Our family recently finished reading the Percy Jackson & The Olympians books, 1-4, written by Rick Riordan. We all really enjoyed the stories. We read about three to five chapters daily. We highly recommend this series and are waiting impatiently for the next book!
The main character, Percy, always had trouble in school and was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. As it turns out, all the children of the gods have dyslexia and ADHD. The reason behind this is that they have to be alert and on thier toes, so it is one of thier natural instincts to not focus on one partular thing, but be constantly surveying their surroundings. I liked that.
The author, Rick Riordan, did a wonderful job of making the characters endearing, even the kids who are bullies and the not-so-nice kids.
read more: Percy Jackson & The Olympians Review , Vote for your favorite Percy Jackson book and watch a video of the author reading chapter one of “The Battle of the Labyrinth” (click here)
Book review:Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on my Life, Love, and Leading Roles, by Kathleen Turner, published in 2008.
I recently read the book Send Yourself Roses by Kathleen Turner. I don’t read biographies. The last one I read was in 1995, It’s always Something, by Gilda Radner. Because I am a fan and heard that Nicolas Cage was suing over some things Mrs. Turner said in the book, I had to read it. I’m glad I did. It was good.
She told a little story about each movie she was in, such as Romancing the Stone. Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito and Kathleen really hit it off. She stated that during the filming, Michael and his wife were going through a separation. She didn’t have a relationship at the time, either, and began to fall in love.
I found it entertaining the way she lets everyone have it. She obviously doesn’t worry about angering her fellow actors. If they did something to upset her, they are going to hear about it. Maybe even in a published book. For example, Christie Brinkley stood her up a few times. She was supposed to see Kathleen’s play and was a no show more than once. Aparently Christie felt bad and sent a gift. Kathleen says she sent it right back saying “You can’t buy friendship” or something like that. Nicolas Cage filed suit against her for claiming he had been arrested for DUI twice and once stole a chihuahua he liked.
Anyway, if you are a also a fan, love her movies, or have Rumatoid Arthritis, I recommend this book. A word of warning, though. F-WORD THIS, F-WORD THAT, F_CK, F_CK, F_CK. I don’t swear, and all the f_words in this book were a little surprising to me. Kathleen Turner must have been a truck driver in a former life!
I highly recommend this book for young readers age nine to ninety. It has it all: Humor, suspense, mystery and more humor. It is really a ‘Detective Novel for Kids’. Our family totally enjoyed reading this book together and are looking forward to the next book in the series.
Summary: “Fletcher Moon may not be the most popular 12-year-old in his Irish town but he’s proud-maybe a little too proud-of the badge that he constantly flashes to let everyone know that he’s an online graduate of a private detective academy in Washington, DC. The other kids admit that Fletcher, aka Half Moon, has solved several tough cases at Saint Jerome’s Elementary and Middle School, so they come to him when they have a problem. But when super all-in-pink girly-girl April Devereux hires him to find a lock of a pop star’s hair that she claims was stolen by one of the Sharkeys-a family of well-known criminals-everything starts going wrong for Fletcher. His precious badge is taken, he finds a single huge footprint at every crime scene, and he’s picked up by the local police for arson when the Devereux playhouse burns down. When Fletcher goes on the run, who becomes his number-one ally? Young Red Sharkey. A typically funny Colfer offering without the mania of the Artemis Fowl series (Hyperion), the story wittily delivers the message that some people aren’t-for good or ill-who they appear to be. Kids who enjoy comic mysteries will have a great time with Half Moon, and the conclusion drops plenty of hints that this could become a series.“
The book, The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless, by Ahmet Zappa, was very fun to read. It is inspiring that the author, who battled Dyslexia, has written such a great book! Our family read it together and we all enjoyed it. It was a little scary in places, but the kid’s didn’t seem to mind. The book is full of great pictures of the monsters that Zappa drew himself. It is a good story about 11-year-old Minerva McFearless, her brother Max, and their mysterious coyote friend, Mr. Devilstone, as they battle the evil army of the king of all monsters—the dreaded Zarmaglorg! The book is set up in a cool and different way. There are pages of “scientific” data on the monsters in the story scattered throughout the book.
We are waiting anxiously for the movie, which will be out 2009, and also waiting for the next book in the series!
About Ahmet Zappa: Last year I read an article in ‘Readers Digest’ about Ahmet and this book. It told us about how he struggled through school with the learning disability, Dyslexia. (click here to read article) He always enjoyed drawing pictures of these monsters and decided to write a book about them. This is his first book, and it is very good. TV personality, movie actor, musician, and son of legendary rock musician Frank Zappa, Ahmet Zappa lives in Hollywood, California, with his one-eyed dog, Wink. see his website
Our family has really enjoyed the chapter books by Eoin Colfer for younger readers. These stories are very entertaining and keep the kid’s interest. We have read three of them: The Legend of Captain Crow’s Teeth, The Legend of Spud Murphy, The Legend of the Worst Boy in the World. They are also easy to read. The book, Worst Boy in the World, is one of the first chapter books our son read ‘voluntarily’ on his own. Reading these books led me to read the book, “Half Moon Investigations” also by Eoin Colfer. It is excellent! I am halfway through the book right now and will write a review when I’m finished.
The Legend of Spud Murphy:Will has four brothers and it’s chaos in his house! If he’s not being teased by his big brother Marty, he has to deal with the terrible, three-headed bundle of cuteness that is his three younger brothers. Even worse, his mother has the brilliant idea of packing Will and Marty off to the library during the holidays. She just doesn’t understand! Not only is the library no fun, it’s also the habitat of the legendary librarian Spud Murphy. If you put a foot wrong, it’s rumoured she will use her dreaded gas-powered spud gun and you don’t want that - just ask Ugly Frank how he got his nickname!
The Legend of Captain Crow’s Teeth: Will and his brothers are on holiday in a cramped caravan on the wild Irish coast. All the boys love ghost stories, but one dark night Will’s older brother, Marty, tells the bloodcurdling tale of the cutthroat pirate, Captain Crow. Will is scared. From that night on, everything starts to go wrong for Will. He is embarrassed, by a girl, at the local youth disco - The Sprat’s Jig - and Marty convinces him that the ghost of the evil Captain Crow is out to get him. But Marty’s tricks backfire, and for once Will has the last laugh.
The Legend of the Worst Boy in the World:Will is desperate to win the Giant Jelly Baby competition and be named ‘the best boy in the world’. But his big brother Marty always beats him to it. Then one day Will’s wish comes true – he’s the best boy in the world at last! Marty is not happy, and decides that something must be done…
We just finished the book, Snarf Attack, Underfoodle, and the Secret of Life: The Riot Brothers Tell All, by Mary Amato. The kids and I really enjoyed it. This book actually got my reluctant reader reading on his own!
The Riot Brothers are pranksters and love to play jokes on people. Unlike most books about siblings, Wilber and Orville get along with each other swimmingly. They decide they need to do something exciting every day and in the first story they plan to catch a crook. They don’t have a certain one in mind, any crook will do. In our favorite story in the book, the boys decided to make some money by giving lessons on ‘being annoying’ to their classmates. They end up in the Principal’s office (who is also their mother), and still manage to foil a bank robber on the way home from school. Next, while searching for treasure, they find a mysterious box in the closet. After they finally open it, they discover that the contents, although not worth money, are still valuable. The final installment has the duo building a catapult designed to overthrow a king and using it instead to defeat a bully.
“Snarf Attack” is a short chapter book with cartoon like pictures throughout. We have been trying to get our son to read and this book did the trick. It was funny and most importantly, easy for him to read on his own. There are three different stories in the book about these mischivious kids (with six chapters each). We tried the other Riot Brother’s books, and the kids enjoyed them, too. Snarf Attack was our favortie.
Other Riot Brothers books:Drooling and Dangerous: The Snarf Brothers Return & Stinky and Successful: The Riot Brothers Never Stop
2008 Caldecott medal winner, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is a 550 page children’s novel in words and pictures. But unlike most novels, the images in this book don’t just illustrate the story; they help tell it. It’s very interesting the way it is put together and fun to read, as well. The fun to read comment comes from an adult, my twelve-year-old had an entirely different opinion. Hugo’s Official Website
“Paris in the 1930’s, a thief, a broken machine, a strange girl, a mean old man, and the secrets that tie them all together… Welcome to The Invention of Hugo Cabret. ”
In this book an orphan, clock keeper, and thief, named Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station. Don’t take the ‘theif’ part the wrong way. He mostly steals food. When the boy’s father died, his drunken unkle came to get him and took him out of school. He was briefly trained, then abandoned. His uncle taught him to take care of the clocks in the station. Hugo doesn’t want anyone to notice that his uncle is gone, because he’d get put in an orphanage. Hugo’s most prized possession is hidden in the wall of his dark little room. His dad had been trying to repair an automaton (robot) and hadn’t finished it before his death. Now Hugo wants to get it working and see what it’s hidden message is.
This book kept my twelve year old interested until about half way through. We made it to page 250 in one afternoon. After that, he left and I continued reading. The size of the book is pretty intimidating, until you open it and see that half the pages are pictures. There are sometimes ten pages of pictures in a row. Now, when I say he lost interest, keep in mind this was after two hours of reading. But then again, he never asked me to read the rest of it to him either.
Click here if you’d like to watch the opening sequence of drawings in The Invention of Hugo Cabret. You can find the link for this at the bottom of the page. The Invention of Hugo Cabret has been awarded the 2008 Caldecott medal! Click here for some links related to the award.
Eddie Murphy has a new movie called Meet Dave. It will be released July 11, 2008. We saw the preview at the beginning of Nim’s Island. It looked pretty funny.
However, I’ve noticed a trend to make the movie look different (in the preview/trailer) from what the movie is actually about. It’s misleading. One blatant example of this is the movie “Bridge to Terabithia“. If I had read the summary of the book I would have known what that movie was really about. Instead, I believed the trailer/preview, which portrayed the movie as an action adventure movie. It turned out to be a really sad, disturbing movie about ‘not fitting in’ and death. Read more about this (we were terribly misled)
The summary of the movie ‘Meet Dave’ was a little different from what the trailer portrayed. Nothing too drastic, though. In the movie preview it looked like this was the plot: “The human looking robot played by Murphy has superhuman strength. He blunders around New York and has many humorous accidents. Inside the Eddie Murphy robot are little people who obviously have a lot of wrong ideas about life on earth.”
Compare that with the summary from Yahoo Movies: “A massive fireball from space hits New York’s Central Park and an ordinary man emerges unscathed. The man turns out to be a spaceship operated by 100 human-looking aliens who are one-quarter inch tall and seeking a way to save their planet; complications ensue when their captain falls in love with an Earth woman who’s always picked losers for previous romances.”
I love the Clive Cussler, Dirk Pitt, books. Right now I’m reading Flood Tide. It’s excellent.
Flood Tide (1997) is an action-adventure novel by Clive Cussler. This is the 14th book featuring Dirk Pitt. He must rescue illegal immigrants from a Chinese warlord and locate the bones of the Peking Man.
This is a fan-made music video of Sahara (I didn’t make it). Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf.
Lyrics:
like to dream yes, yes, right between my sound machine
On a cloud of sound I drift in the night
Any place it goes is right
Goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here
Well, you don’t know what we can find
Why don’t you come with me little girl
On a magic carpet ride
You don’t know what we can see
Why don’t you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free
Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound take you away
Last night I held Aladdin’s lamp
And so I wished that I could stay
Before the thing could answer me
Well, someone came and took the lamp away
I looked around, a lousy candle’s all I found
Well, you don’t know what we can find
Why don’t you come with me little girl
On a magic carpet ride
Well, you don’t know what we can see
Why don’t you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free
Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound take you away
I love the Clive Cussler, Dirk Pitt, books. Right now I’m reading Flood Tide. It’s excellent.
Flood Tide (1997) is an action-adventure novel by Clive Cussler. This is the 14th book featuring Dirk Pitt. He must rescue illegal immigrants from a Chinese warlord and locate the bones of the Peking Man.
This is a fan-made music video of Sahara (I didn’t make it). Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf.
Lyrics:
like to dream yes, yes, right between my sound machine
On a cloud of sound I drift in the night
Any place it goes is right
Goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here
Well, you don’t know what we can find
Why don’t you come with me little girl
On a magic carpet ride
You don’t know what we can see
Why don’t you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free
Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound take you away
Last night I held Aladdin’s lamp
And so I wished that I could stay
Before the thing could answer me
Well, someone came and took the lamp away
I looked around, a lousy candle’s all I found
Well, you don’t know what we can find
Why don’t you come with me little girl
On a magic carpet ride
Well, you don’t know what we can see
Why don’t you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free
Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound take you away
Related:Vote For Your favorite Percy Jackson Book
The main character, Percy, always had trouble in school and was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. As it turns out, all the children of the gods have dyslexia and ADHD. The reason behind this is that they have to be alert and on thier toes, so it is one of thier natural instincts to not focus on one partular thing, but be constantly surveying their surroundings. I liked that.
