Review: The Secret Hum of a Daisy

Title: The Secret Hum of a Daisy
Author: Tracy Holczer
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Pages: 312
Review Copy: ARC from publisher
Available: May 2014

Summary: Twelve-year-old Grace and her mother have always been their own family, traveling from place to place like gypsies. But Grace wants to finally have a home all their own. Just when she thinks she's found it her mother says it's time to move again. Grace summons the courage to tell her mother how she really feels and will always regret that her last words to her were angry ones.

After her mother's sudden death, Grace is forced to live with a grandmother she's never met. She can't imagine her mother would want her to stay with this stranger. Then Grace finds clues in a mysterious treasure hunt, just like the ones her mother used to send her on. Maybe it is her mother, showing her the way to her true home.

Lyrical, poignant and fresh, The Secret Hum of a Daisy is a beautifully told middle grade tale with a great deal of heart. -- Cover image and summary via IndieBound

Review: Lyrical is precisely the word to use for this book. There are so many sentences that are poetry within the prose. Aside from the richness of Holczer's words, we also are treated to samplings of Robert Frost. Grace grew up listening to or reading Frost on a daily basis. She is also a writer herself. Her mother encouraged her writing and Grace has words buzzing and bubbling up inside her trying to escape onto paper every day. Grace's mother was an artist and so is Grace. She can sketch, but her medium is generally words. I enjoyed spending time with Grace and seeing the magic she had with the written word.

As you can see from the summary though, the book is about a lot more than writing. Grace has just lost her mother and is coping with grief and learning to live with a grandmother who is a virtual stranger. Grace struggles so much and slowly finds her way through the challenges she is facing.

I appreciated that the characters had many layers. I especially loved the depth of the grandmother. She is not without fault and idiosyncrasies, but she is also doing her best to be patient and caring as Grace adjusts and grieves even as she herself grieves her daughter and the years they lost.

This is a book full of emotion, love and hope. Grace has many caring adults and friends in the book to help her through this time, but she also draws on her own strengths. Readers who appreciate realistic fiction, especially tear jerkers, will likely love this one as I did.

I do have an issue with the summary above though. I am disappointed that the publishers or whoever wrote up the summary used the term gypsies when talking about their many moves. I thought that was a term with negative connotations about the Romani people and that it wouldn't be used any more around children's lit. Here is a post that explains why it's a negative. I don't think it was in the text itself though - at least I don't remember reading it there. I would have changed that about the book, but nothing else.

Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every day. Here are some of my celebrations from the week in no particular order.

** We have finished our LMC inventory! It's always nice to finish that and see where we stand going into the summer.

** One of the mothers brought us monster cookies as a thank you for teaching her children. She makes the best monster cookies of all.

** Our staff celebrated the retirement of two of our members. It's great to see them getting ready to move towards the next part of their lives with grandchildren on the way and new adventures on the horizon.

** I was struck with the stomach virus a second time this week. It was nice to have my dog curl up next to me and try to make me feel better.

** We finished up our book swap this week. It's fun to see students getting "new to them" books. Also, since I had so many extras (especially due to two huge donations earlier in the year), every single student got to choose at least one book. Those who brought books got to choose more, but I was glad that everyone could get something.

** Books! I have read many good books lately and while I was doing inventory, I grabbed quite a few to bring home for summer #bookaday. School is out next Tuesday and I am looking forward to reading many great books during vacation.

I hope you have a lot to celebrate.

Book Trailers

Often at the end of the year I share a lot of book trailers with students to get them excited about reading over the summer. Here are some that are favorites with various grades.

Older Students

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(not truly billed as a book trailer, but it works)

Also, we will be watching the Ninja! trailer that GeekDad revealed last week here. There is so much fun to be had with these trailers. Of course depending on the interests of my classes I have also showed a few others like False Prince, 8th Grade Superzero, The Meaning of Maggie, The School for Good and Evil #2 and more. I love seeing students adding titles to their TBR (to be read) lists. Yay summer reading!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys. Jen Vincent over at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee Moye from Unleashing Readers decided to put a children's and YA spin on it and they invite anyone with an interest to join in. You can participate by creating your post then visit one of their sites to add your site. Finally, visit at least three participant blogs and comment to spread the love.

If you want to know more about what I am reading, visit me at my Goodreads shelf. Images via Goodreads unless otherwise noted.

The Previous Week:

YA

Picture Books

Adult

I will highlight the best of each of these groups. Dangerous was reviewed last week over at Rich in Color by Jessica. I found it to be on the young side of YA. It was an entertaining sci-fi adventure. Maisy, the main character, is Latina and is missing part of her arm. She does not limit herself and uses all of her talents to do what needs to be done. Shannon Hale has a great post here about her main character. I just have to say that Tender Morsels is way beyond bizarre. I only finished it because it won a Printz and I am trying to read all of them. It was not my cup of tea even though I usually love fairytale retellings.

Separate is Never Equal was my overall favorite of the week. It is a non-fiction picture book that chronicles the Mendez family and their fight for desegregation of schools in California. This is a bit of history that is often overlooked and I am glad to have it in our library. I can't help myself. I have to talk about one more. Just us Women was a lot of fun and it's one I ran across during inventory. I'd never seen it before and was glad to find it.

A Year in Japan is a sort of scrapbook/journal that highlights some of the interesting things that the author experienced during a year in Kyoto. Beth Shaum reviewed it which brought it to my attention. Since my teenager will be heading to Japan in about two weeks, I thought we might both enjoy it. I loved the sketches and the less than typical things she noted such as seeing sumo wrestlers on the street going about their everyday lives. 

The Coming Week:

I am listening to and enjoying Heist Society on a Playaway and Landline on CD (via a Goodreads giveaway). I have barely started Last Airlift, but like it so far. I am really enjoying Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery. Beyond these four I am not sure what I will be getting to, but it is shaping up to be a great week. What will you be reading?

Review: Chukfi Rabbit's Big, Bad Bellyache: A Trickster Tale

Title: Chukfi Rabbit's Big, Bad Bellyache: A Trickster Tale
Tale Told By: Greg Rodgers
Illustrator: Leslie Stall Widener
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
Pages: 40
Review Copy: Digital ARC via Edelweiss
Release Date: June 24, 2014

Review: I'm always on the lookout for great folktales to add to our library collection. Teachers use them in every grade level and it's helpful to have a wide variety. We are especially watching for authentic tales from many different cultures. I was happy to hear about this title in April through a review by Debbie Reese, When I saw it listed on Edelweiss, I knew I had to take a look.

Trickster Tales are generally a lot of fun and this is no exception. Chukfi Rabbit is a selfish and lazy critter. It is interesting to see him working his schemes and readers will be wondering if he will get away with his tricks or not.

Before the story begins, the author does a little bit of explaining about the names in the story. "The people who told this story a long time ago were Choctaw and so they used the Choctaw words for Rabbit, Fox, Bear...." He also explains that sometimes they used the Choctaw word, sometimes English, and sometimes both together. I have been trying to expose my students to many languages through picture books and this is a great example to use. As Rodgers says, by the end of the story, readers may have some new Choctaw words in their vocabulary. Of course we will all know how to say rabbit.

When the story opens, Ms. Shukata Possum needs a new house. Many friends agreed to get together and help build her house. Aside from being a trickster tale, this is also a tale of community and friendship. Chukfi Rabbit is much too busy to help though until he hears that there will be food involved. He is especially interested in the fresh homemade butter. Given his selfishness and laziness, you can easily imagine what he plans to avoid and what he plans to get for himself. His antics are amusing and the results are even more so.

The illustrations are bright and cheerful and also reflect the Choctaw culture. One example is the clothing that the animals are wearing featuring diamond trim. The aprons, hats and other accessories also show this as Debbie Reese noted.

I am excited to be adding this to our collection of Trickster Tales. I know that the teachers will be glad to have another Trickster to share and the students will enjoy meeting him.

Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every day. Here are some of my celebrations from the week in no particular order.

** My daughter had an orchestra concert Tuesday (that I didn't know about until Monday). It was a bit of a surprise to me, but it was really fun to hear her improvise on her cello in a jazz number. Also great to find out that she will be bringing home a bass this summer to learn because the orchestra doesn't have any members that play it now. That was something she wanted to learn way back in sixth grade so it's fun that she gets to play it for a year.

** I was horribly sick this week. Not really something to celebrate, but the silver lining was sitting on my back porch in beautiful weather during the day and watching the Blue Angels practice for today's airshow.

** My trip to Minneapolis last weekend was really nice. I have attended four anime conventions with my daughter now and this is the one that I enjoyed the most because it was not during winter so I could get outside more. I was able to go for a run to the Lake of the Isles and then visit Birchbark Books with @LibLaura5 for one of my outings. It was wonderful to chat about books - and buy some too. I love meeting Twitter friends.

** At school yesterday, we had a visit from some of the team members of the Blue Angels and then of course, in the afternoon we had extended recess to watch this....

** Finally, another great time this week was watching the live tweets from the diversity panels at BEA. I am thankful that people shared what was happening there via #WeNeedDiverseBooks.

My daughter and I are about to head out to the official airshow. After watching the practices all week long it will be fun to see it from the show grounds. Have a great week!

Reading Challenge Update

It's been awhile since I have done an update for my reading challenges so this took awhile to put together and I have a lot of great titles to share.

For the Latin@s in Kid Lit Challenge, the expectation is that participants read at least one book a month written by a Latino@ author or featuring a Latin@ character. I have read 32 so far this year (most are picture books, but 8 were novels and a few were non-fiction).  Here are some of my favorites so far:

For The 2014 Africa Reading Challenge hosted by Kinna Reads we are meant to read at least five books set in at least two regions in Africa. I started this challenge later in the year than the others. I've read four picture books and three chapter books (listed here) so have met the minimum, but I would still like to read some of her suggested books like Maps by Nuruddin Farah or The Prophet of Zongo Street. My overall favorites so far have been Long Walk to Water, Americanah, and Akata Witch.

Diversity on the Shelf is hosted by My Little Pocketbooks and encourages readers to read books written by or about people of color. By the way, this is a great way to support the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign. I chose the 25+ level for 2014. The other challenges I am doing feed into this one so the numbers are way higher. I have read over 130 at this point. The list is here. And here are some of my favorites:

The #MustReadin2014 Challenge hosted by Carrie Gelson will officially post updates in July, but since I was already reporting on everything else, I figured I might as well add this too. This challenge is one to help encourage readers to finally get to some of the books on our TBR that have been waiting. I moved 110 books from my TBR to my Must Read shelf and have been plugging away at them though I haven't read as many lately as I would like. I have managed to get to 36/110 of them and I look forward to getting more finished during summer #bookaday. All of the favorites from this list were also on the Diversity on the Shelf list.

Whew! This has been a great year of reading so far. :)