Have you been looking for a book that is the perfect combination of Alice in Wonderland and "Mission Impossible?" You haven't? Really?
So maybe you haven't been looking for it, but Milo Speck, Accidental Agent appears to be just that winning combination. In this great adventure story, the reluctant Milo becomes the hero after getting sucked into a clothes dryer and thrown out into Ogregon, a land of hungry and foul-smelling ogres. While just trying to avoid getting eaten by many different ogres, Milo devises plans, escapes capture, and rescues other humans caught in Ogregon also. He is the perfect scrawny, self-conscience boy turned action hero, and my students will love his story.
If you haven't heard of Milo Speck yet, you should get this on your order list. The book comes out on September 1 by the impressive children's book author Linda Urban.
Thanks to the wonderfully inspiring "Book Whisperer," Donalyn Miller, and her blog, I decided to take up her #bookaday challenge for this summer. In essense it is a personal challenge with the community benefit of sharing your reading with others using the Twitter hashtag #bookaday. I have enjoyed checking in on other readers' books and reviews, but I have especially enjoyed keeping myself up to the challenge and really enjoying lots of new books. Honestly, I have spent some recent summers not really reading anything in particular, and then kicking myself at the end of the summer knowing how I wasted all those precious sunny hours. Of course I have managed to waste a lots of sunny hours this summer already, but I have kept up with my personal #bookaday challenge and discovered some pretty great books for kids.
Here are my Top Five:
5. Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Brian Biggs
What is not to love about the always entertaining Jon Scieszka? In this newer series Frank Einstein is a child genius who just wants to prove he can win the city-wide science fair just like his dad did as a kid. He knows he cannot win with another tired project like a baking soda volcano, so he decides to tackle artificial intelligence. Will he win the prize, or will his new inventions be stolen by his arch enemy and classmate, T. Edison?
Loula is a tiny and spunky young girl with a gigantic dog as her best friend. Mister, the dog, is not the most agile of sorts. He tends to run into and over everything, leaving a path of broken and spilled household items behind him. One day Loula overhears her mother claiming to want to get rid of that "monster" right away. Loula enlists the help of her doorman to find a way to teach Mister some manners and prove that Mister is not a monster. You will love Loula and her determination to solve this huge problem!
For all of those perfectionist inventors out there, this is the book for you! The girl in the story is on a quest to build the most magnificent thing. She has a faithful assistant, who occasionally unmakes her things, but sticks with her throughout her trying process of attempting, but failing in her opinion, to make the most magnificent thing. The neighbors are quite impressed with her hard work, but "they can't see the MAGNIFICENT thing that she has in her mind." She goes through the process of numerous attempts, anger, frustration, and even resignation. But after a walk with her assistant, things seem a little better, and she discovers that now she knows how to make what she had been seeing in her mind all along.
I don't even know how to explain how utterly simple, yet hilarious this book is. I loved it. I read it out loud in Elliott Bay Books in downtown Seattle with my grown daughter, and we laughed louder than we probably should have been laughing in that quiet, subdued bookstore. We laughed because we are the grammar police at times, and this throws all of that out the window for the sake of some wonderfully satisfying belly laughs.
Jackson is going into fifth grade. He has a mom, a dad, a little sister named Robin, a dog named Aretha. His life appears normal, but something is different about Jackson, or so he thinks. He has an imaginary friend. His imaginary friend is a giant black and white cat with a baseball cap named Crenshaw. Jackson doesn't want to be different. He wants to have a home and enough food to eat, but his life is like so many other children of poverty these days. The last time they lived in their van, Jackson was much younger, but now he knows what that means, and he sees it coming. Then Crenshaw appears, again, just like when he was little. He wants to help his family, but his parents don't want him to worry, so they tell him that everything will be fine. Then Crenshaw appears in the bathtub.
This is an amazing story about the reality of hunger and homelessness from the perspective of a child in the middle of it. His method of coping involves and imaginary cat, but not everyone has that luxury. I think that the honesty of this book will help teachers from all walks of life understand some of the hardships our students face at home, even while they appear to be holding it all together at school. Sometimes school is the only safe or normal place for our students, so that is what we try to provide, yet this story is set in the summer, when a healthy breakfast and lunch is not available every school day. I appreciate the research and heart that went into this book, and I hope that it will reach the many students and adults who will benefit from the message contained in its beautiful story.
Thanks to Net Galley, I was able to preview some new early elementary books coming out this summer and fall. The books were all enjoyable for different reasons, and I hope that I will be able to add all of them to my library very soon.
THE CREEPS, Book 1: THE NIGHT OF THE FRANKENFROGS by Chris Schweizer
These totally smart misfit friends start off in the middle of yet another explosion of epic proportions. Of course, they have been blamed for it, but they were simply trying to save the school from total destruction. Now they have to spend the next few weeks cleaning up the school to make up for all of the chaos they caused. While cleaning they come across another plot to take over the school. What else can they do but save the school, yet again? With a touch of Scooby Doo and Agents of Shield, these individually intelligent kids put their brains together to solve the mystery of the Frankenfrogs. I look forward to reading more books in this series and recommending them to my students.
THE WORST WITCH AND THE WISHING STAR by Jill Murphy
When I chose to read this book, I was oblivious to the previous six titles in the series. Obviously, as I read the book I discovered the world of Miss Cackle's Academy for witches, and I got to know the lovable, blundering, well-meaning young witch, Mildred Hubble. Mildred is once again in the middle of a muddle of problems. Now in her fourth year at the Academy, she is chosen to be responsible for lighting the lamps for one third of the school every day and putting them out every morning. This seems easy enough, but Mildred, ever the animal-lover, finds a stray puppy and immediately decides to take it in as her own. You will have to read to find out how Mildred gets out of this mess. I was surprised to find a copy of the THE WORST WITCH in my library, and of course, I read that also. I have enjoyed getting to know Mildred, and hope to recommend these books to my younger Harry Potter fans, who are not quite ready for the darkness of that series.
I have long loved the books by Peter H. Reynolds, THE DOT, ISH, etc., so I was excited to see that he had worked on an early elementary novel. This is the story of twins, Sydney and Simon, who meet a young sea turtle, Greenie, that was injured by garbage in the ocean. The kids decide to take a look at how their family and school are affecting the environment in how much trash they create. They use math, science and observational skills to determine that the trash they create is more than they could or should be creating. With the help of a teacher and the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) Lab, they come up with a plan, and even a song, to help create awareness about the ways to reduce waste in their community. I loved the message for kids and teachers in this book. We can all make a difference in big and small ways.
One of my favorite projects created by the Reynolds team at Fablevision is The Testing Camera, a powerful video telling the story of one young student dealing with the dreaded testing day. The message is for students, parents and teachers, and it is simple - students are more than a snapshot of data.
You can find these books soon at your local library or at your local independent booksellers.
