Review of The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, by Francisco X. Stork

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors

by Francisco X. Stork

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2010. 344 pages.
Starred Review.

Here’s another book by the brilliant author of Marcelo in the Real World. Like Marcelo, this book deals with many-layered issues in a realistic way that is ultimately inspiring. There are no easy answers here, but we see flawed and lovable people grappling with the basic questions of life.

The book opens as Pancho is being brought to an orphanage.

“It was not a place for kids with problems. Mrs. Olivares had worked very hard and called in a lot of favors to get him admitted. She pointed out the high school he would attend in the fall. It was within walking distance of St. Anthony’s. He had been given a choice between going to summer school and entering as a senior or redoing his junior year. He chose to redo his junior year. He had other plans for the summer.”

Father Concha is the one in charge at St. Anthony’s.

“Father Concha picked up a manila folder and flipped through the pages, deep in thought. What did those pages say? Pancho had never read his file, but he could imagine. The mother dies when the boy is five years old. The father raises the boy and the older sister. The father dies in a freak work-related accident. Then the sister dies from undetermined natural causes three months later. The list of losses that made up his life was so unbelievable, it was embarrassing. It was like he made the whole thing up just so people would feel sorry for him.

“Pancho glared at Father Concha. he did not want pity. Pity turned his stomach. The priest put the folder down and met Pancho’s eyes. There was no pity there.”

At the orphanage, Pancho meets D.Q., a kid his own age who is dying of cancer. D.Q. takes an interest in Pancho. D.Q.’s mother, who left him at the orphanage years before, is now trying to get him to try some experimental treatments in Albuquerque. D.Q. agrees to go, but wants Pancho to come with him.

Pancho agrees because of his own summer plans: To find the man who was with his sister when she died, and kill him.

D.Q. also has his own agenda. A girl named Marisol works at Casa Esperanza, the house where they’ll be staying near the hospital.

D.Q. is always writing in his journal. He’s writing the Death Warrior Manifesto. A Death Warrior affirms life. He sucks the marrow from life with every day he has been given. D.Q. intends to train Pancho to be a Death Warrior, too. Pancho just thinks he’s crazy.

Things happen. Marisol isn’t what Pancho expected. He gets drafted to give rides to young kids with cancer at Casa Esperanza and makes friends with them. He watches D.Q. getting sick from chemotherapy. He makes plans to go to the house of the man who was with his sister and kill him.

There’s nothing simplistic about this book. It’s much more than a story of a teen with cancer or the story of a teen seeking revenge. In a lot of ways, it’s a book exploring what life is all about.

This book leaves you satisfied in a quiet way, glad to have spent time with Pancho and D.Q. and Marisol.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/death_warriors.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

Audiobooks, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Parenting, Starred Review 0

NurtureShock

New Thinking About Children

by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman
read by Po Bronson

Hachette Audio, 2009. 7 CDs.
Starred Review

This audiobook was a fascinating one to listen to. I put a copy of the print version on hold, so I’d have some surprising statistics to quote for this review, but too many people want to read it and my copy still hasn’t come in, so I will have to go by memory of what I heard and be more general.

NurtureShock reviews studies on child development and breakthroughs in our understanding of nurturing children that have come in the last ten years, particularly studies that had results contradictory to prevailing belief.

The authors cover many different aspects of raising children and cover child development at all age levels. They begin with studies that show that too much praise is actually counterproductive for building a child’s self-esteem. They go on to studies about many other things, and cover each topic in great depth, explaining the implications of the studies and how the researchers approached their surprising results.

We learn about the importance of sleep for children — it’s much more important for children and teens than it is for adults. They look at the lies children tell, which happens much more often than their parents realize. It turns out that children know they are lying much younger than their parents realize, but it also serves a developmental purpose.

We learn that baby videos — with disembodied voices — actually slow down a baby’s vocabulary development, that responsiveness to the baby’s initiation is key. We learn that children’s programming like Arthur actually increases aggressive behavior. (The neat summing up at the end doesn’t seem to make up for all the unkindnesses portrayed earlier in the story.)

All ten chapters tell you fascinating things about children and teens and their developing brains. Not only do the authors present the surprising results, they also come up with plausible reasons for why those results are happening.

I highly recommend this book for all parents, and anyone who works with children or teens. People will also be fascinated who are interested in how the human mind works. Every chapter has interesting and surprising things to think about, and it may change the way you parent your kids. It would be nice if this book could even be used to change some school district policies.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/nurtureshock.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Crossing Stones, by Helen Frost

Historical, Poetry, Teen Fiction Review 0

Crossing Stones

by Helen Frost

Frances Foster Books (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), New York, 2009. 184 pages.

Crossing Stones is a novel in verse about two families who live across a creek from each other during World War I. The book is masterfully and beautifully written. Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of verse novels. Just hearing the thoughts of the characters from the start, it’s harder for me to picture the characters and the setting. Still, once I got going, I found this to be a powerful and moving story.

Both the families that live across the creek have a brother and a sister. Frank and Emma live on one side, and Ollie and Muriel live on the other. Frank loves Muriel, and Ollie loves Emma, but when World War I starts, Frank goes off to war, and Ollie soon follows, even though he’s only sixteen.

Muriel’s not a fan of the war, like her Aunt Vera, a suffragette. But not being happy about the war is considered unpatriotic, and women are told their place is in the home.

This book includes war, the flu epidemic, the battle for women’s rights, and the day-to-day struggles of farm chores that must go on even when the men and boys have gone to war.

I should have heeded the advice of our local Kidlit Book Club leader and read the “Notes on the Form” at the back of the book first. Helen Frost did something innovative and symbolic. She writes the poems in the voices of Muriel, Emma, and Ollie. Muriel’s poems are written in free style, in the shape of a rushing creek “flowing over the stones as it pushes against its banks” just as Muriel is pushing against the constraints of her society and time.

Emma’s and Ollie’s poems are written to make the shapes of stones. The author explains:

“I ‘painted’ them to look round and smooth, each with a slightly different shape, like real stones. They are ‘cupped-hand sonnets,’ fourteen-line poems in which the first line rhymes with the last line, the second line rhymes with the second-to-last, and so on, so that the seventh and eight lines rhyme with each other at the poem’s center. In Ollie’s poems the rhymes are the beginning words of each line, and in Emma’s poems they are the end words.”

The rhymes are so unforced, I didn’t notice them at all until I read the note at the back. I was impressed when I looked back and found the rhymes, but wish I had noticed from the beginning. Helen Frost also tells us:

“To give the sense of stepping from one stone to the next, I have used the middle rhyme of one sonnet as the outside rhyme of the next. You will see that the seventh and eight lines of each of Emma’s poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Ollie’s next poem, and the seventh and eighth lines of Ollie’s poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Emma’s next poem. If you have trouble finding these rhymes, remember to look on the left side of Ollie’s poems, and on the right side of Emma’s.”

So besides writing a moving story of World War I, Helen Frost has also pulled off an impressive technical achievement.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/crossing_stones.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Born on a Blue Day

Audiobooks, Biography, Mathematical, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Born on a Blue Day

Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

by Daniel Tammet
read by Simon Vance

Tantor Media, 2007. 6 CDs, 6.5 hours.

Lately I’ve gotten hooked on listening to nonfiction. It’s a little bit easier to stop listening when I get to work (most of the time), and there’s something about driving that makes it a good time to access the part of my brain that stores facts. (That may not be a scientific description, but that’s how it feels.)

Born on a Blue Day tells the story of person with a brain that stores facts much differently than mine. Daniel Tammet is on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, and he has amazing powers of memory. He has recited the digits of pi to more than 20,000 places, and can learn a new language in one week. He proved this in a televised experiment with Icelandic and after studying the language one week, appeared on several Icelandic television and radio shows, speaking in the native language.

Part of the trick to Daniel’s memory is that numbers have a specific shape, color and personality to him. Primes look different than other numbers, and when he multiplies two numbers, he can see the answer by the process their shapes use to combine. He learned all those digits of pi by simply learning the “landscape” — the view as the numbers passed by, which to his mind’s eye was exceptionally beautiful.

He also sees letters and words as having distinct shapes and colors. This helps him learn words in new languages, because he associates the word and its meaning with how the word looks to him.

This book is the story of Daniel Tammet’s life. His prodigious mental feats are a sideline of the story. The focus is on how he grew up and coped with being so different. He is proud to now be living independently with his partner, making a living, and even traveling all over the world and raising money for charities to help people with neurological disorders.

This book is both fascinating and inspiring. I’m not sure that many other autistic savants could articulate the way they see the world so clearly and beautifully.

I was also delighted to discover the reader was Simon Vance, who also narrates the Temeraire books. In this book, there were no characters to distinguish between, since it’s all told from Daniel Tammet’s perspective. But I’m getting quite a crush on Simon Vance’s voice. He’s a treat to listen to.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/born_on_a_blue_day.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Summing Up

Events, General 0

You may have noticed that my reviews have slowed down lately. I thought I’d sum up some of the things that have been going on.

School Library Journal‘s Battle of the Books finished up today. I’m sad that it’s over so quickly. If you haven’t been following the battle, it’s well worth going back and reading the judges’ decisions. The organizers took 16 outstanding children’s and young adult books, fiction and nonfiction, all written in 2009. Then they pitted them against each other in tournament brackets, with celebrity children’s authors providing the judging.

One of the best parts of the Battle is that the judges can write! They picked stellar writers to do the judging, and they waxed eloquent in praise of both the losers and the winners. Because, really all the books chosen to compete were outstanding. They also nicely expressed what factors swayed their ultimate decision.

Katherine Paterson was today’s judge for the final round, and she, too, did a wonderful summing up. Be sure to look at the Battle site and see who won!

Of course, half the fun was predicting who would win. With my first round choices, I did abysmally — only predicting one match right out of eight matches. But, funny thing, after that first round, every single one of my predictions was correct! Perhaps once my favorites were knocked out of the running, I was more objective and didn’t let my own biases affect how I predicted the judges would respond. Or perhaps I was just luckier.

Another event I’m following avidly, checking each morning, is the revelation of the Top 100 Children’s Novels, based on Betsy Bird’s poll over at her Fuse #8 blog. She announced #6 today.

I’ve been following Betsy’s blog ever since her Top 100 Picture Books poll last year. It’s so much fun being reminded of these truly great books. She does an incredible summing up of each book.

Just for fun, here are the books I voted for in the Children’s Novel poll. Now, it was supposed to be Middle Grade Novels, so I didn’t include some favorites that I consider YA. She gave 10 points for first place, 9 for second place, and so on. Here were my votes, with links to those I’ve reviewed:

1. Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery
2. The World of Pooh, by A. A. Milne (This was my way of cheating and voting for both Winnie-the-Pooh and The House of Pooh Corner, but it backfired because no one else voted that way.)
3. Momo, by Michael Ende
4. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis
5. The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner
6. The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien
7. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
8. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling
9. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi
10. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle

Now, there are still five books left to announce. I suspect, when all is said and done, that all but one of my choices will show up on the Top 100 List. Momo, alas, is not well-known in America. Though it was the first book I ever ordered from Book-of-the-Month Club and in fact the book that got me hooked on Book-of-the-Month Club.

Betsy also held a contest to guess what the Top Ten books would be. I think I guessed the books correctly, but I did not get the order right. Here’s what I guessed:

1. Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery
2. Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White
3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling
4. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis (what is it with great children’s writers using their initials?)
5. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
6. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg (I probably should have put her before Madeleine L’Engle because she uses her initials!)
7. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
8. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
9. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
10. Holes, by Louis Sachar

My biggest error was not taking into account how many men and boys were voting. Anne, alas, was only #9. Here is how 6-10 turned out:

6. Holes
7. The Giver
8. The Secret Garden
9. Anne of Green Gables
10. The Phantom Tollbooth

But you have to admit, I’m pretty darn close! 🙂

Anyway, I will predict the top five as being my remaining guesses in the order I guessed them. We shall see…

But the real fun is the finding out! If you haven’t checked out Betsy’s blog yet, do so right away!

And I’m also happy to say that I’ve read almost all the books that have come up in the Top 100. Most of the ones I haven’t read are old classics, and I’m going to have to give them a try.

It was my turn to make a display behind the Circulation Desk for the month of April, so I decided to make a display of the Top 50 Children’s Novels — at least all the ones we have. I will take a picture after #1 has been announced and post it.

So you see, blogging about these blogs takes up my review time! On top of that, I am frantically trying to get out job applications. At the end of April, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors will vote on the budget. If they vote for a 15% cut in the libraries, as the County Executive has proposed, well, I will almost certainly lose my job. They would cut 24 Librarian I positions, based on seniority, and I’m about 10th from the bottom. Many other positions would also be cut, but that’s the job class that concerns me.

Anyway, I already have 5 job applications out there, for some librarian positions for federal agencies (like the US Senate Library and the Executive Office of the President!), and some research positions for private companies. All the jobs pay considerably better than my current job, so I’ll be tempted to take one even if I’m not laid off. But we will see. Anyway, each day after work I have time to either blog or get an application sent out. So tonight I’m not getting an application off, and neither am I getting a review written.

But I’m also reading slowly lately, because I have gotten on a Killer Sudoku kick lately, so I’ve been doing Killer Sudoku at bedtime instead of reading. But I do already have some books waiting to be reviewed, as well as lots and lots of wonderful books that I’m dying to read! So I’m reminding myself that if I just get these applications out, then I can get busy reviewing again….

Mind you, I also recently filed for divorce, so any day now I’ll have to gather up all my financial records again, or work with my lawyer on an agreement. I’m still sad about that — I still love my husband. — and yet I’m happy to get this settled and get out of his life while he does NOT want me there. And I get to pursue my career (who ever thought I’d have one? I was just tagging along on my husband’s career…) and the things that I am passionate about.

Oh, and I almost completely forgot to mention that for every day in 2010, I have faithfully spent at least 30 minutes each day working on my own book! It’s a middle grade novel, and I thought I had it finished last year, but then in the Fall I got an idea to add to the back story and give it a lot more depth. So slowly but surely, I’m rewriting it, and I think it’s a better book. Here’s hoping I can finish the revisions by my birthday in June.

So life is very busy. But it’s also very interesting and very good. I’m finding that I have a choice: I can stew over my impending job loss (I do really love my job!) — or I can get excited about what God is going to do next. The latter option is a lot more fun!

My New T-shirt!

Events 0


Here I am in the t-shirt the nice folks at School Library Journal sent me for blogging about their wonderful Battle of the Books!

I stole an idea from one of the other commenters and made a display to follow the progress of the tournament at the library. My co-worker took this picture this morning before I had checked today’s round. I did predict Megan Whalen Turner’s decision correctly.

I hope this new stretch of correct predictions extends to Fire coming back from the dead and winning it all! The Battle will unfold through the start of next week. Stay tuned…

Review of A Conspiracy of Kings, by Megan Whalen Turner

Adventure, Alternate History, Fantasy, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Conspiracy of Kings

by Megan Whalen Turner

Greenwillow Books, 2010. 316 pages.
Starred Review.

I’ve been waiting eagerly for this book, the fourth about The Thief Eugenides. When it did arrive last week, sure enough, I didn’t stop reading until I finished, even though that severely cut into my time to sleep. I will probably reread it soon to savor it more slowly and catch the things I missed that I’m sure Megan Whalen Turner inserted all along. She has a way of writing books that get richer every time you read them.

Again, I can’t say too much about the plot, because I don’t want to give away all that happens in the earlier books. This definitely is a book you would enjoy more if you read the earlier books first. Or at least you’ll definitely enjoy the earlier books more, because this book refers back to almost every surprising plot point in The Thief and The Queen of Attolia.

I was fully expecting to be championing this book for this year’s Newbery Medal, but now that I’ve read it, I think it’s probably not enough of a stand-alone story to win. However, rabid fans of the earlier books (like me) will gobble it up and be excited that she’s definitely setting the stage for further exciting drama and conflict with the Medes. I strongly suspect that Eugenides will be up to some further scheming in future books, and I only wish that Megan Whalen Turner could write such brilliant books just a little bit faster!

I like that this book featured our old friend Sophos from the first book, The Thief. In A Conspiracy of Kings, Sophos must grow into his heritage. He’s the heir to the throne of Sounis, but the book starts with his kidnapping. There are powerful people who would like to make him a puppet king with the Medes pulling the strings. Can Sophos find a way to escape that fate? Can someone who preferred poetry to swordplay and who blushes easily and can’t lie convincingly seize and hold a kingdom?

In the first chapter, Sophos writes:

“I was crossing the courtyard of the villa, and it was as if one of Terve’s lessons had come to life. He may as well have been there, shouting, ‘You are suddenly attacked by fifteen men; what are you going to do?’ Only they weren’t a product of Terve’s imagination; they were real men, cutting down the guards at the front gate and streaming into the courtyard of the villa.”

If you haven’t yet read these books, full of adventure, danger, plots and counterplots, and wonderfully flawed heroes and heroines — order a copy of The Thief right away and get started!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/conspiracy_of_kings.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Battle of the Books Second Round Round-Up

Events 0

Today the second round of School Library Journal’s Battle of the Kids’ Books finished up! Even better, today I got my t-shirt!

Well, okay, maybe that was only better for me. I won a t-shirt for blogging about the Battle. Pictures to follow. I simply have to wear it to work tomorrow, since my son’s at his Dad’s and can’t take the picture tonight. Now, it turns out that when I sent them my address, I should have requested them to send the smallest size they have. But it’s okay — I can always wear it as a tunic.

I’m happier about the second round of the battle, because it turned out that, after predicting seven out of eight of the first round matches incorrectly, I guessed ALL four of the second round matches correctly.

Do I have a better feel for how the judges are picking? Am I tracking better with these judges because I love their work? Or am I just getting lucky? Well, I’m on a roll, so I’m going to guess who will win the third round, the Final Four. Though I have to admit that I am fervently hoping that either Fire or Marcelo in the Real World will come back from the dead and win it all in the final round.

Interestingly, both matches in the third round feature a nonfiction title versus a fiction title. That will be tough to judge. I think I’ll split my guesses between Team Fiction and Team Nonfiction.

Third Round Predictions:

Match One:
Charles and Emma
vs.
The Lost Conspiracy
Judge: Megan Whalen Turner

Hmm. If judges go with the book that is least like what they write, then Megan Whalen Turner would pick Charles and Emma. The Lost Conspiracy is very similar to the fabulous books Megan Whalen Turner writes — Her latest is even called A Conspiracy of Kings! Though Judge Turner’s books are less dark, both are fantasy books with intricate plots and a well-realized fantasy world.

So, Judge Turner may notice flaws in The Lost Conspiracy that weren’t obvious to any but a skilled practitioner like she is. Or maybe, like me, she’ll be turned off by the genocide and focus on revenge in the book.

However, The Lost Conspiracy is such a well-crafted book, and I still haven’t gotten around to reading Charles and Emma, so for the sake of prediction, I’m going to root for The Lost Conspiracy.

Match Two:
Marching for Freedom
vs.
Tales from Outer Suburbia
Judge: Walter Dean Myers

Phooey. I’m a huge fan of Tales from Outer Suburbia. But I somehow can’t quite foresee Walter Dean Myers not taking this opportunity to extol Marching for Freedom.

So there you have it. As I did in the first round so abysmally, I’m predicting that the judges will pick the book most like their own. I may be totally wrong.

But the fun part is finding out!

Again, I have to urge everyone to check out the Battle of the Books. The best part is hearing what these brilliant authors have to say about the books they read. Last year, I had hardly read any of the books, but the judges convinced me to do so without delay!

Enjoy!

Review of My People, by Langston Hughes, photographs by Charles R. Smith Jr.

Children's Nonfiction Review, Picture Book Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

My People

by Langston Hughes
Photographs by Charles R. Smith Jr.

Ginee Seo Books (Atheneum Books for Young Readers), New York, 2009. 36 pages.
2010 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award
Starred Review

My People is a beautiful, glorious, gorgeous book. I can’t adequately speak in its praise. It’s also, I believe, the first time a photographer has won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award — but the award is completely deserved, as the images used are stunning and so wonderfully accompany the poem.

The text is the Langston Hughes poem, “My People,” which talks about how beautiful his people are. “The night is beautiful, so the faces of my people…”

Charles R. Smith Jr. uses incredible close-up pictures of African-Americans to illustrate each phrase. The faces are truly beautiful, radiant and glowing. I think my favorite pictures are the ones that illustrate the phrase “are the souls,” with children dancing, completely unself-conscious. But all the people featured — elders, adults, children and babies — are photographed in a way that makes us see the wonder of their joy and humanity. Truly beautiful.

You simply have to see this book to understand how wonderful it is.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/my_people.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Battle of the Books First Round Report

Events 0

School Library Journal’s Battle of the (Kids’) Books finished its first round today. Back before the battle started, I predicted who would win. Of the eight first round matches, I only got one right! Though there is some consolation. Eric Carpenter of the blog What We Read and What We Think conducted a poll as to the winners of each match. And according to the stats he has reported, in every case I chose the same book as the majority who entered the poll. So I’m in line with the other people following the battle, just not with the celebrity authors who are making the choices.

And there’s some great writing going on by the judges. Getting talented wordsmith’s to say what they like about two books and why they chose won book over another was an inspired idea. Reading their comments will make you want to read the books you missed, even the ones that don’t win. That’s what happened to me last year with The Hunger Games. After hearing four rounds of judges extol it, I had to see for myself.

Now here’s a recap of the second half of Round One and my predictions for Round Two:

My biggest disappointment of the second half was that the wonderful Marcelo in the Real World was beaten by Marching for Freedom. There was some consolation in how eloquently Gary Schmidt talked about the brilliance of Marcelo.

The sixth match, Peace, Locomotion vs. A Season of Gifts was the only match in the whole Battle where I hadn’t read either book. So I wasn’t emotionally invested in that prediction.

In the second round:
Marching for Freedom
vs.
A Season of Gifts
Judge: Christopher Paul Curtis

I’d like to see Marching for Freedom win.

The seventh match was the only one I predicted correctly, with The Storm in the Barn beating Sweethearts of Rhythm. I read Sweethearts of Rhythm the night before the contest, and I thought Judge Anita Silvey summed up its strengths and weaknesses just about perfectly.

For the last match, I had come close to predicting the winner, because I do admire both books tremendously, and I wasn’t sure which way the judge would go. Julius Lester went with the incredible and bizarre Tales from Outer Suburbia over the Newbery winner, When You Reach Me.

In Round Two, that will give Shannon Hale this choice:
The Storm in the Barn
vs.
Tales from Outer Suburbia

This one is tough. Both are wonderful books in the graphic format. Will Shannon Hale go with the fairy-tale type element in The Storm in the Barn? Or will she be captivated by the quirks of Tales from Outer Suburbia? I think both books are brilliant, so I won’t be disappointed either way, but for the sake of prediction I will choose Tales from Outer Suburbia.

Tomorrow morning, M. T. Anderson will start the first half of the second round, which I predicted last week. Will I do any better in Round Two?