a not so good local government (Detroit), saying that we're going the way of Detroit, gross. But his arguments on this topic along with everything else are pretty right on, and terrifying. Obama’s America pretty much wipes out the middle class, upper middle class, and small businesses. HELLO?! THAT’S US.


***For a chance to win a FREE copy, follow this blog then email your name, address, and this book title to: jenileerose@yahoo.com!

poetry for every content.

I love the idea of reading and writing workshops. We don’t really have an equivalent to them at the school I work at, but I absolutely think that we should. I have seen these workshops in middle schools, but never at the high school level, which needs to change. Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli have created a mentor text which shows how to use poems in both reading and writing workshops and across content areas titled Poetry Mentor Texts: Making Reading and Writing Connections, K-8.

This text is a collection of lessons devoted to making reading and writing connections through poetry. The authors include a number of different styles of poetry in every chapter, along with a basic lesson using that poem laid out for you. Included are poems that help students reflect on their own lives and poems that inspire response.

Each poetry lesson includes a writing connection, for example: Why did the author choose the words they did? Each poetry lesson also includes a reading connection, for example: Understanding the structure of a poem to help reading comprehension. This helpful resource contains ideas on how to use guided practice, independent reading, and student reflection while using poetry as well. Poetry Mentor Texts is perfect for elementary school teachers.

which downton abbey character are you?

Let me put it this way, my mother, grandmother, and I all read While We Were Watching Downton Abbey at the same time so that we could talk about it after we were finished, like a book club of sorts. Proving that this is a book for every age; 20’s, 50’s, 70’s and everyone in between. We are obsessed with the show Downton Abbey, and have been watching all 3 season’s on DVD over and over again, impatiently waiting for season 4 to begin and air in the US. I absolutely adored how author Wendy Wax incorporated scenes from the actual show throughout the novel. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me give you the 411 on our main characters.
 

 

Set in present day Atlanta, Wax tells the story of Brooke, Samantha, Claire, and Edward as an omniscient (or all knowing) narrator. Brooke is a recently divorced mother of two little girls who feels incredibly bad about herself due to her plastic surgeon ex-husband who has made her feel like shit throughout their entire marriage. Samantha is a very wealthy southern socialite who married her current husband, John after her parents died leaving her to raise her younger brother and sister. Claire is a writer/single mother who moved to the area after her daughter went off to college in hopes to write her third romantic historical fiction novel. These three are brought together by (British) Edward, their apartment building concierge who, in hopes to bring the building together as a community of sorts, began screening Downton Abbey with themed English snacks and drinks every Sunday night.

 

 

The novel is just plain enjoyable as we watch the characters evolve and become stronger as individuals due to the support they now receive in these new friendships.